Robert Smith makes Billboard Hot 100 chart for first time as solo artist with Olivia Rodrigo collab

Robert Smith has scored his first solo appearance on the Billboard Hot 100.

The Cure frontman enters the chart at No. 17 with What’s Wrong With Me, his collaboration with Olivia Rodrigo.

The track logged 15.5 million official US streams in its opening week, according to Luminate, following the release of Olivia’s latest album You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love. The record debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 485,000 equivalent album units – the second-biggest week of 2026 behind BTS’ ARIRANG.

Robert previously appeared on the Hot 100 a whopping 14 times with The Cure between 1986 and 1996, including No.2 smash hit Love Song in 1989.

Olivia recently spoke about her long-standing connection to The Cure, telling Zane Lowe on Apple Music: “I saw The Cure with my dad and we were just holding each other singing Pictures of You, and I’m like, ‘This is so beautiful,’ we’re just crying. That’s just a thing in my family. We’re very, very emotional when it comes to music, it’s sort of our thing.”

Meanwhile, the Friday I’m in Love icon recently confirmed that The Cure are preparing to release two new albums.

Speaking on BBC 6 Music, he revealed the band recorded enough material for three full records, with the second now completed and ready to deliver to Universal.

He said: “We did record three albums’ worth of songs, so the second one is done.

“The third one is weird, actually.”

Robert added that some fans may assume the stylistic shift is linked to his work with Olivia, but said the comparison only goes so far.

He said: “People think, ‘Ah, it’s because he’s been working with Olivia,’ because the third one is actually really upbeat. It’s really poppy… it’s my idea of Cure Pop. It’s probably 20 BPM slower than anything she does, but [compared to] what we’ve done in the last couple of years, it’s really rocking. It’s banging.”

While one album leans brighter, the other heads in the opposite direction.

He added: “The next one, if anything, it’s more dismal than Songs of a Lost World,” he explained. “It’s quite dark… it’s a different perspective on things.”