Our 10 Favorite Smiths Songs

The Smiths Songs

Our 10 Favorite Smiths Songs present a lisy of songs by the band that we have always found to be the ones that we have spent the most time playing over and over again.

Top 10 The Smiths Songs

# 10 – Miserable Lie

Their debut album, The Smiths, was a formal introduction to the world in 1983; they were the original Bohemians of the Ronald Reagan era, where everything was flashy and the times were much more straightforward. With its distinctive album cover bearing Andy Warhol actor Joe Dallesandro from the 1968 film Flesh, the music was far too ahead of its time even to be produced in such an era.

It produced several incredible singles, but if there’s one deep track that stands fascinatingly by itself, Miserable Lie would be just that. The jangly guitar sensibilities of Marr and Morrissey’s wild falsetto quirks, which turn his romantically bleak stanzas into something almost tongue-in-cheek, make this song a significant enough inauguration for our top ten list.

# 9 – I Want the One I Can’t Have

By the time the Smiths put out their second record, 1985’s Meat is Murder, they were already paving their own road to success and recognition. After being underwhelmed with the production value of their first album, they produced the album themselves, thus giving them the freedom to write and record what they felt was right.

For Meat is Murder, the end result was a bold diversity rooted with contempt for animal cruelty, physical punishment in school, and abuse at home, among other topics; of course, Morrissey’s dry witticisms are scattered about. I Want the One I Can’t Have is another deep cut with a wondrous stratum of chord voicing glossed in Morrissey’s sad-eyed lust.

# 8 – Death of a Disco Dancer

Strangeways, Here We Come, the band’s final studio album was certainly a proper send-off to a brief yet empyrean career. It was the album that saw the Smiths in a different state of mind as far as musical progression was concerned; they added stringed arrangements and drum machines to their compositions, and Marr took to The Beatles’ White Album for further influence.

It’s a fantastic farewell record, and with Death of a Disco Dancer, one can hear that succulent penchant for the intricate rock grooves that plagued the White Album. Everyone’s chemistry here collides interchangeably, and it should be noted that this is the only song where Morrissey plays an instrument; he can be heard towards the end jamming on the organ.

# 7 – I Know It’s Over

The Queen Is Dead established the Smiths as one of the greats of their time, laying the groundwork with their postmodern blend of pop, punk, and second-wave British invasion. It’s constantly branded as their best work, and deservedly so. Lyrically, the prose on this record has never sounded more delicately tailored with the ghosts of the Romantics. “I Know It’s Over” definitely exercises that level of grief, despair, and love lost, but each vignette carries on a broken passion for existential enlightenment in every form of human emotion.

# 6 – What Difference Does It Make

Morrissey has referred to this as his least favorite song he recorded with the Smiths, but that didn’t stop it from being a hit single that climbed up the UK charts. The song is famous for its electrifying riff and Morrissey’s unnaturally high notes he hits towards the end. It should also be noted that when it came to Morrissey’s storytelling, he usually would stay away from pronouns, giving each song’s narrative gender ambiguity; this made his lyrical prose more relatable and more accessible to identify with. That’s exactly what this song’s content illustrates: forbidden desire and lovesickness.

# 5 – Ask

This bouncy single released in 1986 is like a big ball of The Byrds and the Nuclear holocaust all baked into one surprisingly optimistic song; who wouldn’t want to be with the one they loved before the world gets wiped away from a million bombs dropping? That’s what makes Morrissey such a brilliant poet; he can take the most puerile subject and make it thought-provoking and funny, all in the same breath. The song is also the most potent representation of their voluminous overdub of acoustic and electric chimes.

# 4 – Paint a Vulgar Picture

Paint a Vulgar Picture is a virulent explanation of what it’s like to live in the music industry as a puppet for the corporate machine, and it’s all cloaked ostensibly in a bright and sunny sensation to the ears. The lyrics extend into a highly descriptive play-by-play of the laborious dynamics of being a commercial band. Everything from falling prey to the greed of the record companies, selling out, making millions of dollars, to living a lonely life of stardom in that expensive house, pondering the remains of that fervid love for the craft. That’s at least one way of interpreting its meaning.

# 3 – Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others

Though not released as an initial single, Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others still unfolded into one of the band’s most critically acclaimed numbers. It’s coated with every inch of dry humor and flippancy for what can be considered beautiful, and from a technical standpoint, this is probably Marr’s most inspiring guitar song.

# 2 – How Soon Is Now?

This is perhaps their signature song that everybody has heard repeatedly. It wasn’t released on any of their albums, except as a B-side single for the other non-album single, “William, It Was Really Nothing.” What is there really to laud that hasn’t already been expressed countless times again over the past thirty years?  Marr’s guitar riff and overall structure were inspired by a cornucopia of Bo Diddley’s syncopated shuffle, Hamilton Bohannon’s “Disco Stomp,” and Can’s “I Want More,” and the upshot turned into one of the most enduring and badass tunes in all of rock.

# 1 – There Is a Light That Never Goes Out

The number one position on our Top 10 The Smiths Songs list wouldn’t feel complete without writing this one off as their defining song; it’s what makes The Queen Is Dead the undisputed classic it is. The main progression, based out of F sharp minor, was heavily influenced by the Rolling Stones’ cover of Marvin Gaye’sHitch Hike.”  Marr has jokingly said in an interview that he intentionally copied it to see if people would realize that the Velvet Underground lifted the progression in their song, There She Goes Again from the Rolling Stones.

The chords are so perfect. Morrissey’s grim tale of being with the one he loves before they both die in a horrible accident makes you look past the dismal nature and understand the aesthetic authenticity of his disposition; the man connects with the listener on the rawest level and turns the hopelessness of life into artistic acceptance.

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

Top 10 Smiths Songs article published on Classic RockHistory.com© 2024

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