Morrissey is releasing a new album this week, and while he's pretty much a reprehensible bastard now, I did want to take a look back at his old band and the albums that are the reason anybody continues to pay attention to him.

The Smiths deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. I Know It's Over
2. Nowhere Fast
3. Death Of A Disco Dancer
4. Still Ill
5. Unloveable
6. There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
7. You Just Haven't Earned It Yet, Baby
8. Paint A Vulgar Picture
9. The Headmaster Ritual
10. Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want
11. The Queen Is Dead
12. Meat Is Murder
13. Vicar In A Tutu
14. Pretty Girls Make Graves
15. Asleep
16. Frankly, Mr. Shankly
17. Well I Wonder
18. Unhappy Birthday
19. Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others
20. London

Tracks 4 and 14 from The Smiths (1984)
Tracks 2, 9, 12 and 17 from Meat Is Murder (1985)
Tracks 1, 6, 11, 13, 16 and 19 from The Queen Is Dead (1986)
Tracks 3, 8 and 18 from Strangeways, Here We Come (1987)
Tracks 5, 7, 10, 15 and 20 from Louder Than Bombs (1987)

The Smiths are probably the biggest theoretical reunion tour that will never happen, other than ABBA, as far as groups where everyone's still alive but they're just never going to stand onstage together again. They were together for almost exactly 5 years, and were a hugely popular recording act (at least in the UK) for 4 of those, and then it was over.

I kind of feel like 4 must be the magic number for albums an alternative band can leave behind before flaming out to leave a lasting, influential legacy, if you're to go on The Smiths, The Pixies, (sort of) The Velvet Underground, and so on. But The Smiths also released a lot of standalone singles and non-album stuff that was collected into compilations that are about as much part of their canon as the albums -- Hatful Of Hollow and The World Won't Listen in the UK, and much of the same material on Louder Than Bombs in the US. Bombs is basically one of their biggest records in America, so I kinda treated it as the de facto 5th album here.

Because there's something in the DNA of the British rock press that each era has to have its big bands paired up as rivals (Beatles/Stones, Blur/Oasis), you can rarely bring up The Smiths without people bringing up whether you prefer them or The Cure, and vice versa. I've always had more of a natural affinity for The Cure, although for a long time I kind of only liked British rock from the '60s and '70s and took a while to come around to embracing the UK rock of the '80s. And I play Jeff Buckley's small discography around the house a lot, which includes some lovely covers of "I Know It's Over" and "The Boy With The Thorn In His Side" that have really ingratiated me to those songs.

I included "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out," which was eventually released as single in the '90s to promote a compilation but wasn't really part of the band's proper singles output. Over the years it's grown into the band's most streamed song, ahead of even "How Soon Is Now," so I think it's interesting that it was never promoted back when The Queen Is Dead was in stores -- even the 1992 single was only the band's 14th-highest charting song in the UK. "Asleep," "I Know It's Over" and "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want" are other non-singles that are among the band's most streamed songs now.

I like the song "Vicar In A Tutu," although you can imagine my disappointment the first time I played it that the chorus didn't go "vicar in a tutu, I know, I know, it's serious." The lyrics of "Paint A Vulgar Picture" about record labels cashing in on dead stars -- "reissue! repackage! repackage! reevaluate the songs! double-pack with a photograph, extra track and tacky badge!" -- are a bit more amusing given how many compilations have been issued of the band's small catalog since their breakup.

The Smiths are I think part of a lineage of rock, particularly British bands, where the singer and guitarist functionally are the band in the public mind and the rhythm section doesn't matter at all. But even if they weren't part of the songwriting braintrust that made The Smiths stand out, bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce have some pretty choice moments on these records, I particularly think they loosened up on later songs like "Death of a Disco Dancer." And it appealed to me to end the playlist with one of their faster, more rocking songs, "London."

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