The Smiths

Product Information

There’s plenty of lovable Smiths jangle on ‘Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before’ and ‘Girlfriend in a Coma’. Or, for that matter, men's singing voices, or what lyrics could and couldn't say, or whether or not it was a good idea to sing lines twice in a row if he was particularly proud of them.

As that context drops away with the passage of the decades, what endures is the peal of exile in Morrissey’s voice, a timeless plaint of longing and not-belonging. While recording a BBC session for Dave Jensen in August 1983, The Smiths met producer John Porter, who was working in one of the studios. Meat Is Murder was more strident and political than its predecessor, including the pro- vegetarian title track (Morrissey forbade the rest of the band from being photographed eating meat), [18] and the anti- corporal punishment " The Headmaster Ritual". But in those days (I was a teenager during the 80s) it was inevitable to choose the coolness of The Police, the hiper serious preaching of U2, the magic atmospheres from Joy Division and The Cure, the hype of INXS or the emotional sincerity from REM.

Do it Again and Reeling in the Years were fantastic, if almost too intelligent to be singles, while Fire in the Hole, Only a Fool Would Say That and Turn That Heartbeat constitute a rock-solid body for an album. Combines footage of The Smiths on The Tube in April 1987 with footage from the film A Place in the Sun. Lesser songs like the funky rockabilly of ‘Barbarism Begins At Home’ and the uneventful title track are stretched out to epic lengths.

A month after the release of The Queen Is Dead, the quartet threw down the gauntlet with non-album single “Panic,” whose war-cry chorus proposed to “hang the blessed DJ” for constantly playing music that “says nothing to me about my life. These days, I have “Hatful of Hollow” and “Louder Than Bombs” together as a Smiths playlist, and that meets my needs, completely! The intensity of the first one now pushes it a little way down the list for me and my number one would be Strangeways, with those deliciously bitchy songs about ageing people and dead stars.Meat Is Murder is the second studio album by English rock band the Smiths, released on 11 February 1985 by Rough Trade Records.

Shankly” is petty as meta goes: At the time, nobody but a handful of music industry insiders could have known that it’s a mean-spirited swipe at Rough Trade’s Geoff Travis. He avoided clichés like solos and power chords in favour of intricate arpeggios and jangling rhythms. I think Pretzel Logic is actually my favourite sounding era – a nice balance between jazz and rock – but some of the songs are pretty weak. The cleverest of the meta-pop Smiths songs of this period, though, can be found on this reissue’s second disc of B-sides and demos. Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel met in 1953 when they appeared in their school’s production of Alice in Wonderland – Simon played the White Rabbit and Garfunkel the Cheshire Cat.In the UK, the original LP and CD did not include it, though it was included on the 1993 CD re-release. I think tribalism has disappeared from music a bit – I’m free to enjoy all of those bands except INXS. What’s more interesting now is Morrissey’s admission of his insatiable lust for attention—“Fame fame fatal fame/It can play hideous tricks on the brain”—but nonetheless he’d “rather be famous than righteous or holy. This Charming Man" was included as the sixth track on all original US releases of the album on Sire Records (LP, CD and cassette) and on the UK cassette on Rough Trade. The band was formed in 1982 in Manchester by vocalist Morrissey, guitarist Johnny Marr, bass player Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce.