Song · The Cure
“10:15 Saturday Night” by The Cure
From the album Three Imaginary Boys (1979)
“10:15 Saturday Night” by The Cure appears on 12 radio countdowns from 10 stations between 1979 and 2026. It was first released in 1979 on the album Three Imaginary Boys. Its best result is #43 on the John Peel's All-Time Festive Fifty (1979). In the combined RockLists rankings it is #2,555 alternative song of all time.
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"10:15 Saturday Night" opens Three Imaginary Boys, the Cure's 1979 debut, and it first slipped out in December 1978 on the flip side of "Killing an Arab". It's the song that got them in the door: the demo is what hooked Chris Parry in 1978 and landed the band on his brand-new Fiction label, and Parry went on to produce it, with Mike Hedges engineering.
Robert Smith wrote it at 16, sitting at the kitchen table on a gloomy evening, staring at a leaky tap and working through his dad's homemade beer, and the record sounds exactly like that: Smith's wiry guitar and flat, bored voice, Michael Dempsey's bass and Lol Tolhurst's clipped drums leaving acres of empty space. It was already in the set when they were still Easy Cure, playing around Crawley, it has stayed in most of their shows since, and it turned up on the 1984 live album Concert: The Cure Live.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Alternative & Modern Rock
Indie & Adult Alternative
All Rock Formats
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1979 | 43 | John Peel (BBC Radio 1) | John Peel's All-Time Festive Fifty (1979) | 50 |
| 1988 | 159 | KROQ | KROQ Flashback 500 (Memorial Day 1988) | 496 |
| 1988 | 320 | Live 105 | Live 105 Top 500 Songs of All-Time (Memorial Day 1988) | 501 |
| 1989 | 400 | KROQ | KROQ Flashback 500 (Memorial Day 1989) | 495 |
| 1989 | 64 | WOXY 97X | WOXY Modern Rock 500 (1989) | 500 |
| 1999 | 782 | Q101 | Q101 Top 1,011 Songs of All-Time (December 1999) | 1017 |
| 2003 | 806 | Fred (XM 44) | Fred XM Top 2044 Songs of All-Time (July 2003) | 2044 |
| 2022 | 607 | 90.9 The Bridge | 90.9 The Bridge Top 909 Songs of the '70s | 908 |
| 2022 | 225 | The Colorado Sound | The Colorado Sound Top 1055 Colorado Sound Songs of All Time | 1055 |
| 2024 | 507 | KEXP | The Best Opening Tracks of All Time | 738 |
| 2026 | 693 | KXT | KXT 917 Song Countdown | 917 |
| 2026 | 819 | The Colorado Sound | The Colorado Sound Top 1055 Songs You Discovered on The Colorado Sound | 1055 |
Also listed as: 10.15 Saturday Night.
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