Easy, Smiths fans and Morrissey acolytes, you can sheathe those daggers. I’m not going to court vitriol by penning a cheap tirade claiming The Smiths as “overrated” or by lambasting the hordes of Moz followers for their miserable, mopey dispositions. It’s been done to death and truth be told, it would be dishonest of me in the first place. I happen to believe that the Smiths were arguably the finest band of the 1980s, and for me to renounce them would be to negate literally years of my childhood spent obsessing over every note of their music. What I would like to address here is the conundrum I find myself in when someone asks what my favorite Smiths record is, or which album one should start with if exploring the band’s discography for the first time. A few months ago there was a listmaking exercise floating around the blogosphere where writers named a favorite album for each year they’ve been alive, and I was puzzled by the inclusion of so many Smiths records that occupied various slots of the ‘80s. The reason is an intangible quality that is rarely discussed in analyses of pop music album structure and content, yet is undeniably critical to a record’s effectiveness and how it’s assimilated by the masses. I’m talking about song sequencing.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: in their six years of existence, The Smiths never pretended to be anything other than a singles band. The four official studio albums and three compilations released while the group was together were merely vehicles for their impeccable run of singles at the time, and to view full-lengths like Meat Is Murder (1985) or Strangeways, Here We Come (1987) solely as cohesive artistic statements is naïve at best and at worst, a serious disservice to everything Morrissey and Marr’s vision was about. I have a theory that the reason why the band split in the fall of ’87 wasn’t because of Marr’s frustration with the band’s direction or the endless curse of piss-poor management that plagued the group since their inception, but rather that no one ever sat them down and said, “Ok, gentlemen, these are the songs you should choose and this is the order in which they should be.” I’m half-joking, of course, but in my perfect-world scenario, the following is how I would have altered the fabric of history by suggesting these changes and modifications to The Smiths’ four studio releases, assuming that I wasn’t, you know, like nine years old at the time of the band’s heyday. (Or: Playing God [R.I.P. Stylus] with The Smiths’ Catalogue, aka Sacrilege.)
I don’t even know where to start with the self-titled debut. The argument of, “They were still a young band just gaining their footing,” can only carry so much weight here. Putting aside the dry and unbalanced mix from producer John Porter, The Smiths (1984) is easily the most poorly-sequenced item in the group’s oeuvre. So many phenomenal songs could have kicked off the album: first single “Hand in Glove,” the brooding and majestic “What Difference Does It Make,” or “This Charming Man,” which holds my vote as the finest single of The Smiths’ career, featuring a five-second introductory lead by Marr that’s one of the greatest things I’ve ever heard anyone play on guitar. But not only did the band chose the six-minute, mid-tempo dirge “Reel Around the Fountain” as their announcement to the world (a song which, granted, I absolutely fawn over), but they followed it up with the two worst songs on the record, one of them (“Miserable Lie”) qualifying as the worst four and a half minutes the band committed to tape (“Golden Lights” notwithstanding). It isn’t until halfway through the record that The Smiths begins to pick up steam, although the placement of “Still Ill” between “This Charming Man” and “Hand in Glove” never quite gels. And even as closer “Suffer Little Children” begins to fade, the sins of the first half are still fresh in the memory. My suggestion? Eliminate “Miserable Lie” altogether and arrange the selections thusly:
1. This Charming Man
2. You’ve Got Everything Now
3. What Difference Does It Make?
4. The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
5. Still Ill
6. Hand in Glove
7. Pretty Girls Make Graves
8. Reel Around the Fountain
9. I Don’t Owe You Anything
10. Suffer Little Children
“I Don’t Owe You Anything” – The Smiths 4:05 (The Smiths, Rough Trade 1984)
The Smiths’ follow-up, Meat Is Murder (1985) is a vast improvement over the debut and a bit of an anomaly in the band’s discography, as the one single culled from the record, “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore,” fared poorly on the charts (“How Soon Is Now” was added onto the US versions of the record); it’s the most “album-like” of the group’s studio releases. Despite being my least favorite item in The Smiths’ catalog, I actually don’t have any issues with the sequencing here; any record that opens with something as sonically dense and uncompromising as “The Headmaster Ritual” gains immediate favor in my book. My issue with Meat Is Murder is the inclusion of three lackluster songs – the trivial rockabilly romp “Rusholme Ruffians,” utter afterthought “What She Said,” and the disdainful, miserable, barrel-scraping title track (I’ve always loathed this song, even when I was a practicing vegetarian) – that could have easily been replaced by three singles that proceeded the album’s release: “Shakespeare’s Sister,” the iconic “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now,” and “William It Was Really Nothing.” One can only imagine the possibilities of an album where the hypnotic and propulsive “Barbarism Begins at Home” is the final layer of icing on the cake:
1. The Headmaster Ritual
2. William, It Was Really Nothing
3. I Want the One I Can’t Have
4. Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now
5. That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore
6. How Soon Is Now?
7. Nowhere Fast
8. Well I Wonder
9. Shakespeare’s Sister
10. Barbarism Begins at Home
”Barbarism Begins at Home” – The Smiths 6:58 (Meat Is Murder, Rough Trade 1985)
Ah, The Queen Is Dead (1986). The Smiths’ undeniable masterpiece, their singular, defining statement that solidifies their place in the pantheon of pop music. Naturally, I call bullshit. There are moments of perfection here – the psychedelic density of the opening title track, the achingly gorgeous “There Is a Light that Never Goes Out,” Andy Rourke’s bass work on pretty much everything – but the entire first half of the record takes an enormous stumble that it never fully recovers from, beginning with “Frankly, Mr. Shankly.” “I Know It’s Over” dangerously borders of self-parody and fails at the epic heights it attempts to attain, but even worse is “Never Had No One Ever,” which is so similar in mood, tempo, and even pulse (6/8) to its predecessor that it’s genuinely shocking that no one pointed out this lapse in judgment when the band was sequencing the record. And sorry, but the literary pap of “Cemetry Gates” has always annoyed me. Side two immediately seems more promising with the one-two punch of “Bigmouth Strikes Again” and “The Boy with the Thorn in His Side,” but the album’s momentum is hiccupped again with the quizzical “Vicar in a Tutu.” “There Is a Light” could very well be the greatest song Morrissey and Marr ever penned and is not only quintessential Smiths, but the strongest contender for Best Album Closer in their catalogue. Instead, the band tacks on “Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others,” the very definition of a b-side if I’ve ever heard one, to bring the album to its conclusion. Huh? The lack of singles recorded prior to the album’s release prevents the ‘supplemental singles’ method I utilized on “Meat Is Murder,” so I’m afraid that this is the best I can do:
1. The Queen Is Dead (Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty)
2. Frankly, Mr. Shankly
3. The Boy with the Thorn in His Side
4. Cemetry Gates
5. Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others
6. Bigmouth Strikes Again
7. Never Had No One Ever
8. Vicar in a Tutu
9. I Know It’s Over
10. There Is a Light That Never Goes Out
“Bigmouth Strikes Again” – The Smiths 3:15 (The Queen Is Dead, Rough Trade 1986)
Which brings us to The Smiths’ swan song, Strangeways Here We Come (1987), a flawed but nonetheless compelling album that’s generally regarded as most fans’ least favorite entry in the discography. The chief problem with Strangeways is that its second half pales in such comparison to the first that the band should have lopped it off altogether, designated it as an EP, and simply called it a day. Instead, the listener is treated to “Unhappy Birthday,” which sounds like an outtake from Morrissey’s tepid Kill Uncle (1991), the never-ending record company rant “Paint a Vulgar Picture,” and the almost embarrassing Moz confession “I Won’t Share You.” The first six songs are exceptional and some of the best of the band’s career, but are sequenced so haphazardly that Strangeways begins to take on the guise of a post-disbandment compilation of outtakes and b-sides – and why on earth did they choose to open side two with “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loves Me”? Even substituting the last four tracks with singles still involves a lot of surgery here:
1. A Rush and a Push and the Land Is Ours
2. I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish
3. Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before
4. Ask
5. Death of a Disco Dancer
6. Panic
7. Girlfriend in a Coma
8. Shoplifters of the World Unite
9. Shelia Take a Bow
10. Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me
“Death of a Disco Dancer” – The Smiths 5:26 (Strangeways, Here We Come, Rough Trade 1987)
Ultimately, of course, this is an exercise in futility for the diehards, but for the rest of us, a little juggling and switching can make quite a difference in enjoying The Smiths’ catalog. So what would I judge to be the quintessential Smiths album and ideal primer? My answer would be a resounding, blasphemous Singles (1995). Oh, the horror!
8. “White Sand”
13. “Seyga Seyga”