Best Song On The Queen Is Dead

closing bets on the winner, surely?

i just was think nah about starting this. that andrew marr program and the scott walker doc last night made me think a lot about how special this album is. i'm going for SGABTO never has anyone, anything quite captured the feel of a rainy day in a provinical town it seems like you'll never leave. that doesn't make it sound like a good thing does it? hmmm

I am so glad to hear someone else raving about SGABTO. That's a great way of describing it. Not that I've actually lived in a provinical town it seems like I'll never leave. I suppose it's a Marr triumph above all really, and I can understand why he was reportedly pissed off on hearing the lyrics Morrissey put to it, but for me they work perfectly to evoke that arch, poignant distancing stance he made his own.

I voted for I Know It's Over, though.

But now I kind of wish I'd chosen the title track.

"And if a double decker bus, crashes into us..." Cheesy, but I can't resist it.

title track, totally. this is by no means my favourite smiths album though.

i think the album needs SGABTO, it's somewhere between a raspberry and a sigh. it's "forget it, this is chinatown england" after the preceding moment of almost transendence. i know you can't really blame them but you can see the worst paraochial tenedencies of the next twent years of brit rock formenting here. it's an album about decline and stasis that doesn't point a way forward, it leaves you there with moz. that's what the scott walker docu got me thinking about, eno complaining about bands just imitating talking heads and so on and never going as far out as nite flites and then you have all these bands jus refining what was said, what was done in 1986. the smiths couldn't say anymore really and morrissey only had things to say about himself afterwards.

title track for me too. But really could've been any of them.

Rogue vote for Cemetary Gates - my god, just because Johnny Marr's guitar work on it is so lushious and pouting. Plus I've always related to the lyrics. I was the sort of teenage goth that used to hang out in graveyards quoting poetry, ha ha, oh dear.

I think this could be another poll where everything gets a vote - "Never Had No One Ever" probably least likely, it's in the shadow of its predecessor a bit.

I do love Never Had No One Ever -- and can appreciate the near-petulance of its bald lyrics much better these days than the similar How Soon Is Now? -- though it's another that works more because of Marr than Morrissey.

I Know It's Over.

The Queen is Dead is my favourite song on the album, but I MUCH prefer teh Rank live version, with it's mad wah-wah guitar (not a phrase you associate with the smiths!) In fact most of the Rank versions are better, IMO.

I never, ever, put this on. The production is just horrible. Especially if you compare with the luminous, transparent sound of Hatful of Hollow, even though that's a ragbag of sessions (who produced them? in-house BBC people?)

"I Know It's Over" - my favourite expression of Morrissey's self-pity.

In-house Dale Griffin and Roger Pusey did some, John Porter (who also did their debut album) did others. Some stuff on Hatful isn't radio sessions, though.

Actually, I'm not sure JP did any of the sessions on Hatful.

Maybe he did the Jensen ones actually. I DON'T KNOW AND SHOULD STOP PRETENDING I DO.

i voted for the title track.

this thread makes me want to do something i haven't done in years, ie, listen to this album. cool!

Anyway, I just looked and Morrissey/Marr produced Queen is Dead themselves, which might explain it. Am I alone in this, or does anyone else find the sound of it offputting?

There is a light and it never goes out
There is a light and it never goes out
There is a light and it never goes out
There is a light and it never goes out
There is a light and it never goes out
There is a light and it never goes out
There is a light and it never goes out
There is a light and it never goes out
There is a light and it never goes out

The album sounds fine to me, production-wise. The title track sounds especially forceful.

i think the album is pretty muddy and flat sounding, although i guess this does contribute to the claustrophobic smalltown atmosphere mentioned above.

"There Is a Light", for me...

ah i voted for SGABTO but should it have been Cemetry Gates. after the relentlessness of IKIO and NHNONE it's like the windows being thrown open. it's the moments when the sun comes out and everything is ok and yr small town looks kind of nice. it seems weird choosing songs of TQID thou,i can't think of another pop song based album which holds together as a piece so well.

I voted "Bigmouth Strikes Again" even though I think that "Cemetry Gates" is probably my favourite song on there. CG is just a little too... teenage? It's Morrissey at his most adolescent, put it that way.

i dunno cemetry gates seems one of the more "mature" songs in the smiffs cannon, yes it deals with adolesence but moz seems amused by it all rather than messed up by it. he seems almost well adjusted on it.

"some dizzy whore, 1804"

exactly. he's messing about. he's got a bit of perspective. Never Had No One Ever or even This Is A Light feel more teenage to me. i mean dying in the arms of yr lover is kind of an adolesent fantasy right.

Yeah, but Morrissey (90% of the time) knows when he's sounding ridiculous, even in "There Is A Light". I mean, The Smiths invented smirking.

this was before the smirking ban comes into effect.

little geordie humour there.

Funnier than Simon Donald's appearances as a talking head on Bravo documentaries, anyway.

simon donald? was he the guy from the falklands?

no woops that was simon weston.

Guy from Viz.

Jamie T Smith completely OTM (re: Rank version of TQID, and better 'sound' on Hatful of Hollow).

And if a double-decker bus crashes into us
To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die
And if a ten ton truck kills the both of us
To die by your side, well, the pleasure and the privilege is mine

Adolesent Fantasy??? High praise indeed!!!

BSA rocks, even more so than the title track, which rocks pretty bloody hard.

yes, i'd say it is a crime. there is no best song on this immaculate album. i don't even have a personal favourite. the question is like asking to cut michelangelo's david into pieces. or like asking a mother of ten children to choose the one she loves more than the others. it's wrong. the only result i could accept is a tie between all of them. possible but very improbable. i won't participate in this. not even with a strategic vote. sorry.

Can't please everyone :(

I voted Bigmouth and now I'm second-guessing myself.

I voted the title track - I'm a terrible sucker for state of the nation pronouncements, especially when they're as flailing and funny as this is.

Frankly Mr. Shankly.

Frankly Mister Shankly!!

my favorite, I realize in trying to pick one! not because it's "best," or because it's the Smiths at their most archetypically Smithsy, but because it's the kind of song that only they could really do. it's like a summary of all the things about them that were unique to them -- like, take the Smiths, subtract (layered, moody, 80's rock) and it's what you're left with

oh man xpost

I voted for "There is a Light," I suppose based on being impressed by its accomplishments as ... well, a sort of anthem, one that's lasted and spawned good reinterpretations and all that jazz. But at the time I was first listening to this, I'd definitely have chosen "Cemetery Gates," based not on anything lyrical, but on -- like Kate says -- the sound of it; it has this very comfortable and pleasing movement to it, and in a way they didn't quite seem able to capture again. (E.g., I may have my dates mixed up, but I feel like "Ask" might have fallen in the same mold, only it turned out much chirpier, a lot more glib, with a lot less weight.)

You really want to tear people apart, just start a similar poll with Louder than Bombs -- I'd guess "William, It Was Really Nothing" would win, but I'd also guess you'd get a very wide spread of votes.

One thing I find funny about this album is that the band's early tendencies as a sort of camp rockabilly act hit their highest point on the third record, with "Vicar in a Tutu!" That style seems to lurk somewhat in the background of all their early stuff (especially on Meat is Murder -- "Rusholme Ruffians," "Nowhere Fast"); with "Vicar" it's almost like they'd decided to get it all out there in one place so they could forget about it from then on.

i wanted to vote for the boy with the thorn in his side in the beginning. morrissey's sighing is so fucking tuneful. then for a second it was some girls are bigger than others where marr's guitar is most sparkling. there is a light that never goes out for the over the top lyrics and the detachedness with which they are delivered. what a majestic, calm song. bigmouth strikes again for the stunning change around the 2 minute mark. when the guitar is stuttering and it adds a punch which wasn't there before. i know it's over for the sadness and the simple truth: "tonight is like every other night". the queen is dead for the punkish unsmithness. the other four songs are as important. as they hold it all together.

sp: unsmithsness

Wow, I really thought there would be something close to consensus around "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out." CG is probably my second-favourite.

"There Is A Light" was inspired by John Fogerty "Centerfield"

"I Know Its Over" is definitely my sleeper pick

"The Boy With The Thorn In His Side" is one of their best ever songs. Wins easily in this case, even though I also have a soft spot for "Frankly Mr. Shankly".

even when you are right, you are wrong at the same time...

Cemetry for me. I'd never thought about the spelling: how come?

The mis-spelling of "cemetery" is a MozMistake, as opposed to any dire pun on the word "try", thank god. sez LASID

Hmm. I thought there would be, I dunno, *people* who would correct such things. Maybe they bowed in the face of what they thought might've been a clever MozPun.

Everything got a vote! Predictable winner, surprising (to me) 2nd place.

This poll didn't last long enough. I would've voted for Cemetery Gates.

It lasted two days - that's longer than a General Election!

wow!! my boy! i always thought BOY WITH.. was HATED by the fans.
man alive that's great.

this poll proves how crappily the first side is sequenced. who ever thought of having NEVER HAD NO ONE EVER after I KNOW ITS OVER wants shootin. just insanity.

simon goddard's book reveals the original vocal has a bit at the end that ran 'there is a light IN YOUR EYES that never goes out' but they chopped it off so that 20 years on, people on the web would be a-pondering over wether it's abaout plane crashes and such.

i think that sequence sort of works cos it jus goes so down. it becomes so deeply morose that it almost topples into the abyss then the guitars of cemetry gates rush in and it hits so much harder this sudden change from despair to joy. it's one of the moments that make me think that the idea of the album is good 'un.

i should never have read kerouac at 17.

Boy With is one of my favorite Smiths songs!

you know, along with my 1346141 other favorite Smiths songs

"And in the darkened underpass
I thought Oh God, my chance has come at last
(But then a strange fear gripped me and I
Just couldn't ask)"

I always thought this was about cruising!

the original vocal has a bit at the end that ran 'there is a light IN YOUR EYES that never goes out'

which is odd because i'd imagine that most ppls (ok, well my) interpretation of the refrain has always been that it's the narrator who has the metaphorical light that never goes out, FOR this other person of indeterminate gender.

"I Know It's Over," "Never Had No One Ever" - these songs are really really awful. This is an album I got before I weaned myself off of skipping songs, so I think I can safely say I've never actually listened to the entirety of either of these. Drudging dirges both.

"I Know Its Over" - just for the opening line - is incredible (granted, from that point on, it falls of a little).

"And in the darkened underpass
I thought Oh God, my chance has come at last
(But then a strange fear gripped me and I
Just couldn't ask)"

I always thought this was about cruising!

-- Tim F, Friday, May 25, 2007 1:56 PM (7 minutes ago)

Abso-fucking-lutely. This bit of the song always makes me thinking of Handsome Devil.

I sort of missed the Smiths until the age of about 19, except for the songs that made it into the charts. A shame, because they might have made me feel better about feeling shit.

the original vocal has a bit at the end that ran 'there is a light IN YOUR EYES that never goes out'

which is odd because i'd imagine that most ppls (ok, well my) interpretation of the refrain has always been that it's the narrator who has the metaphorical light that never goes out, FOR this other person of indeterminate gender.

-- Alan, Friday, May 25, 2007 2:11 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

I always thought it was about hope (also, despite the song title, I've always heard it as "there is a light and it never goes out") - its the final glimmer of something surviving from the wreckage of the chorus. Morrissey doing equivocal as well as he ever did.

For what it's worth, in concert Moz often dedicated "There is a Light" to Elvis Presley, possibly James Dean, Nico, and others, I can't really remember. My friend got one of the setlists and I think the song was referred to as "There Used to Be a Light" or something like that.

How about the Louder than Bombs poll now? I can't remember, was that mostly an American release? It's the first Smiths record I saw/bought so in my mind it is.

How could that part of "There Is A Light..." be about cruising given the rest of the lyrics in the song?

It's interesting that we kind of come to read "I Know It's Over" and "Never Had..." as straightforward, earnest, first-person miserablism, given that everything in the catalog up to that point had been fairly theatrical, knowing, snarky, or sort of character-study about such stuff. This record is way less arch, a bit more straightforward than the ones that preceded it, but there's something that keeps me from being entirely ready to read those songs as face-value mopey, even if there's not much in the lyrics to give them away. (The best I can do is that the most cutting, clever lines in "I Know It's Over" are self-lacerating, but that's not saying much when the speaker's then hurt by the laceration.)

I dunno ... it's just strange to think of the various lyrics on this album that read as honest-to-god no-fooling miserablism (or romanticism, like "The Boy..." and "There is a Light...") sitting deadpan among the vicars in tutus, the very knowing complications on "Bigmouth" and "Cemetery," and the odd humor of "Frankly" and "Some Girls," and then that tendency somehow getting reined straight back into knowingness for most subsequent releases.

Taking sides: darkened underpass vs. alley by the railway station

i always think he would have been better off using a footbridge

Well there's not much wink to be found in "Now I'm outside your house / I'm alone / And I'm outside your house," for instance

And I certainly wouldn't say everything they did before The Queen Is Dead can be not-taken-fully-seriously (e.g. "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore")

It's not so much winking I'm sensing in there -- more just theatricality, if that's the right word. It's just some vague sense, probably based more on other Smiths material than those songs, but there may be a couple things in the lyrics that I'm specifically reading that way -- from that same song, something about "I had a really bad dream / it lasted 20 years (and etc.)" seems kinda arch, right? (Especially with the way he trails off as it gets down toward the hours and the seconds.)

I suppose it's theatrical, but I wouldn't say it's necessarily being arch. I mean when I hear it it sounds more like he's laboring over every long torturous minute of his life ("twenty years.. and seven months..." etc.).

Huh. I always thought of this album (including those songs) as more theatrical and arch than much of the earlier Smiths stuff, esp Meat Is Murder.

(I hear that line the same way as nabisco. Also the wordplay with "No I (ah) never/ had no one ever.")

The Queen Is Dead is the best Smiths record ever and people need to sortof get used to this. I'm trying to to post a thing of the sleeve, but I can't get hold of it yet.

Everyone already thinks that, even tho Strangeways is better

I want an all out battle of the Smiths albums, and nothing less

It isn't the best song on the disc, but I always liked Frankly Mr. Shankley, for two reasons. First, I think it's a slightly-veiled slap at Morrissey's critics at a former record label (or maybe former management at The Smiths' record label), which gives the lyrics a malicious edge. Second, it's well-placed on the album; a perfect change-of-pace following the ferocious title track.

I never thought this was their best. It has some unbearable pits in it IMO. I wouldn't have said this twenty years ago, but....Some Girls are Better Than Others and the title track are currently my faves.

On second thought, the worthless songs make this album less corny.

Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others needed more votes in this poll.

People always cite 'Never Had No One Ever' as an unbearable pit, but I play that song more than any other. After that, I'd say the stretch around the turn is pretty weak. 'Vicar In A Tutu' actually drags the album back to the heights.

oops typo. Anyway, now that I think about it, at the time I liked this one better than the earlier ones because depressed people hated it.

The band themselves all say that Strangeways is best. xp

Quite surprised "Bigmouth..." didn't do better here.

Just as well. Nice to see some contrarian views once in a while. Shows that people still listen to a record, instead of relying on their memories.

The band themselves all say that Strangeways is best.

not true! i just read an interview w/ johnny marr saying the queen is dead was their best. it was from guitarworld or something.

The band's opinion on which is their best is pretty irrelevant, in my opinion. You have to remember that their perceptions of it are filtered through the memory of making it and the surrounding circumstances. Killing Joke, for example, consider Pandemonium their finest hour ... and I find it pretty weak in comparison to several of their other albums.

Hm yes, I saw that too on some other thread, but I've definitely seen all four of them repping for Strangeways in a single article. He's obviously free & easy with his affections.

strangeways starts brilliantly, then loses its way; somewhere in a record company meeting, maybe?

There Is A Light That Never Goes Out 34
The Boy With The Thorn In His Side 20
The Queen Is Dead 18
Bigmouth Strikes Again 18
I Know It's Over 18
Cemetry Gates 11
Frankly Mr Shankly 6
Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others 5
Never Had No One Ever 1
Vicar In A Tutu 1

if you switch "I Know It's Over" and "Never Had No One Ever" this is basically how I rank this album I think

Is "plagiarize" (c/o 'Cemetry Gates') pronounced with a hard G in Morrissey's homeland, or is it just some deliberately silly pronunciation?

An earlier draft of that post included the word "fununciation" btw.

The Queen Is Dead is the third studio album by the English rock band the Smiths, released on 16 June 1986 by Rough Trade Records.