We're Not Who You Think We Are
Just like I did after I finished the Rolling Stones, here’s my ranking of all of the Smiths songs I wrote about. As always, don’t take it too seriously, as I did it in an afternoon, mostly, and as with all rankings, could be totally different now.
Oh, and of course, I’m ranking the songs, not the posts. Though I do hope there is some kind of correlation.
Album: Strangeways, Here We Come
Year: 1987
. . .
“On their hands – at last! – a dead star”
Have you ever had a relationship that seemed to end because a switch went off? And somebody who loved you suddenly didn’t?
That’s kinda what happened with Johnny Marr just after the recording of Strangeways, Here We Come in May of 1987. In the previous , they’d recorded two albums worth of high-quality material (if you count all of the singles & b-sides, and you know you should) as well as embarked on long tours. And he was also kinda managing the band. And Morrissey. The upshot was that he needed some time off, and was planning to take a couple of weeks vacation here in sunny Southern California. Two weeks! Recharge, and figure out what was next for The Smiths.
My guess is that the next album would have gone even deeper on the relative lack of guitar and the over orchestrated songs that characterized Strangeways, Here We Come, and I might have disliked it. But I would have loved their 6th album, the return to their roots.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2314: The Smiths – “Paint A Vulgar Picture”
Album: Strangeways, Here We Come
Year: 1987
. . .
“Do you really think she’ll pull through?”
Even for The Smiths, Strangeways, Here We Come was a morbid album, starting with a song narrated by a ghost, and featuring several songs about recently deceased — rock stars, disco dancers, etc — or in the case of “Girlfriend in a Coma,” soon to be deceased, people. And while it’s not really a competition, “Girlfriend in a Coma” just might be the most morbid. Also, it might be the darkly funniest, a George Constanza plotline before that was a thing.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2313: The Smiths – “Girlfriend in a Coma”
Album: Strangeways, Here We Come
Year: 1987
. . .
“Love, peace and harmony”
“Death of a Disco Dancer” just might be my favorite Smiths song.
It’s right up there with “How Soon Is Now?” “The Headmaster Ritual” “The Queen is Dead” and “There is A Light That Never Goes Out,” and sometime I think I love it even more than all of those worthies because it was so much more weirder, more experimental and more powerful than the songs that surrounded it on Strangeways, Here We Come.
That, of course, includes the song before it “I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish,” which is yet another big glam rock stomper, but had too many fake horns, 80s snare drum and not enough melody for me. It also reminds me of a song that a band that wanted to sound like the Smiths would write, and the song after it, the too-meta-by-half “Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before.”
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2312: The Smiths – “Death of A Disco Dancer”
Album: Strangeways, Here We Come
Year: 1987
. . .
“There’s too much caffeine in your bloodstream”
Even by my normal standards, there was wayyyyyyy too much going on in my life during the autumn of 1987.
For one thing, I was on the verge of turning 25, which seemed like a milestone in and of itself in terms of getting old, though it was just the beginning of what will probably stand as the five most fully-packed years of my life. Secondly, I had joined a band and was teaching myself to play drums for said band. Thirdly, I was preparing to become the manager of Video Zone. And I was still holding down the late Friday afternoon shift at KFSR, making radio spots for various shows, and maybe even attending classes at Fresno State.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2311: The Smiths – “A Rush and a Push and the Land Is Ours”
Album: Louder Than Bombs
Year: 1987
. . .
“Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera”
Another song that had its debut on the late December 1986 Peel session, “Sweet and Tender Hooligan” was another one of the b-sides of “Sheila Take A Bow” as well as one of the absolute highlights of Louder Than Bombs
Kicking off with a panned phased spiraling guitar lick that soon resolves itself into some desperate rhythm guitar, “Sweet and Tender Hooligan” finds Morrissey leading with the chorus while depicting the plight of the titular hooligan.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2310: The Smiths – “Sweet and Tender Hooligan”
Album: Louder Than Bombs
Year: 1987
. . .
“I can’t help the way I feel”
“Is It Really So Strange?” the opening track on Louder Than Bombs was one of the first songs The Smiths had written after The Queen is Dead, but when they tried to record it, they never found a take they really liked and shelved it in favor of all the other songs we’ve been talking about over the last few days.
However, at the very tail end of 1986, The Smiths — sans the recently sacked Craig Gannon — decided to do another John Peel session: their first one in three years. And one of the songs they chose was “Is It Really So Strange,” and this time they knocked it out of the park, bringing in the reliable John Porter to help them work it out.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2309: The Smiths – “Is It Really So Strange?”
Album: The World Won’t Listen
Year: 1987
. . .
“You must suffer and cry for a longer time”
As 1987 dawned, Perhaps the best indication that things weren’t 100% well at Smiths HQ was the case of the dueling compilation albums.
The first one, The World Won’t Listen, was a pretty decent overview of the singles that the Smiths had released after Meat is Murder, but also included album cuts like “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore,” “Bigmouth Strikes Again” (which were at least singles) and “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” (which wasn’t). And so, I dutifully went out and purchased it as an import at Tower.
And soon after that, I was totally blindsided by Louder Than Bombs, which came out a month later only in America and collected nearly everything that wasn’t on the U.S. versions of first three studio albums as well as the non-BBC sessions from Hatful of Hollow. And it included the entire “Sheila Take A Bow” single, which hadn’t yet been released in the U.K. So I had to buy that, too.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2308: The Smiths – “You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby”
B-side, 1987
. . .
“Do you think you’ve made the right decision this time?”
The Smiths kicked off 1987 in full gear, releasing their third straight high-charting single, “Shoplifters of The World Unite,” which topped out at #12 on the U.K. charts. It’s a fine song and everything, but was a too blatant attempt at recapturing the shimmering magic of “How Soon Is Now?,” and while it did contain Johnny Marr’s first actual guitar solo on any Smiths song, and it just never went anywhere for me.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2307: The Smiths – “London”
Single, 1986
. . .
“It’s the bomb that will bring us together”
“Ask” is a deeply weird song. On one level, it’s straight-ahead Johnny Marr (plus Craig Gannon) jingle-jangle-jingle, but on the other hand, there’s a lot of crazy stuff going on, and like “Shakespeares Sister,” it stands as a single that wasn’t quite as great as it should have been.
And that’s probably on Morrissey and Steve Lillywhite.