I saw Morrisey at the Leeds festival and wasnt exactly blown away, but the constant clamour of acclaim has aroused my interest in the Smiths. I am going to buy one of their albums to see what it is that catalyses such fervent adoration. Which album would be a good starting point? Please help...

The best album is probably Queen Is Dead. Or you could go for a compilation - Louder Than Bombs is my favourite of the many released...fiver each at Fopp


And don't give up on Morrissey either...try Your Arsenal or Viva Hate. Or The Best Of...another Fopp fiver job

The Queen is Dead is a great album. Probably a good one to get you into the Smiths as well as it'll contain a number of songs that you recognise. Strangeways Here We Come is good too... but you probably have to be familiar with the Smiths to appreciate it fully.

Ooooh The Smiths eh? Probably* my favourite band of all time. Always good to have a potential newcomer to convert.

The Queen is Dead is generally considered to be the best album but Meat is Murder is also pretty damn fine. As is the first album: The Smiths. Other than that any of the compilations are a good starting point. As Sostie says, Louder Than Bombs is the best one - my fave compilation too. Not sure that helps actually, as having re-read this post I've realised that I've just recommended most of 'em.

Morrissey's worth sticking with too. Viva Hate is good. Bona Drag [an early compilation] is probably the best intro to his post Smiths work. After that Vauxhall & I is stunningly good.

Chris

*changes each week...but anytime i listen to The Smiths I'm reminded of how good they are

I like The Queen is Dead, and the Singles is a good compilation to start with.

mmm

definately the queen is dead, classic album

What was that, Phil?



I'd recommend Hatful of Hollow meself - as for Morrissey's solo stuff I recommend nothing cos it's not very good.

In my opinion.

It needed Morrissey and Marr to work.

you gotta love " everyday is like sunday" it's great

There is the odd song, such as that and Suedehead - I bought You Are The Quarry on the strength of Irish Blood, English Heart and was most disappointed.

Looks like the fave so far is Queen Is Dead. Though with Hatful of Hollow you do get, what I think, are the 2 greatest Smiths tracks - "How Soon Is Now" and "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want".

The power of The Queen Is Dead cannot be denied...I have seen it turn 8 beer swilling Luther Vandross loving London lads on holiday in Tenerife, into fully fledged indie gig going buddies. Such a proud moment

Just remember Skip (can I call you Skip) don't listen to anyone who tells you that The Smiths are miserable - I used to get this a lot - from people who only ever heard one or two singles. Yes, some songs are sad, but quite a few are uplifting and funny too.

My first Smiths CD was "Singles" (the one with Diana Dors on the front cover).
It was good enough for me and still gets the occasional outing.

Breaking with thread tradition, I highly recommen the Singles compilation (the album with Diana Dors on the cover) because, well, it's got all the hits you'll recognise on it without the one or two slightly less than amazing tracks that are on The Queen Is Dead (like Never Had No One Ever for example).

EDIT: Er, what Ron said.

I'd go for the Queen is Dead since it is a stunning album, but they best album for an introduction, in my opinion, would be their self-titled debut, it's got some fantastic pop songs such as This Charming Man and What Difference Does It Make?. Meat is Murder is another classic, that and the debut have some fantastic songs which mix great lyrics with some really funky pieces of music.All their studio albums are classics though.

For compilations, i'd go for the best of, it's got most of the singles, along with a number of their brilliant album tracks.

As has been mentioned once or twice, The Queen Is Dead is probably their greatest album, but I'd agree with Andy (and one or two others) and start with Hatful Of Hollow and also pick up Louder Than Bombs or The World Won't Listen (although please ignore Golden Lights - the worst Smiths song by miles). If you fancy more, I'd then get The Queen Is Dead, Meat Is Murder, Strangeways Here We Come, The Smiths, Louder Than Bombs/The World Won't Listen (whichever one you didn't buy above) and Rank in that order. Not that I've thought about it a lot or anything...

As for Morrissey himself, Viva Hate is very good and some of the rest are alright.

I thought that. I was also very disappointed, upon close listening to IBEH that he made an incorrect reference to Cromwell. I would have thought that Morrissey woulld know his history...

Considering his anti-monarchist views you'd have thought he'd praise Cromwell, but he's actually slagging him off for his treatment of the Irish.

I think that if you want to get intothe Smiths, then you're best off buying the 'best of...' collection. It'll help.

Yes you can (call me Skip, or Skippy or even Bob, John, Martha or Unglet if you want) and with reference to miserablism i'm a Radiohead fan... need i say more?

Another vote for The Queen Is Dead here. Only just gets the nod over (the also superb) Hatful of Hollow, mind.

The Smiths are probably my favourite band of all time but I never could stomach any of Morrissey's solo stuff post-Viva Hate. He's just not the same without Johnny Marr (and vice versa).

I dunno, Electronic did some good albums and had a few decent tracks (including the brilliant 'Getting Away With It')and some of Morrissey's stuff is good. He rarely write poor lyrics, it's just that his collaborators aren't up to scratch. Vauxhall & I is a classic album though, some absolute classics on there

Im definately purchasing some more of their albums, just need some money first.

I'd definately start with the singles collection.

Strangeways...is a good one too. That's probably the first Smiths album I was introduced to, but then I knew a lot of the singles before that.
I always liked "Girlfriend in a coma" "This Charming Man" "Ask" "There is a light" and so on. I guess they'd all be on the singles collection.

How can anyone say Morrissey's solo stuff isn't any good? What about "You're the one for me, fatty"? hhahahahahahahaha
What the hell was that about??
Actually I always really liked "Last of the famous international playboys" and "November Spawned a monster"


Cheers
AC

I always thought that 'Why Don't You Find Out For Yourself', 'Suedehead', 'The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get' and 'Speedway' were Morrissey's best solo effort (3 of them are on Vauxhall & I if anyone wants to check 'em out)

Well, i thank you all for your sound advice, which i read thoroughly, twice, and then completely ignored buying the one of the ch 4 poll (the queen is dead) because it was the cheapest (well im scottish, what did you expect).
The album had not been out of my cd player for a couple of weeks and i am swiftly becoming a smiths convert (fave tracks off the album: The queen is dead, cemetry gates, bigmouth strikes again and there is a light...).

i was wondering if anybody could shed any light on the meaning of some of the tracks, i am intrestred to know. also, which album should i buy next?

The queen is dead is basically Morrissey voicing his hatred of the monarchy by mocking them and visualising sneaking into the palace and killing the queen ''I broke into the palace/with a spunge and a rusty spanner''-A Spanner to beat her to death with and a sponge to clean up the blood.

Frankly, Mr Shankly is about escaping from the mundaanity of life in order to become a popstar, it's also a sly dig at Geoff Travis, the head of the Smiths label at the time (I never knew that you wrote poetry/I never knew that you wrote such bloody awful poetry)

I Know It's Over is fairly straight forward, it's about a relationship that has ended, calthough it is slightly unclear about whether there actually was a relationship (''I Know it's over/but it never really began/but in my heart it was so real'') and also talks about a relationship between a group of people; the bride, groom and the loutish lover

Never had no one ever is again fairly self-explanatory but is decidedly clearer than I Know It's Over

Cemetry Gates is about Morrissey being in a graveyard with a friend talking about life and death and how his friend keeps stealing their observations from other sources ('some dizzy whore 1804'). This is slightly self-referential since Morrissey famously used to steal lines from plays and books that he used for his songs.

Bigmouth Strikes Again is about insulting a partner and apologising for it, but being 'persecuted' for it despite this (I think it is anyway) hence the reference to Joan of Arc, the walkman reference is just a bit of surrealism I think...

The Boy With The Thorn In His Side is about how Morrissey felt about the record industry, that it was athorn in his side that annoyed him, as well as being about love, or something

Vicar in a Tutu is a funny little ditty about seeing a vicar in drag whilst stealing parts of the church roof. This is one of Morrissey's many little plays with sexuality as well as a little dig at the Church

There Is A Light That Never Goes Out is the most beautiful love song ever, about someone being in love with someone else but not being able to act upon it (''And in the darkened underpass/I thought Oh God my chance has come at last/But then a strange fear hit me and I just couldn't ask'') and how being with the person was so great that the moment may never be recaptured so it would be best to die at that moment, or that Morrissey would die happy.

Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others another little funny song by Morrissey, not too sure about what it's about mind, other than some girls being bigger than others

If you really want to know about the songs, but Simon Goddard's book Songs That Saved Your Life, he goes into exhausting detail about every Smiths song

Go for their self-titled debut next, it's absolutely brilliant and doesn't have a single bad song, it also features their best pop singles ''This Charming Man'' and ''What Difference Does It Make''

in the smiths, johnny marr would write the music and put it down on tape before giving it to morrisey who would then write the lyrics.

the famous story about this song is that marr spent ages writing this one, thinking it would be the centrepiece and focal point of the album only to find morrisey had given it a lyric about some girls having bigger tits than others. he wasn't too happy.

having said that, the smiths have always left me cold. i've had 'the queen is dead' and the singles collection for years but they don't often get put in the cd player.

I love The Smiths. They were the soundtrack to my childhood. I think my Dad sees himself as a cross between Morrissey and George Best, in fact I know he does.

I'm listening to 'Hatful of Hollow' now, I never get tired of it.

Just remembered that the line in Bigmouth about hearing aids is another little nod to Morrissey's appearance in the eyes of the media, since he used to appear with a hearing aid when he performed on television and at some gigs.

I knew that Marr always wrote the music but when someone asks what a song is about, talking about the musical side of the song doesn't really explain much about what the song is about.

Here's my ratings of each of the Smiths albums on a scale of 1 to 10, for anoyone who would like a statistical idea of what their albums are like:

The Smiths-14/10
Hatful of Hollow-15/10 (Compilation)
Meat Is Murder-15/10
The Queen Is Dead-15/10
World Won't Listen-12/10 (Compilation)
Louder than Bombs-11/10 (Compilations)
Strangeways Here We Come-11/10
Rank-9/10 (Live Album)

Meat Is Murder becomes a 17 if you get the version without How Soon Is Now tacked on to it. Don't get me wrong, it is an amazing song, but it disrupts the flow of the album as a whole since it was added by their US record company.

All their compilation albums (except for Louder Than Bombs) are well worth buying because they are 50 percent versions of already released songs and 50 percent unreleased songs. LTB is just released songs since it was a US compilation that was later released in the UK. Hatful is undoubtedly the best compilation album since it features some stunning live renditions of their early songs as well as the fantatsic 'William, It Was Really Nothing'.

my friend made me a comp cd and i used a programme called 'musicbrainz' to get the tracklist. it told me one of the songs was the smiths' 'wonderful woman' live at the hacienda.

imagine my pleasure when in fact it turned out to be the jeff beck group and donovan doing ragged funk classic 'barabajagal'. but its still in my itunes under the old tag so every time it comes on i think 'oh god its the smiths' and then get a pleasant surprise.

definition of irony? 'i know its over' actually drags on for over five minutes.

Well it is the most miserabl song ever as voted for by BBC Radio 2 listeners, so it would be long just to accentuate the misery of it all.

the queen is dead is such a wonderful album.

louder than bombs is very nice too.

i didn't like meat is murder though, was alright, but nothing special.

I think that Meat Is Murder is a fantastic album, but only if you have the version without How Soon Is Now? on it. Though that is a great song, it does kind of disrupt the flow of the album, which is fairly upbeat considering the subject matter includes school brutality and militant vegetarianism, amongst others

Meat Is Murder never did much for me either I must admit.

I aint going veggie for no-one. Morrisey included. Great album cover though.

I'm now hooked on Hatful of Hollow - thanks guys!

As I was adding my CDs to the bookcase full of them in our apartment, I suddenly noticed that my darling other half has every Smiths album, so I don't have to buy them now.
Woohoo!