The Cure’s Robert Smith Crafts Remix of Noel Gallagher’s “Pretty Boy”

Noel Gallagher enlisted The Cure‘s Robert Smith to remix “Pretty Boy.” The track is featured on Gallagher’s latest album with the High Flying Birds, Council Skies, available June 2.

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“I was surprised and delighted when Noel asked me to remix this gorgeous song, and I had a lot of fun slowing it down and spacing it out,” said Smith in a statement. “Cure drummer Jason Cooper gave me a great vibe-y drum track to play along with, and the rest just phased into place under the starry sky of my distant moon.”

In 2020, Smith also remixed the Deftones’ track “Teenager” and recently co-wrote and appears on Chrvches’ 2021 single “How Not to Drown.”

On “Pretty Boy,” Smith’s spacier remix mirrors Gallagher’s more celestial lyrics on the track — Beneath the starry sky / Of a distant moon / At the magic moment / That’s gonna come too soon / There was a girl like me / There was a boy like you.

In 2020, Gallagher first hinted that “Pretty Boy,” which he originally released in October 2022, sounded like a song by The Cure. “I’ve written a tune that sounds very much like the Cure, and I didn’t even have to dial back the copyright,” said Gallagher. “It just sounds like the Cure. It’s called ‘Pretty Boy.’”

High Flying Birds are set to release Council Skies via Gallagher’s label Sour Mash. Along with the previous song “Easy Now,” the album also features songs remixed by the Pet Shop Boys (“Think Of A Number “) and Irish musician and composer David Holmes.

A deluxe edition of the album will be available in triple vinyl and 2CD formats and feature a BBC Radio 2 session version of High Flying Birds’ cover of Oasis’ 1994 single “Live Forever.”

Formed in 2010, following Gallagher’s departure from Oasis, the High Flying Birds have released three albums together, including their most recent, Who Built the Moon?, in 2017. Council Skies was co-produced by Gallagher and longtime collaborator Paul “Strangeboy” Stacey and also features guitarist Johnny Marr on three songs.

“It’s going back to the beginning,” said Gallagher of the album in January 2023. “Daydreaming, looking up at the sky and wondering about what life could be. That’s as true to me now as it was in the early ’90s.”

Gallagher added: “When I was growing up in poverty and unemployment, music took me out of that,” Noel says of the album. “’Top of the Pops’ on TV transformed your Thursday night into this fantasy world, and that’s what I think music should be. I want my music to be elevating and transforming in some way.”

Council Skies Track List:

1. “I’m Not Giving Up Tonight”
2. “Pretty Boy”
3. “Dead to the World”
4. “Open the Door, See What You Find”
5. “Trying to Find a World That’s Been and Gone Pt. 1”
6. “Easy Now”
7. “Council Skies”
8. “There She Blows!”
9. “Love Is a Rich Man”
10. “Think of a Number”
11. “We’re Gonna Get There in the End”

Original 2022 lyric video for “Pretty Boy”

Photo: Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images

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