As usual, please select exactly one song.
My fave is “The Headmaster Ritual”, with the title track being a close runner up.
And you?
Well, How Soon is Now is as good a song as anyone has ever done, so voted that.* It’s odd that it started off as a b-side to a single. The Smiths blew out the Scottish part of the Meat is Murder tour because someone was ill, but did a mini-tour afterwards to make up for it. Saw them five times in seven days, or whatever, driving round Scotland in a total fucking wreck of a car. There’s a song on this album that they really should be paying royalties to the Presley estate. I didn’t realise for years, until I heard His Latest Flame.
- This is another “not on the album” thing, but it’s a US forum I guess. If it comes down to songs that were on the actual album, then it’s That Joke isn’t Funny Any More
“Rusholme Ruffians” is the one based on the Elvis song. I didn’t realize it until I heard “(Marie’s the Name of) His Latest Flame” on the radio even though it’s spelled out on the tracklisting of the album Rank.
For a bonus, the opening riff of “Big Mouth Strikes Again” appears to be taken from Heart’s 1976 song “Crazy on You.” That blew my mind. Talent borrows, genius steals.
Oh, and “Well I Wonder” is my favorite off this album. I used to rewind the tape over and over again to listed to it. Perfect for rainy days with the rain sound effects.
Holy shit! :eek: I really should investigate this 70s stuff. I’ve been investigating cocaine-and-serial-wife-swapping Fleetwood Mac, but that is Heart? Heart were once a good band? WTF
The way I discovered it was the Decemberists did a cover of “Crazy on You” and I recognized the riff. Since the Decemberists are huge Smiths fans, I assumed they had added it themselves, but listening to the original song reveals that it was there all along. Check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZuW6BH_Vak (fast forward to 0:36). The live versions sound even more like Bigmouth. But it is just a short riff he borrowed, not much more than that.
I don’t know. It’s a similar rhythm and strumming pattern, but the chords are a good bit different, and I’m not talking about being in different keys–they’re different progressions. They do have a similar feel, but they’re quite distinct to me. I wouldn’t confuse one for the other.
I hate to go with the obvious choice, but How Soon is Now is classic.
IMO, this is a contest for second place. I voted for “How Soon Is Now,” which I expect will be the runaway winner, but my second-place vote (if I had one) would go to “Rusholme Ruffians.”
I am human and I need to be loved!
Of course I’m going to carp about HSIN not being on the original Rough Trade release… it’s on the Sire version only. So it doesn’t really count, and an example of a song not really fitting the vibe of an album. HSIN was a standalone single, I think, and should be that way as it is singular in the Smiths’ canon.
The Headmaster Ritual is almost my favorite… killer riffs, Morrissey’s yodeling, and the stark imagery of, as the runout groove reads, “education in reverse.” But I voted for Nowhere Fast, that rockabilly swing and tongue-in-cheek lyric: “I’d like to drop my trousers to the Queen.”
It probably has the most unlikely Smiths track, Barbarism Begins at Home, which transforms the Wythenshawe-Hulme mopesters into a Northen version of Chic. Absent Morrissey’s voice, most non-Smiths fans can’t put the funk workout with pasty White boys from Manchester.
Across the board this is the strongest Smiths album, IMHO.
After opening up the past, and the significant meaning of this album therein. I have to say “I want the one I can’t have”