"Why Can't I Be You?" was the first single released from the album Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me—the band's seventh LP. In 14 April 1987, it peaked at number 21 on UK Singles Chart. In the United States that same year, the song reached number 54 on the Billboard Hot 100, while a remix of the track charted at numbers eight and 27 on the Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales and the Dance Music/Club Play Singles charts, respectively.

The video for "Why Can't I Be You?" was filmed in early 1987, in between rehearsals for The Cure's first South American tour. It was directed by Tim Pope, a past video collaborator of the group's. Filmed in a studio in Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland owned by actress Mary Tyler Moore, the video featured the band members performing what biographer Jeff Apter referred to as "some of the most poorly choreographed dancing ever seen on MTV". All five band members wore costumes: Robert Smith dressed as a bear and as a woman, Simon Gallup was costume as both a crow and a Morris dancer, Porl Thompson was a Scotsman as well as cross-dressed, Boris Williams was a schoolgirl and Lol Tolhurst wore blackface and then a bumblebee costume. Pope referred to the clip as "the video I've always wanted to make".

In the NME's review of the single, writer Donald McRae singled out Smith's voice as the sole element of the song that "doesn't shout 'TEEN FUN'". Nonetheless, he praised the band, and concluded, "Shameless and cheap enough to steal Wham's 'Young Guns' riff, this ditty will soon be another Top of the Pops cracker".

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