Our 10 Favorite Smiths Songs

Photo: Charlie Llewellin from Austin, USA [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Our 10 favorite Smiths songs celebrate the recordings we return to most often from one of the most distinctive bands of the 1980s. Morrissey’s dramatic, funny, and frequently wounded lyrics found their ideal musical setting in Johnny Marr’s inventive guitar arrangements, Andy Rourke’s melodic bass lines, and Mike Joyce’s forceful but flexible drumming.

Formed in Manchester in 1982, the Smiths released four studio albums between 1984 and 1987. Their catalog was brief, but the band continually changed its approach, moving from sharp guitar pop and rockabilly rhythms to orchestral ballads, studio experimentation, and some of the most emotionally direct songs of its era.

This ranking is a personal selection rather than a definitive account of the band’s best-known singles. Several of the songs below are album tracks whose humor, guitar work, atmosphere, or emotional power made them impossible to leave out.

Top 10 The Smiths Songs

# 10 – Miserable Lie

The Smiths’ self-titled debut album arrived in 1984 as a formal introduction to a band that already sounded unlike anything surrounding it. The cover featured actor Joe Dallesandro in a cropped image from Andy Warhol’s 1968 film Flesh.

“Miserable Lie” begins with deceptive restraint. Marr’s guitar initially supports one of Morrissey’s bitterly comic romantic complaints, but the track suddenly accelerates into a frantic second half. Joyce pushes the tempo, Rourke holds the rush together, and Morrissey climbs into a deliberately exaggerated falsetto.

The abrupt change gives the song its identity. What starts as wounded confession becomes something close to hysteria, revealing how quickly the Smiths could move from elegance to chaos without losing control of the arrangement.

# 9 – I Want the One I Can’t Have

By the time the Smiths released Meat Is Murder in 1985, they had taken greater control of their studio sound. The record expanded their subject matter to include animal cruelty, corporal punishment, violence in the home, and political disillusionment while still making room for Morrissey’s romantic frustration.

“I Want the One I Can’t Have” is one of the album’s most immediate guitar songs. Marr layers bright chords over a rhythm section that never stops moving, creating an exhilarating contrast with the lyric’s fixation on unavailable love.

Morrissey’s performance balances longing with self-mockery. He understands the absurdity of the situation but cannot escape it, which gives the song the mixture of humor and genuine ache that defined so much of the band’s work.

# 8 – Death of a Disco Dancer

Strangeways, Here We Come was the Smiths’ fourth and final studio album. Released in 1987 after the group had already fractured, it revealed a band moving beyond the guitar language that had first established its reputation, with Marr also drawing inspiration from records such as the Beatles’ White Album.

“Death of a Disco Dancer” is one of the album’s most experimental tracks. Marr’s guitar textures scrape and hover over Andy Rourke’s ominous bass and Mike Joyce’s slow, skeletal beat. The arrangement becomes increasingly unstable as the song proceeds.

Morrissey contributes piano near the end, making this the only Smiths recording on which he is credited with playing an instrument. His rough, percussive playing fits the track perfectly, turning the closing section into an uneasy collision rather than a conventional solo.

The song’s bleak meditation on peace, love, and public indifference captures the darker atmosphere of Strangeways, Here We Come while demonstrating how much unexplored musical territory remained when the band ended.

# 7 – I Know It’s Over

The Queen Is Dead established the Smiths as one of the essential bands of their generation. Its songs moved between satire, romance, anger, absurdity, and grief while Marr, Rourke, and Joyce created arrangements that sounded far more expansive than the standard description of “jangly guitar music” suggests.

“I Know It’s Over” is the album’s emotional center. The performance begins quietly, with Marr’s guitar leaving open space around Morrissey’s voice. As the song develops, the bass, drums, and layered guitars gradually increase the pressure without disturbing its intimate mood.

Morrissey moves from loneliness to accusation, self-reproach, and desperate tenderness. The most devastating moments arrive when the lyric briefly turns outward and offers compassion before collapsing back into isolation. That emotional movement makes the song much more than a conventional lament.

# 6 – What Difference Does It Make?

“What Difference Does It Make?” became the Smiths’ first United Kingdom Top 20 single. Its opening guitar figure is one of Johnny Marr’s most recognizable early riffs, balancing hard rhythmic attack with the bright tone that quickly became associated with the band.

Morrissey’s lyric avoids fixing the relationship inside a simple narrative. Shame, desire, secrecy, resentment, and dependence overlap without identifying the people involved in conventional terms. That ambiguity allowed listeners to recognize themselves in the song rather than merely observe someone else’s story.

The closing vocal climb adds another layer of drama. Morrissey pushes his voice higher while the band continues driving forward, making the song feel both confrontational and strangely celebratory.

# 5 – Ask

Released as a single in 1986, “Ask” is among the Smiths’ brightest recordings. The guitars ring with the influence of the Byrds, while the rhythm gives the song an almost weightless forward motion.

Beneath that cheerful surface is a lyric about shyness, isolation, physical desire, and nuclear destruction. Morrissey transforms the possibility of annihilation into an argument for human connection: if disaster can arrive at any moment, remaining silent becomes its own kind of waste.

The acoustic and electric guitar overdubs create a dense field of chimes without making the arrangement feel heavy. That combination of apocalyptic imagery and radiant pop makes “Ask” one of the band’s most deceptively sophisticated singles.

# 4 – Paint a Vulgar Picture

“Paint a Vulgar Picture” appeared on Strangeways, Here We Come and offered one of Morrissey’s sharpest attacks on the music industry. The lyric imagines a dead star’s catalog being repackaged, promoted, and repeatedly sold by executives eager to turn loss into another commercial opportunity.

The criticism is delivered over one of the album’s most inviting arrangements. Marr’s guitars are melodic and expansive, while Rourke and Joyce give the track a steady sense of momentum. The brightness of the music makes the cynicism in the lyric even more effective.

The song also recognizes the complicated role of the devoted fan. Records can be exploited by corporations, but they still carry memories and personal meaning for the people who buy them. That tension keeps “Paint a Vulgar Picture” from becoming a simple complaint about record companies.

# 3 – Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others

“Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others” closes The Queen Is Dead with one of Johnny Marr’s most beautiful guitar arrangements. The opening fades in, drops away, and returns, creating the impression that the listener has briefly passed through a wall before entering the song properly.

Marr layers chiming phrases that seem to answer and overlap one another, while Rourke’s bass adds a melodic counterline beneath them. The instrumental performance is so graceful that it creates an amusing contrast with Morrissey’s deliberately slight lyric.

The words reduce centuries of romance, storytelling, and idealized beauty to an obvious physical observation. Whether heard as dry humor, provocation, or a refusal to provide the grand statement the music appears to demand, the mismatch is exactly what makes the track memorable.

# 2 – How Soon Is Now?

“How Soon Is Now?” began as a B-side to the 1984 twelve-inch single “William, It Was Really Nothing.” It later appeared on Hatful of Hollow, was included on several international editions of Meat Is Murder, and received its own United Kingdom single release in 1985.

The recording sounds unlike almost anything else in the Smiths’ catalog. Marr built the track around a heavily treated guitar pulse, using tremolo to make the central figure rise and fall like machinery. The rhythm draws on blues and dance music while the layers of sound create an enormous, almost psychedelic space.

Morrissey’s lyric gives that sonic scale an intensely private subject: the humiliation of wanting connection but being unable to cross the distance between oneself and everyone else. The famous description of shyness does not romanticize loneliness. It exposes how painful and repetitive it can become.

Although it began on the reverse side of another single, “How Soon Is Now?” grew into one of the Smiths’ signature recordings and reached number twenty-four when released as a British A-side.

# 1 – There Is a Light That Never Goes Out

The number one position on our Top 10 The Smiths Songs list belongs to “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out.” Featured on The Queen Is Dead, the song brings together Johnny Marr’s gift for melodic construction and Morrissey’s ability to turn romantic desperation into language that feels both theatrical and sincere.

Marr has discussed the musical line connecting the song’s chord movement to Marvin Gaye’s “Hitch Hike,” the Rolling Stones’ cover of that song, and the Velvet Underground’s “There She Goes Again.” That private musical joke became the foundation for one of Marr’s most enduring compositions.

The acoustic guitar, synthesized strings, and flute-like melody give the arrangement a sweeping cinematic quality. Morrissey answers with a lyric about escape, belonging, and the desire for a moment so complete that even death would not invalidate it.

The song was not released as a United Kingdom single during the band’s lifetime. It finally appeared as a single in 1992 and reached number twenty-five, but its reputation had already grown through The Queen Is Dead, live performances, compilations, and years of devotion from listeners.

For more on the musical lineage behind the song, visit our features on the Rolling Stones’ deep cuts. “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” earns the top position because it turns hopelessness into connection and transforms a private fantasy into one of alternative rock’s most universal songs.