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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
Lifestyle
Jacob Stolworthy

Deadpan Robert Smith interview resurfaces as The Cure singer celebrates 64th birthday

YouTube

It’s Robert Smith‘s birthday so, naturally, fans of the singer are sharing what is commonly believed to be one of his greatest moments.

The musician, who is the frontman of The Cure, turns 64 today (Friday 21 April).

In 2019, he became a viral sensation on Twitter thanks to his hilariously deadpan response to an excitable reporter.

Smith was in attendance at that year’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, where The Cure were being inducted alongside Stevie Nicks, Janet Jackson, Def Leppard, The Zombies, Radiohead and Roxy Music.

The singer approached a chipper interviewer at Brooklyn’s Barclays Centre, who said to him: “Congratulations, The Cure – Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees 2019! Are you as excited as I am?”

Smith, without missing a beat, replied: “Um, by the sounds of it, no.”

The interviewer, brushing off the response, laughed in response, and asked him: “Oh, no, what are we going to do?”

Smith continued: “I’m sure we’ll get there eventually. It’s a bit early, isn’t it?”

The clip, which has been viewed more than 10m times, has been shared on social media to mark Smith’s birthday.

“One of my absolute favourite Twitter clips of all time. Perfect!” one Twitter user wrote in response.

In March, Smith hit out at Ticketmaster after fans sent him screenshots of the high fees they were being charged when buying tickets to see The Cure live.

The Cure singer Robert Smith (Getty Images For The Rock and Ro)

The frontman used Twitter to express his frustration at the pricing system by the ticket site, which he says artists cannot “limit”.

“We had final say in all our ticket pricing for this upcoming tour, and didn’t want those prices instantly and horribly distorted by resale,” he wrote.

“We didn’t agree to the ‘dynamic pricing’ / ‘price surging’ / ‘platinum ticket’ thing…,” wrote Smith on the new higher tier system Ticketmaster has been trialling.

He later detailed what he meant by the tweet, writing: “I had a separate conversation about ‘platinum’ to see if I had misunderstood something… but I hadn’t!”

“All artists have the choice not to participate… If no artists participated, it would cease to exist,” he added.

However, when tickets went on sale, fans were reportedly hit by large fees that meant the cost of tickets was more than doubled.

Samith then announced that Ticketmaster would issue partial refunds to fans.

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