The Smiths are, without question, one of the greatest and most influential British bands of all time – the only ambiguity is where you’d rank them after The Beatles. Inspired by the 40th anniversary of their 1984 eponymous debut album, though, we have a different kind of ranking in mind today (February 20).
What Morrissey, Johnny Marr, Mike Joyce and the late Andy Rourke achieved between 1983 and 1987, during their all-too-brief spell at the forefront of the cultural zeitgeist, can never be undone. The clever, shy, poetic outsiders had stormed Top of the Pops and the weirdos were freed to rise up and inherit – well, if not the Earth, then at least the Student Union. Even Morrissey’s deserved pariah status can’t tarnish the band’s shared genius, a point Joyce made – apparently unintentionally – in 2019: “What we did is bigger than me and bigger than Johnny and Morrissey as individuals. We changed the perception of what indie bands were supposed to be.”
The enormous task of choosing their best song ever, then, is enough to melt your Walkman. So, first, a little housekeeping: no live tracks, alternate versions or demos that aren’t widely available. Ready? OK then. Take my hand and off we stride…
‘Money Changes Everything’ (1986)
RE the band’s ‘shared genius’: there’s a little something missing from this instrumental track…
‘The Draize Train’ (1986)
See above!
‘Oscillate Wildly’ (1985)
And again!
‘Work is a Four-letter Word’ (1987)
A gruesome Cilla Black cover, and the song that broke up the Smiths. “That was the last straw, really,” Marr later sassed to Record Collector. “I didn’t form a group to perform Cilla Black songs.”
‘I Keep Mine Hidden’ (1987)
The band’s listless final recording – a light that is, in fact, going out. Morrissey, of course, whistles cheerily at the start.
‘I Want A Boy for My Birthday’ (1982)
Engineer Dale Hibbert (who played bass in the band before Rourke) uploaded this Cookies cover to YouTube a few years ago. The first Moz and Marr recording known to exist, it’s spindly and slight, but an endearing testament to their shared love of ‘60s girl group pop.
‘Wonderful Woman’ (1983)
Dirge-like and murky. Somewhere between its live debut and the studio, Moz changed the title – from ‘What Do You See in Him?’ – and ironed out lyrics that didn’t quite scan. He was learning his craft.
‘Miserable Lie’ (1984)
‘The Smiths’: an album so good they made it twice, and there’s been much debate over whether the scrapped original recording (produced by Troy Tate) is actually better than the finished product (produced by John Porter). Generally speaking, Porter’s more polished version comes out way ahead, though this bruising workout lost some of its immediacy in the process.
‘Jeane’ (1983)
Morrissey channelled his love of kitchen sink dramas into this tale of romance thwarted by squalor in a home with “its cupboard bare” and “ice on the sink where we bathe”. The lyrics are vivid, but there’s little in the way of a tune.
‘Handsome Devil’ (1983)
The Sun decried this steamy, homoerotic thrasher as an ode to child molestation, prompting the singer to issue an uncharacteristically plain rebuttal. The song, he explained, “has nothing to do with children, and certainly nothing to do with child molesting. It’s an adult understanding of quite intimate matters.”
‘Golden Lights’ (1986)
Moz pays further tongue-in-cheek homage to the disposable pop of the ‘60s, this time via a cover of one-hit-wonder Twinkle. With that weird, watery vocal, it’s unlike anything else in the band’s canon – which is probably just as well, considering Smiths historian Simon Godard dubbed it their “worst record ever”!
‘Accept Yourself’ (1983)
A weightless, atypically self-celebratory calls-to-arms, as Morrissey implores the eternal outsider to love themselves. It is, he’s said, “the fundamental request of Smithdom”.
‘Meat Is Murder’ (1985)
It’s not one to light up the indie disco with, but this misery fest is a powerful polemic, rich in atmosphere and enough to put you off bacon sarnies for life.
‘Suffer Little Children’ (1984)
The tabloids misinterpreted this lament for the Moors Murders as a fetishization of the killers, and the band’s records were briefly pulled from Woolworths stores. Listen to it once, though, and you’ll sense the deep sorrow not just in the lyrics (“Oh, John, you’ll never be a man…”) but in its aching, world-weary instrumentation.
‘Asleep’ (1985)
Marr reworked a discarded piano coda from ‘Suffer Little Children’ and expanded it into one of the Smiths’ most devastating songs, which finds Morrissey longing for the afterlife. It was recorded in just a couple of hours, but the track’s chilling effect will stay with you for much longer.
‘Unhappy Birthday’ (1987)
Great tune, shame about the lyrics, which come off as an unfunny parody of Smiths song.
‘Death at One’s Elbow’ (1987)
Final album ‘Strangeways, Here We Come’ might have upped the production ante considerably, but the lads never let go of their rockabilly shuffle.
‘The Hand That Rocks the Cradle’ (1984)
Moz’s narrator croons to a child, declaring their undying devotion. Some have read this as a depiction of abuse, but there are hints that it’s the tragic tale of someone who’s lost a child and is making a desperate and doomed attempt to replace them with another.
‘Pretty Girls Make Graves’ (1984)
With a little production spit and polish, this oompah-oompah early track wouldn’t sound out of place on ‘Strangeways…’
‘I Don’t Owe You Anything’ (1984)
When Morrissey mournfully modulates the line “you knew very well…” and Marr spins a delicate web around him, it’s their entire musical brotherhood in miniature.
‘Stretch Out and Wait’ (1985)
In which the Pope of Mope ponders whether Armageddon will come during the day or at night-time. Either way, though, he’s resigned to the inevitability of the event.
‘This Night Has Opened My Eyes’ (1984)
The gorgeous, lounge-like music belies the heaviness of Moz’s lyrics – with which, in magpie fashion, he recounts the plot of Shelagh Delaney’s classic play A Taste of Honey. Sometimes, as on “I’m not happy and I’m not sad…”, he lifts entire lines. Cheeky!
‘Well I Wonder’ (1985)
The rain sound effect should be overkill, but the track is so gorgeously gloomy it couldn’t really end any other way.
‘London’ (1987)
Marr and briefly installed ‘fifth Smith’ Craig Gannon (who served for several months in 1986) pound out super-simple riffs as Moz narrates a character’s move to the Big Smoke, asking wryly: “Did you see the jealousy in the eyes / Of the ones who had to stay behind?” It’s like the Pistols wrote an episode of Corrie.
‘These Things Take Time’ (1984)
This could be a formulaic jangle, but reaches new heights when a) Morrissey croons fondly of “the alcoholic afternoons…” and b) Marr’s Motown-style flourish sees the track collapse into an unexpectedly joyous conclusion.
‘Vicar in a Tutu’ (1986)
One of the band’s rockabilly blazers, this cut from ‘The Queen Is Dead’ is carried almost entirely by its lyrics, which are at once camp, surreal and strangely empowering.
‘Girl Afraid’ (1984)
“I think ‘Girl Afraid’ simply implied that even within relationships, there’s no real certainty and nobody knows how anybody feels,” Moz told Melody Maker in 1985, expressing a sense of anxiety that’s mirrored in the tense, claustrophobic arrangement.
‘Is It Really So Strange?’ (1987)
A very silly song, and further proof that those who write the Smiths off as maudlin just aren’t listening.
‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’ (1986)
A companion piece to ‘Vicar in a Tutu’; they appear on the same record and boast similarly bizarre, dreamlike qualities.
‘Unloveable’ (1986)
It’s one of the Smiths’ most straightforward songs, but that simplicity is refreshing in a landscape filled with ornate instrumentation, gallows humour and flashes of punk rage.
‘Back to the Old House’ (1984)
152 million Spotify streams can’t be wrong. This previously relatively obscure tune is now one of the Smiths’ most popular, thanks to – you guessed it – a TikTok craze.
‘I Won’t Share You’ (1987)
The final track on the final Smiths album, this baroque ditty – at once understated and grandiose, both romantic and a little sinister – was the perfect send-off for a band who’d always defied categorisation.
‘You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby’ (1987)
Long considered a jab at Rough Trade boss Geoff Travis, who’d reputedly made a similar comment after Morrissey moaned that the Smiths should be more successful. When NME grilled him on the subject in 1988, Morrissey replied, tartly: “I never said it was a personal letter addressed to him. That’s just a very, very cruel assumption on your behalf.”
‘You’ve Got Everything Now’ (1984)
Wait for that effervescent chorus, which soars with the clarion cry of those who’ve never really fit in: “No, I’ve never had a job / Because I’ve never wanted one.”
‘Paint a Vulgar Picture’ (1987)
Moz takes on the music biz while Marr nods his head sadly in the background. Wags have had a lot of fun with the sneering “reissue, repackage, repackage” line, given how many Smiths records have been, erm, reissued and repackaged.
‘Shakespeare’s Sister’ (1985)
The gnarled mirror image of ‘Asleep’, which the band would record eight months later. Morrissey mines the same sense of fatalism here, though does so for queasy comedy as he rides a helter-skelter piano riff to a cliff edge. All was not well in the Smiths camp at this time, largely due to Andy Rourke’s heroin addiction. The song is a breakneck rockabilly steamer, but its mu.ddled production perhaps accounts for the fact it crashed to a grisly 28 in the singles chart
‘I Want the One I Can’t Have’ (1985)
Morrissey sarkily depicts one of his kitchen dramas while Joyce’s drums whiplash away in the background; the sound of frustrated desire – for love, for broadened horizons
‘Rubber Ring’ (1985)
When adulthood comes to claim you in its icy claws, Moz implores over Marr’s staccato riff, “Don’t forget the songs that made you cry / And the songs that saved your life”; one of the wiser things he’s said.
‘Death of a Disco Dancer’ (1987)
Morrissey once revealed that this unremittingly dark, cynical track sometimes comes into his head “as I’m rolling out pastry”. It’s probably just as well we’ll never see him on Bake Off.
‘Frankly, Mr. Shankly’ (1986)
Another inspired ‘The Queen Is Dead’ album track, this one heightened when Marr’s neon guitar sound rises in the mix, with – again! – an alleged pop at Geoff Travis (“I didn’t know you wrote such bloody awful poetry”).
‘The Headmaster Ritual’ (1985)
The titular boss man is depicted as a cartoonish monster, and there’s sheer menace in Marr’s surprise guitar attack, which opens ‘Meat is Murder’ like a punch to the nose.
‘Sweet and Tender Hooligan’ (1987)
“Although British punk bands are emerging by the truckload,” a certain Steven Morrissey wrote in to the NME letters page in November 1976, “even the most prominent are hardly worthy of serious musical acceptance.” Marr’s stinging riff – like being thrashed by steel wire – is a reminder that punk spirit always coursed through the Smiths.
‘Half a Person’ (1987)
This sigh of a song features one of Morrissey’s most self-deprecating lyrics: “If you have five seconds to spare / Then I’ll tell you the story of my life.”
‘Sheila Take A Bow’ (1987)
The Smiths’ songs became less insular and twisted as the band found greater success, and that darkness gave way to a kind of manic surrealism. Their 1987 singles run took on a cartoonish quality that was never more evident than on this ultra-camp stomp into the shallow waters of adolescent infatuation.
‘Nowhere Fast’
A perfect marriage of lyric and style, this runaway ‘Meat Is Murder’ track pairs a chugging steam engine rhythm with the yearning assertion that “when a train goes by, it’s such a sad thing”; the eternal admission of the small-town misfit who longs for escape.
‘Never Had No One Ever’ (1985)
Morrissey was 27 when the Smiths released ‘The Queen is Dead’, and yet the record is packed with adolescent proclamations – “No, I never had no-one ever,” he croons over chiming guitar, a sound as indulgent as it is gothic. When, in an interview about the album, NME journalist Ian Pye effectively asked him why he didn’t grow up, the singer confessed it was a case of latent adulthood: “I do feel in an absolute way that I’ve been sleepwalking for 26 years.”
‘The Boy with a Thorn in His Side’ (1985)
The Smiths could always deliver a heavy truth like a bunch of gladioli. Here it’s in the delicate acoustic guitar and bright bass set to a perceptive and heart-breaking lyric, which speaks to an angry young man’s “murderous desire for love”.
‘What She Said’ (1985)
‘Rank’, the contractual obligation-fulfilling live album released after the band’s split, features a barnstorming rendition of this metal-inspired cacophony. In some ways, the track verges on self-parody, given the melodramatic lyrics that were nicked from Elizabeth Smart’s novella By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, but Marr’s heavy guitar pushes the band in new directions.
‘I Know It’s Over’ (1986)
Unremittingly bleak, and – in a crowded field – a contender for the most claustrophobic song the Smiths ever recorded. The self-pity is undeniably cloying, but the instrumentation is so darkly intoxicating that you’re swept away in its undertow.
‘William, It Was Really Nothing’ (1984)
Marr confessed to being confounded by the words Morrissey set to this eccentrically structured, moreishly brief pop song. Some claim it’s an ode to the late Billy Mackenzie of Scottish post-punks The Associates, who reportedly attended the Smiths singer’s flat during a “dream date” – as The Face termed the encounter in a 1984 article – and pinched a book about James Dean.
‘A Rush and a Push and the Land Is Ours’ (1987)
The opener to ‘Strangeways…’ charges in on you like an angry mob. You’ll find – shock, horror! – not one guitar on this wheezing march into fresh territory. In 2020, Marr revealed via an Instagram Q&A that he’d become “bored of the whole ‘jingle jangle’ thing”. So Morrissey wasn’t the only contrarian in the Smiths.
‘Shoplifters of the World Unite’ (1987)
In which Marr tears off a hair metal solo that would make Van Halen proud. There’s a deeply enjoyable YouTube clip of some American fans blaring the song on their car stereo. As the solo rips through the speakers, one of them, headbanging away, declares: “JOHNNY MARR I LOVE YOU!” Party on, dudes.
‘Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me’ (1987)
A masterful combination of two songs (Marr originally composed the stark piano intro as a standalone track) that became something beautiful, tragic and profound. Morrissey named it his favourite Smiths song ever, as did his old foe David Bowie. The shift from the meditative piano to crashing drums, the sound of a waking nightmare, gets you every time.
‘Barbarism Begins at Home’ (1985)
The funkiest thing they ever committed to tape, and a swaggering showcase of Rourke’s prowess in particular. Oh, and Morrissey barks on it a bit, too, for some reason. Woof!
‘Girlfriend in a Coma’ (1987)
In the band’s dying days, Marr tired of Moz’s cultural references – kitchen sink dramas, kitsch matinee idols et al. – and feared that the Smiths risked becoming passé. Yet this strange, short single (the briefest they ever released, fact fans) suggests their creative partnership remained in rude health, as the singer channels the maudlin, death-obsessed pop songs of the ‘60s against an insensitively upbeat tune.
‘What Difference Does It Make?’ (1984)
On paper, this is vintage Smiths. In theory, it should be Top 10. Catchy ‘jingle jangle’ riff? Check! Lyrics that are both arch (“You make me feel so ashamed / Because I’ve only got two hands”) and frighteningly sincere (“I’d leap in front of a flying bullet for you”)? You bet! It reached Number 12 in the UK singles chart, but the song cleaves a little too close to the formula for ours.
‘Still Ill’ (1984)
So guttural, so minimalist, so bleak. Pretty much every line is quotable, with Morrissey lamenting a country barren of opportunity while Rourke’s bassline snakes through the song with a general sense of unease. The outsiders were coming to claim the kingdom for their own.
‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’ (1984)
The Smiths had such a distinct identity that they approached self-parody even as they toured their debut album. But what a glorious parody this is. Down in the dumps (quite literally – the track was written in New York’s flea-bitten Iroquois Hotel) after their first US show proved a disaster, Moz and Marr worked around a fiendish pun on Sandi Shaw’s ‘Heaven Knows I’m Missing Him Now’. Camp, clever and self-aware to boot.
‘That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore’ (1985)
This haunting wisp of a song features some of the band’s most economical writing; it’s a collage of desolate imagery (“Parked the car at the side of the road…”) and a gossamer riff that seems to drift in and out of the track.
‘Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before’ (1987)
A prime example of late-era maximalism, the guitars as big as Morrissey’s quiff and his lyrics at their most comically bizarre. Please, please, please don’t talk about the parpy Mark Ronson cover.
‘Ask’ (1986)
If ‘Accept Yourself’ posed “the fundamental request of Smithdom”, here is its essential quandary: “Shyness is nice and / Shyness can stop you from doing all the things in life you’d like to.” When the singer introduced the lolloping tune on ‘Rank’, he belched out its title – a hint at the burning frustration beneath its feyer lyrics. After all, “If it’s not love / Then it’s the bomb that will bring us together.”
‘Hand in Glove’ (1983)
Rarely has the intensity of young love been better realised on record. It’s right there in the fixation on tiny gestures, the rejection of the outside world because you’ve found one of your own. Marr’s restless, cyclical riff captures the sheer ecstasy of it all – and then, inevitably, the whole thing crashes to an abrupt end, almost as if it never happened.
‘Panic’ (1986)
Not a literal incitement to “Burn down the disco / And hang the blessed DJ,” despite some claims to the contrary. Instead, Marr told NME, the song’s glam stomp was meant to crush what they saw as vacuous pop, having been inspired by a radio report on the Chernobyl disaster that rolled gracelessly into Wham’s ‘I’m Your Man’: “I remember actually saying, ‘What the fuck has this got to do with people’s lives?’”
‘Reel Around the Fountain’ (1984)
If you were ever in doubt that the band released the right version of their debut album, compare Troy Tate’s recording of its opening track with the one produced by John Porter; the latter is as delicate as the former was heavy handed. The finished version is so achingly romantic that we instantly dubbed it “the greatest love song written since the Buzzcocks”.
‘Rusholme Ruffians’ (1985)
The essential tension at the heart of the Smiths is that Morrissey wanted to be a tweedy academic and Marr wanted to be a rockstar. That friction, which sparked off something beautiful and unique, defines this light-fingered lift from Elvis’ ‘(Marie’s the Name) His Latest Flame’. Morrissey, meanwhile, mopes around a greasy fairground, observing all of life from a distant, lonely remove.
‘I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish’ (1987)
The band declined to play Wembley Stadium during their first flush of fame; the very idea, their singer told Melody Maker through pursed lips in 1984, “was far too rock’n’roll”. By 1987, however, they’d crunched out an absolute rocker that would have slayed all the way to the nosebleed seats… if they hadn’t split before it came out.
‘Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want’ (1984)
A song with such a strong, atavistic emotional pull that John Lewis used it for a 2011 advert about a little boy who’s really excited to give his parents a present for Christmas. Which is sweet, but probably not what Morrissey had in mind.
‘The Queen Is Dead’ (1986)
One of the great punk album openers. If the Smiths were only ever the effete janglers who inspired a generation of indie wallflowers to look up – a bit – from their shoes, we wouldn’t be here to sift through 73 largely brilliant tunes. Marr’s guitar scythes away like the weapon Moz uses to break into Buckingham Palace (who else would punctuate the hysteria by rhyming the aforementioned “rusty spanner” with “piano”?).
‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’ (1986)
The song that spawned a million Morrisey headlines; the eternal anthem of the mouthy teenager, its Stonesy rhythm absolutely assured and the lyrics resolutely weird. It’s the work of a band who, by 1986, had magically bent the zeitgeist to their singular will. With Moz singing back-up to his own lead vocals, it’s self-referential, darkly comic and shot through with a vague sense of danger. Won’t anyone think of Joan of Arc’s hearing aid?
‘How Soon Is Now?’ (1984)
This masterwork is an anomaly in an oeuvre that is, with trademark contrariness, full of anomalies. It was initially inspired by the primitive rock’n’roll and blues of Bo Diddley and early Elvis, though a spliff in the studio (prim Morrissey was at home) loosened the band up, resulting in their trippiest track. You’re a lucky Smiths fan if you discover this after you’ve learned to love their other biggies. A motorik, six-minute-plus dancefloor womper about the loneliness of clubbing? What?
‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ (1986)
Unbelievably, when a 2023 survey revealed the 10 most popular UK funeral tunes, this bright spot in the Smiths’ canon was nowhere to be seen. Ed Sheeran’s ‘Supermarket Flowers’ was at Number Three, though, proving we live in a cruel world, as peak-era Morrissey would no doubt have told you with great panache. That peak arrived in 1986 with ‘The Queen Is Dead’, when the band produced so much A-grade material that ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ wasn’t even realised as a single (though this was corrected in 1992). The song’s final gasp, which sees Morrissey chant the title as Marr’s (synthetic) strings begin to wilt, is one of the most transcendent moments in British pop.
‘This Charming Man’ (1983)
If your indie disco doesn’t go off in the first three seconds of this one, kick out every single snowflake in there. The start of a very gentle revolution was also the sound of a band working together in perfect harmony – Rourke’s pogoing bassline, Joyce’s bone-dry percussion, Marr’s clarion call of a guitar riff. And then there’s Morrissey, whose defence of their decision to appear on Top of the Pops (a very ‘80s thing to have to defend) was already justified by their first appearance on the show, as he crooned this call to arms and waved gladioli all the way to the provinces, signalling: You’re not alone.
In other words: the Smiths’ second single is perfect. But the band were never about being perfect. They were about celebrating the oddball, obsessing over cult favourites and, well, being a bit of a know-it-all. Which brings us to…
‘Cemetry Gates’ (1986)
… This unabashedly beautiful monument to the band’s legacy. An album track buried midway through ‘The Queen Is Dead’, it’s the kind of obsessive anorak’s pick that Moz and Marr themselves would have dusted off and brought to the light in all its shimmering majesty.
The latter’s major/minor chord shuffle is so earnest and full of hope that even Morrissey was moved to pen a sunny tale that sparkles with the promise of a new day. Admittedly that tale begins at the curiously misspelt cemetery gates of the song’s title, where the narrator meets a friend or a lover – both? – to walk among the dead, the characters’ sheer vibrancy at odds with the gloomy setting. They exchange plagiarised, mangled witticisms (an adolescent eye roll at those who criticised Moz for lifting lines) and, skipping flightily around the graves, wonder: “All those people, all those lives – where are they now?” Inevitably, that line itself is borrowed (from the 1942 movie The Man Who Came to Dinner).
The bass dances like a spectral orb, the percussion a similarly ghostly presence. ‘Cemetry Gates’ reaches out to you like a hand from the other side. It’s a song to covet, a secret to enjoy; the story of the Smiths.
The post The Smiths: every song ranked in order of greatness appeared first on NME.
