# Deep Tracks - The Smiths - "The Smiths" - (1984)



## Guest (Aug 24, 2018)

View attachment 107023


Please *choose up to six selections* for this particular poll.

On all polls created if you click on the number of votes following the song title the username of all voters and their chosen selections will appear.

The tunes themselves will be found below the poll itself as links rather than as embedded videos due to bandwidth issues for those who wish to reacquaint themselves with a tune that may have receded a bit too far into the past to be remembered with the clarity that came when they were first released...

Next up is - The Smiths - "_The Smiths_"

"The Smiths" is the debut studio album by English rock band the Smiths, recorded in 1983 and released on 20 February 1984 by record label Rough Trade.

The sleeve for The Smiths was designed by Morrissey. It features American actor Joe Dallesandro in a cropped still from Andy Warhol's 1968 film Flesh. The photograph of Morrissey on the original card inner sleeve was taken at an early London concert by Romi Mori, who would subsequently play bass guitar for The Gun Club.

The single "What Difference Does It Make?" was released in January 1984, reaching number 12 on the UK Singles Chart.

The album was released on 20 February 1984, and debuted at number two on the UK Albums Chart.

"This Charming Man" was included as the sixth track on all original US releases of the album on Sire Records (LP, CD and cassette) and on the UK cassette on Rough Trade. Since 1992, when WEA acquired the Smiths' catalogue, nearly all reissues worldwide also include this song, with the exceptions being a 2009 vinyl reissue on Rhino Records in both the USA and the UK and the 2011 vinyl version box set collecting the Smiths albums titled "Complete".

The music critic Garry Mulholland included it in his list of the 261 greatest albums since 1976 in Fear of Music: "The Smiths made safe their early legend with a debut album about child abuse. The production was flat and dour, yet it succeeded in conjuring yet another Manchester-in-song, distinctly different from that of Ian Curtis and Mark E. Smith. But everything about "The Smiths" ran contrary to mid-80s pop, from Joe Dallesandro on the cover to the restrained jangling of the songs, but mainly through Moz's [Morrissey's nickname] dramatized disgust at sex, which here exists to ruin true love at best, and to ruin an entire young life at worst."

Slant Magazine listed the album at 51 on its list of "Best Albums of the 1980s" saying "There's no reason why a mordant, sexually frustrated disciple of Oscar Wilde who loved punk but crooned like a malfunctioning Sinatra should've teamed up with a fabulously inventive guitarist whose influences were so diffuse that it could be hard to hear them at all and formed one of the greatest songwriting duos of the '80s."

In 1989, the album was ranked number 22 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 greatest albums of the 1980s.

In 2003, the album was ranked number 481 on that magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". The album ranked at 473 on an updated list by the magazine in 2012.

The album was ranked number 51 on Rolling Stone's list of the "100 Best Debut Albums of All Time".

It placed at number 73 in The Guardian's list "100 Best Albums Ever" in 1997.

The Smiths:

Morrissey - voice

Johnny Marr - guitars, harmonica

Andy Rourke - bass guitar

Mike Joyce - drums, tambourine ("Hand in Glove")[25]

Additional musicians:

Paul Carrack - piano, organ ("Reel Around the Fountain", "You've Got Everything Now" and "I Don't Owe You Anything")

Annalisa Jablonska - female voice ("Pretty Girls Make Graves" and "Suffer Little Children")

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smiths_(album)

Your commentary on any and every aspect of the album and especially any memories reawakened as a result of the poll is welcomed.


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## Guest (Aug 24, 2018)

"Reel Around the Fountain" -






"You've Got Everything Now" -






"Miserable Lie" -






"Pretty Girls Make Graves" -






"The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" -






"Still Ill" -






"Hand in Glove" -






"What Difference Does It Make?" -






"I Don't Owe You Anything" -






"Suffer Little Children" -






"This Charming Man" -


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## Guest (Aug 24, 2018)

A snippet from a review of this album which appeared in "Pitchfork" and which stresses the importance of guitarist Johnny Marr -

"But the Smiths weren't Morrissey-plus-some-musicians, despite what he'd later try to suggest. They had a magnificent rhythm section in bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce, who were unflashy, tough, and supple.

And they had guitarist and writer Johnny Marr, who was responsible for at least half of the Smiths' glory. It's hard to neatly describe what was so great about Marr, because he didn't have a particular gimmick or a signature sound; there are virtually no audible guitar solos on Smiths records. Instead, he worked up a different sound and technique for nearly every song in the band's discography--the breadth of his inventiveness is a good part of what's important about him.

There also aren't a lot of new wave classics with guitar lines inspired by Ghanaian highlife (and a rhythm section that's basically just playing "You Can't Hurry Love"), but then there's "This Charming Man" to prove the rest of the world wrong.

It's safe to say that nobody else, before or since, has opened a significant rock album by hammering the bejesus out of the capoed, open-tuned chord that begins "The Headmaster Ritual"-- Marr has called his riff what Joni Mitchell "would have done had she been an MC5 fan."

To have come up with the tone and riffs of "What Difference Does It Make?" or "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" or "London" would be a coup for any guitarist; to have come up with all of them is astonishing."

Note" this review makes references to four separate releases "The Smiths", "Meat Is Murder", "Louder Than Bombs" and "The World Won't Listen".

"The Headmaster Ritual" - 




"Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" - 




"London" -


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