The Smiths - The Queen IsDead

Fri 3rd Dec, 2004 in Music Reviews

In 1986, while others were busy watching Kylie and Jason get married on Neighbours, The Smiths were occupied with bridging the gap between pop music and the most dour subject matter imaginable. Johnny Marr’s pop arrangements superficially were at odds with Morrissey’s melodrama. And yet the music they created transcended the differences, soundtracking nervous teenage fondling, make-outs and breakups across the world.

The Queen Is Dead saw The Smiths move forward from their debut with the advent of Morrissey’s Awakening: that is, the singer, though still morose as all hell, decided to frame his moods in the most ridiculous lyrics conceivable. And so we have one of the most hilarious and tragic set of verses to grace our ears, and it is all the more effective for it.

A grab of Take Me Back To Dear Old Blighty opens the album, which sounds like a WWII-era motivational tune which would blast through the town to get the comrades going. But then it fades away and the drums of the title track cascade in, and Morrissey deadpans about breaking into the Queen’s house and having a good chat with her. But beneath the absurdity is a desperate loneliness that cannot be avoided. And the song is damn catchy to boot.

I know It’s Over is largely regarded as one of the most depressing songs, ever. Look beyond the self-depreciative humor of ‘Oh Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head’, and you’ll see why this, for many, is the break-up song of choice. The bass murmurs quietly as he bemoans ‘I know it’s over, and it never really began, but in my heart it was so real’, and all you can do is cling to the pillow she slept on and weep. 

Never Had No One Ever doesn’t do much to bring you out of your pitiful state. Its languid heaviness merely reiterates that you are, in fact, alone. Luckily, Cemetry Gates bounds on, and it’s all spangled guitars and sweet strings and, er, walks through the cemetery with poetic virtuosos Keats and Yates. And yet it’s incredibly apt, because Morrissey writes as if he has an audience circa 19th century, and with his decidedly English lilt, it is the very heart of melodrama.

Bigmouth Strikes Again is perhaps both the poppiest and ludicrously despondent song on the album. When you find yourself singing ‘Now I know how Joan of Arc felt, as the flames rose to her Roman nose, and her walkman started to melt’ along to the arching melody and the thrash of guitar as you dance about madly, the dichotomy becomes all too clear.

The most perverse of love songs comes in the form of There Is A Light That Never Goes Out, where on a bed of swooning strings Morrissey croons ‘if a double-decker bus crashes into us, to die by your side such a heavenly way to die’. But The Smiths pull it off with such style that you can’t help but take it seriously, albeit with a glint in the eye.

The majesty of The Queen Is Dead is in the way Johnny Marr’s animated arrangements counter Morrissey’s jocular verbose lyricism, shrouding those gloomy tales of love and hate, and wrapping it all into sharp pop moments. Anyone need an album to sit in their room and brood to?