The Queen Is Dead

Smiths, The

album cover

A Literary Dude Finds a Way to Rock

The Smiths typify one of the classic oppositional dynamics that define many rock bands: The singer, a self-described "well-read" chap named Morrissey, appears as the wounded poet in his garret, musing loftily about the perilous machinations of love. The band, mean-while, is much scruffier—led by rhythmically astute guitarist Johnny Marr, it specializes in breezy, chiming, quintessentially buoyant music.

Lots of acts have milked that contrast. But few have taken it to the delightful extremes that define the Smiths' third album, The Queen Is Dead.

Here are silly word puns blown up to the preposterous ("Frankly, Mr. Shankly," "Some Girls Are Bigger than Others"), and songs that present the great poets as trading-card superheroes ("Cemetry Gates," which finds Morrissey giving his friend John Keats and William Butler Yeats and keeping Oscar Wilde for himself). Here are distraught accounts about the end of an affair (the weepy "I Know It's Over") and rampaging Stones-style rockers about saying the wrong thing ("Bigmouth Strikes Again," with its curiously empathetic line, "Now I know how Joan of Arc felt as the flames rose to her Roman nose and her Walkman started to melt").

The Queen Is Dead often turns up on those Best Albums of All Time lists, and though the band has publicly disagreed with that appraisal, it is the album that best captures the droll humor and musical extravagances that made the Smiths so riveting. Perhaps stung by the mostly negative reaction to his scolding previous work Meat Is Murder, Morrissey slings sensual images while sharing the darkness in his heart (talking about the cemetery, he tells his friend, "Let's go where we're wanted"). Meanwhile, Marr and the rhythm section blaze trails toward an idealized zone of rock (and sometimes pop) sunshine. Their runaway exuberance magnifies and sometimes mocks Morrissey's gloomy desperation. One vivid illustration comes on "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out": The singer makes a morbid declaration—"If a tenton truck kills the both of us, to die by your side, well, the pleasure and the privilege is mine"—and the band just cruises right along, barely noticing that Morrissey traffic snarl on the side of the road.

Genre: Rock
Released: 1986, Sire
Key Tracks: "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out," "Cemetry Gates," "The Boy with the Thorn in His Side," "Bigmouth Strikes Again."
Catalog Choice: Strangeways Here We Come. Morrissey solo: You Are the Quarry.
Next Stop: Magnetic Fields: 69 Love Songs
After That: The Pet Shop Boys: Very
Book Pages: 721–722