“So come back,
come back,
don’t walk away,
come back,
come back,
come back today.
Come back,
come back,
why can’t you see?
Come back,
come back,
come back to me.”

About the song:

“Inbetween Days” is the first single from The Cure’s 1985 album, The Head on the Door. The song was a big international success. In the U.K., it was the band’s 9th chart single and their 4th consecutive Top-40 hit, while in the U.S. it was their 1st single to reach the Billboard 100, where it peaked at #99. It was a Top 20 hit in Australia and New Zealand, and also charted in several European countries.

The song is poppy and upbeat, featuring strummed acoustic guitars under a snappy synthesizer riff, although the song’s lyrical themes of aging, loss and fear do not particularly reflect the upbeat tempo of the music.

The spacing and punctuation in the title of this song is widely disputed, as it varies between “In Between Days”, “Inbetween Days”, and “In-Between Days” on many official Cure releases. The single used “In Between Days”, whereas the album The Head on the Door uses “In Between Days” on the back of the album cover and the record label, and “Inbetween Days” on the inner sleeve. However, the CD release of the album also uses “In Between Days” on the actual disc.

The 1986 singles compilation Standing on a Beach uses both “In Between Days” and “In-Between Days”, whereas the 1990 remix album Mixed Up, the 1993 live album Show, the 2001 Greatest Hits collection and the 2004 B-sides compilation Join the Dots each use “Inbetween Days”. The 2006 re-release of The Head on the Door uses “Inbetween Days” on the back of the box and the track listing in the booklet, but it uses “In Between Days” as the title in the lyrical portion of the book.

My thoughts:

Once upon a time every single mix tape I ever made had a Cure song on it, usually on Side 2. This one was one of three that I tended to, well, until Disintegration came along and stole my heart for keeps.

Senior year of high school a friend of mine gave me a compilation album that had this song on it. I remember playing it, over-and-over, sometimes singing into a hairbrush microphone, sometimes dancing and spinning around my bedroom, and sometimes writing overly sad and soppy poetry in one of my composition book journals.

Dancing, too – this song reminds me of dancing, first at Cloud 9 at Knott’s Berry Farm, and later at underground Hollywood clubs, like Hot Lava, or Ground Zero.

Inbetween Days (1985) :: The Cure
from the album, The Head on the Door