The Cure “Boys Don’t Cry” released on this date, February 5th, 1980 in the UK. Fiction Records/PVC Records. The US version was released in August of 1980, both as an alternate version of the band’s 1979 debut album Three Imaginary Boys with a slightly different track list. The record falls in a grey area between an official release and a compilation record.

Boys Don’t Cry includes three singles not on Three Imaginary Boys: “Killing an Arab,“ ”Boys Don’t Cry“ and ”Jumping Someone Else’s Train.” Tracks that overlap are “10:15 Saturday Night,” “Accuracy,” “Grinding Halt,” “Subway Song,” and, one of my favorite Cure songs, the beautifully haunting “Three Imaginary Boys.” Allmusic reviewer Chris True describes this time in The Cure’s recording catalog as “More poppy and representative of the times” and “a semi-detached bit of late-‘70s English pop-punk, angular and lyrically abstract..utter simplicity.”