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Seventeen Seconds is the second studio album by British alternative rock band the Cure, recorded at Morgan Studio and released on 22 April 1980 by Fiction Records. For Seventeen Seconds, Robert Smith co-produced for the first time with Mike Hedges. After the departure of original bassist Michael Dempsey, Simon Gallup became an official member along with keyboardist Matthieu Hartley. Single "A Forest" was the band's first entry in the Top 40 of the UK Singles Chart.

At the end of their 1979 UK tour, Robert Smith spoke less and less with bassist Michael Dempsey; the Cure were, at the time, the support band for Siouxsie and the Banshees. An early version of "M" was performed at a few concerts, but Dempsey didn't like the new musical direction that Smith wanted to take. Smith commented: "I think the final straw came when I played Michael the demos for the next album and he hated them. He wanted us to be XTC part 2 and - if anything - I wanted us to be the Banshees part 2. So he left". The records that Smith was constantly listening to during the composition of the album were Five Leaves Left by Nick Drake, Isle of Wight by Jimi Hendrix, Astral Weeks by Van Morrison and Low by David Bowie. Smith wrote the lyrics and music for most of the record at his parents' home, on a Hammond organ with a built-in tape recorder. Interviewed in 2004, producer Mike Hedges does not recall any demo tracks, with the band generally playing the track in the studio before laying down a backing track to which overdubs were added.

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