Mojo: "The Smiths’ 50 Greatest Songs" (March 2, 2023)

The Smiths’ 50 Greatest Songs

WHEN JOHNNY MARR FIRST KNOCKED ON MORRISSEY’S DOOR IN 1982, the pair’s initial plan was to become a songwriting powerhouse akin to Brill Building titans Leiber and Stoller.

Though The Smiths’ recording career was as brief as it was brilliant – just four studio albums alongside some of the greatest 45s of the era – the songs Morrissey and Marr penned cemented their reputation as one of the greatest musical partnerships since Lennon and McCartney, and made The Smiths the most important British band of the decade.

The Smiths’ 50 Greatest Songs

MOJO selects the best ever songs by The Smiths

www.mojo4music.com

(Above playlist appears backwards).
Regards,
FWD.

 

[Sarcasmos]

See also this poll conducted by user Houdini on this site (2014):

The Moz/Smiths Top 100 - FINAL RESULTS 2014

So here are the final results of the polls we've conducted of all the officially released Morrissey and The Smiths-songs. We started back in 2007 and over the last couple of months we've polled the most recent songs. Thanks all for voting! Here are the results of all the previous final...

www.morrissey-solo.com

Top 100 solo from the thread

I made a Spotify playlist for the top 50 Morrissey solo songs based on this list, but I added Lifeguard Sleeping, Girl Drowning in the place of Art-Hounds because I couldn't find it on Spotify and Lifeguard is 51st on that list:

 

[Roman Holiday]

I Know It's Over from Rank is brilliant, just like you said. In fact, Vicar, Cemetry, and I Know are so strong on Rank compared to the sometimes thin (and quiet) recording of TQID (and they featured a 2nd live guitar). Regarding Fountain, It's not the music that is as boring to me as it is the vocal melody. I too like the early Smiths guitar sound featured on Wonderful Woman, etc....but by the time he was writing Girl Afraid and Heaven Knows he had much more confidence and the music became fuller than the very early stuff.

Did you ever hear the Suffer Little Children from the Troy Tate Sessions? It has almost like a 'child's piano' sound for the ending piece (but you've gotta really TURN UP the volume) which really hits hard, deep in the heart. That piano itself, the playing and the notes -gives almost a full description of what the song is about really. I had heard the LP version of Suffer for like 20 years, but only after hearing the Troy Tate version was I as moved as I am now by that song. It's awful how those kids died. And it's also awful how Morrissey, Johnny and company grew up with that menacing cloud hanging over them.

Agreed 100 percent that The Queen Is Dead songs are much better on Rank than on the, as you well put it, "sometimes thin (and quiet)" album versions. I can't figure out why I Know It's Over was recorded so soft and acoustic when the electric version is so much more funereal and powerful. Morrissey has said he didn't think Craig Gannon added anything to the Smiths' live sound, but that one's about as bonkers as any of his more bonkers opinions, like almond milk will outpace dairy milk, or Dog on a Chain is "the very best of [him]."

I greatly prefer the Troy Tate versions to the John Porter versions. A bootleg cassette copy of the Tate Sessions gifted to me in the 1990s probably accounts for a lot of why my response on the Morrissey/Smiths ratio thread was 40/60. It wasn't a twenty year lag for me, probably more like 6 or 7. But the difference was night and day. All of Morrissey's criticisms of the John Porter versions are right on, especially "a Spandau Ballet cuddle" for I Don't Owe You Anything. And just like I can't figure out the production for The Queen Is Dead, I can't hear what they disliked so much in the Tate sessions. Credit to the Mojo list compiler(s), at least, for including a Tate version on their list.

 

[bhops]

Well I Wonder isn't the top of the list so the list is all wrong.

 

[Juan Dulces]

Agreed 100 percent that The Queen Is Dead songs are much better on Rank than on the, as you well put it, "sometimes thin (and quiet)" album versions. I can't figure out why I Know It's Over was recorded so soft and acoustic when the electric version is so much more funereal and powerful. Morrissey has said he didn't think Craig Gannon added anything to the Smith's live sound, but that one's about as bonkers as any of his more bonkers opinions, like almond milk will outpace dairy milk, or Dog on a Chain is "the very best of [him]."

I greatly prefer the Troy Tate versions to the John Porter versions. A bootleg cassette copy of the Tate Sessions gifted to me in the 1990s probably accounts for a lot of why my response on the Morrissey/Smiths ratio thread was 40/60. It wasn't a twenty year lag for me, probably more like 6 or 7. But the difference was night and day. All of Morrissey's criticisms of the John Porter versions are right on, especially "a Spandau Ballet cuddle" for I Don't Owe You Anything. And just like I can't figure out the production for The Queen Is Dead, I can't hear what they disliked so much in the Tate sessions. Credit to the Mojo list compiler(s), at least, for including a Tate version on their list.

The band said, and I would agree on some tracks - the speed of the Tate recordings was awry. However, it was never completed, and we never heard it mastered. I sure am happy to have what we have though.

Honestly, I don't really like the first Smiths LP's 'thin' production as well. The tracks were not all produced the same though. For me, the gem of that album is I Don't Owe You Anything - honestly my favorite song on that album. It's a shame that Morrissey feels that way about it, because that's the best 'sounding' song on the LP. The guitars are produced especially emaciated most of the album, but they shine on that track - and sound so full. Plus, the American release gave you a version of Hand In Glove without the fade-in intro, that one also had a thicker production which really rocked you. I'm also a big fan of Miserable Lie on the LP, which now we're back to thinner production...but talk about some of the most exciting (albeit painful) falsetto on a runaway, roller coaster of a track. The Jenson radio session version of Pretty Girls is my favorite version. I also think that Still Ill, Charming Man(US release), What Difference and Got Everything Now sound much better on Hatful. Throw in the Tate version of Suffer for sure. I never could fully get into Cradle and Fountain.

The production on the other Smiths LPs was much, much more consistent.

 

[Juan Dulces]

Well I Wonder isn't the top of the list so the list is all wrong.

That's a wonderful song (one of my very favorites), possibly deserving of the top 10 and at least top 20 for certain.

 

[gordyboy9]

Frank spencer or Norman Wisdom??
Norman for me

frank all day long and michael did his own stunts.

 

[Was I ever any good]

Who gave "Mojo" the keys to make a playlist inside Spotify?

Me and the Dolls Gordy

 

[Was I ever any good]

I’m a good looking swine
Celtic lad .

 

[gordyboy9]

Me and the Dolls Gordy View attachment 89238

you and baz could be twins,
dont know if you know baz from on here,goes by the name slack and wide now.

 

[DagenhamDan]

Me and the Dolls Gordy View attachment 89238

That’s one cool poster Baz

 

[Redacted]

WFNX, whose DJ Julie Kramer, was the first to play the Smiths in the US (she brought a physical copy of some vinyl over from England when she was either there for break or studied abroad, can't remember, she was at UMass) and did a lot to promote them (and Morrissey, after the Smiths broke up, but still promoted the Smiths as well on air all the time) chose How Soon Is Now as the #1 song of the 80's. Strange to see it on the bottom here. Boston had a huge alternative scene so the Smiths weren't just relegated to college radio, WFNX ran the clubs here and helped a lot of bands break out, incl. U2 (who credits Boston with that)

 

[BurgerButt]

Am i the only one that dislikes Barbarism Begins at Home...... i know a lot of people go on about Rourke's bass playing on it, but it grinds me, especially the ending going on so longzzzzzz.

 

[DagenhamDan]

Frank spencer or Norman Wisdom??
Norman for me

Gotta be Frank, god love him for trying

 

[FROSTY]

I remember a documentary where Bono mentioned how good girlfriend in a coma was.

How he was laughing so hard in his car hearing it for the first time he had to pull over.. ha ha he found it so brilliant

 

[j*e*t]

I would also like to add You Just Haven't Earned It Yet Baby to the greatest 50 Smiths songs, but I'm not sure what I would drop to make room for it.

 

[Deleted member 31333]

How he was laughing so hard in his car hearing it for the first time he had to pull over.. ha ha he found it so brilliant

Kinda wish he hadn’t pulled over, the world (and definitely the music industry) would have been a much better place

 

[Daniel B]

what the f***! where is Girlfriend in a Coma???

 

[Roman Holiday]

Am i the only one that dislikes Barbarism Begins at Home...... i know a lot of people go on about Rourke's bass playing on it, but it grinds me, especially the ending going on so longzzzzzz.

I don't dislike it, but it's easily the weakest track on Meat Is Murder. It does kind of fit, though, as a bridge between the romantic sadness of Well I Wonder and the sermonizing dirge of the title track. It's a bit too caffeinated and funky, though. If you slow it down to 3/4 speed, it sounds more sinister.

 

[Juan Dulces]

If How Soon is Now had a 'third' part to it - not another verse or chorus but maybe something like the 'Hold It Steady' part in Roy's Keen - it would be a more 'eternal' Smiths song. As it stands, the track kind of just goes on.....with nothing new or exciting later in the song. I would think 20,30,40 year long Smiths fans (who have obviously heard/know the entire catalog) would choose several songs over HSIN.

HSIN lit me on fire - being their first track I listened to, had it on a mix tape. No song I had ever heard in my life sounded nearly as cool. It always reminded me of a train (similar to Nowhere Fast). However, when I discovered all of the other Smiths songs, HSIN's star (for me) eventually faded.

The sound of that song though...still a huge part of the Smiths' overall cool factor.

 

[Deleted member 29227]

I still love HSIN?, but the problem is, it is such a great track (ground breaking at the time), that it has been completely flogged to death over the years, which is a real, but unavoidable, shame. I try my best to limit the number of listens because of this, tbh. Some of the re-hash versions are good & offer it in a new light. I do actually like the recent version done by Mr. Marr & his band, & even the one (How Soon Is Now? · We Are Waves) posted by FWD as recent as Wednesday (I think) in the strange/unexpected thread.