Still an astonishing piece of work 20 years on (The Queen Is Dead - The Smiths)

Member Name: Jon V

Product:	The Queen Is Dead - The Smiths
Date:	08/08/06 (175 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Morrissey/Marr are genuine rivals to Lennon/McCartney

Disadvantages: The first and last tracks

This isn’t the greatest British album of all time. The two tracks that bookend the album are too long and lyrically inept respectively. However the eight songs in between are some of the best pop songs ever written by a band from this country.

This year marks the twentieth anniversary of this album’s release and I was seven at the time. I began hearing about The Smiths when I was at school and didn’t listen to them intently until I was a student bullied into hearing them by going to countless cheap indie nights (usually called Cider N’ Black or Live Forever) where “This Charming Man” was played every night.

I sought out a copy of The Queen Is Dead and spent months enjoying it in my room. I started a relationship with a girl who had no regard for them and within weeks she was hooked as well.

Put simply: this album ticks all of the indie rock n’ roll boxes that few have managed to fill since.

Comprised of singer Morrissey, guitarist Johnny Marr, Bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce, The Smiths were and still are viewed as a figurehead frontman with a genius guitarist and two session musicians. Johnny Marr is massively respected but dwarfed by the personality of Morrissey, who in the last two years has re-emerged and become the huge solo star many thought he always should have been. It is his personality that dominates this record.

The Queen is Dead is catchy, isolated, self-conscious, euphoric, melancholic and hilarious. To be able to give it enough credit requires a critique of each track:


1)The Queen Is Dead

Caused outcry upon release, although never put out as a single. Clocking in at over six minutes it’s the heaviest song here, built upon Marr’s speedy guitar work and a pacey beat. Morrissey sets the tone with some scathing yet hilarious put-downs of the royal family. Why did people get so upset? Example lyrics:

So I broke into the Palace with a sponge and a rusty spanner/
She said “I know you and you cannot sing”/
I said “That’s nothing, you should hear me play piano”

Charles did you ever crave to appear on the front of The Daily Mail/
Dressed in your mother’s bridal veil?

A stunning opening track is only blighted by an extended musical coda that could have been culled by a few minutes. This song is also out of step with the rest of the album which is typical of the moody and introverted jangly Smiths songs that made so many bedroom teens hold Morrissey up as their saviour.


2)Frankly Mr Shankly

Short, sharp and full of bile. Built upon a simple drumbeat with straightforward bass patterns, this typifies the genius of Morrissey and Marr working together: catchy pop with great lyrics. The vocals enter almost immediately, with Morrissey offering up stinging rhyme with a throwaway delivery:

I didn’t realise that you wrote such bloody awful poetry/
Frankly Mr Shankly since you ask/
You are a flatulent pain in the arse

As soon as you feel it’s ready to step up a gear it ends, having covered all the bases of a great song in two minutes.


3) I Know It’s Over

A five minute whine to a few, a drawn out tale of agony told through ecstatic melody to many. People I’ve spoken to prefer this song above the more obvious highlights on the album and it’s the voice and lyrics which bring out the passion. When Morrissey begins lamenting, “Oh Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head” he’s scratching the surface. It goes further down from here and turns into a vitriolic and scathing attack:

If you’re so funny then why are you on your own tonight?
And if you’re so clever why are you on your own tonight?
And if you’re so very entertaining why are you on your own tonight?
If you’re so terribly good looking why are you on your own tonight?

Everything builds into a massive crescendo as the opening line is recited again and again into the distance. Desolate and beautiful.


4)Never Had No One Ever

A close cousin of the previous song that is shorter but equally full of wanting and loss. Featuring only six lines from Morrissey before Marr’s haunting melodies take over and a sure and steady drumbeat drift out into the abyss. As with Frankly Mr Shankly it’s brief but also brilliant, repeating the same riff over and over before a whistle that sounds like it may of come from a second rate extra-terrestrial film adds to the feeling of loss and abandonment.


5)Cemetry Gates

An upbeat tale of strolling through a cemetery with a friend that is my favourite track on the album. Poppy and yet still shrouded in darkened angst, Morrissey berates his foe for stealing prose and scathingly attacks the unoriginality of plagiarists. Underpinned by the fantastic line, “A dreaded sunny day”, this is one of the highlights of the album that is so often overlooked in favour of the three singles in the closing half.


6)Bigmouth Strikes Again

Starting with a pacey strummed guitar, Morrissey leaps in quickly with a strong feeling of aggression and revenge. And sarcasm:

Sweetness, sweetness I was only joking when I said I’d like to smash every tooth in your head/
Sweetness, sweetness I was only joking when I said by rights you should be bludgeoned in your bed

One of the more commercial moments and a Top 30 hit, the song is never-the-less riddled with bile. Features a great drum break while Marr loses himself in the moment before the final chorus comes back in.


7)The Boy With The Thorn In His Side

In which Morrissey performed his typical camp dance complete with miming (pointing to his side) on Top of the Pops. Another single that bounces along with feelings of loss and agony, yet again made beautiful by the lilting sounds produced by the band. Often overlooked and derided by fans, it’s still a highlight that culminates in Morrissey singing “wooah-wooah” contentedly into the distance.


8)Vicar In a Tutu

Another brief tune replete with hilarious lyrics and full of catchy guitar. Teeters on the verge of being a forgettable album track but is redeemed with such poetic gems as, “My Man, get your vile soul dry-cleaned”.


9)There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

For many, the song which best sums up the album, the band and their legacy. The chorus has become part of indie folklore and to some extent the despair of life under Thatcher in the Eighties:

And if a double decker bus crashes into us/
To die by your side such a heavenly way to die

What tends to be overlooked is that this is an astonishing piece of music that could easily soundtrack the end of the world. One of those rare compositions that is anthemic whilst being introspective and downbeat. Playing this at a funeral would leave people pole axed on the floor. I’ve been listening to this song for ten years and whenever I hear it, I never fail to be touched by it’s beauty and longing for happiness. Possibly one of the greatest songs to be written by a group of English guys in a band. Including those Scouse ones.


10)Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others

There Is A Light would also have been a fitting album closer as opposed to this, in which Morrissey repeats the title of the song a lot and the band plays on through a lazy beat. Sounds like a bad Smiths covers band and that’s a shame, although I can’t help feeling there was someone with a quiff dancing sticking two fingers up who’s put this there deliberately.


Despite the first and last songs The Queen is Dead remains a monolithic column of noise and aural delight twenty years on. If you only have ten cds this has to be one of them. The masterpiece of a man in internal turmoil and the baroque pop output of arguably the best guitar player of his generation. The fact they called it a day shortly afterwards mattered little as there was no way they could have bettered this body of work.

Summary: One of the great indie albums of all time. Listen to it.