The Queen Is Dead
The Queen Is Dead is the third studio album by the English rock band the Smiths. It was released on 16 June 1986 through Rough Trade Records.
For other uses, see The Queen Is Dead (disambiguation).The Queen Is Dead
16 June 1986
1985
36:48
The album was produced by the band's singer, Morrissey, and their guitarist, Johnny Marr, working predominantly with engineer Stephen Street who engineered the Smiths' previous album, Meat Is Murder (1985).[3] Marr wrote several songs while the Smiths toured Britain in early 1985, working out arrangements with bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce during soundchecks.[4] The album title is taken from American writer Hubert Selby Jr.'s 1964 novel, Last Exit to Brooklyn.[5] The cover art features the French actor Alain Delon in the 1964 film L'Insoumis.[6]
The Queen Is Dead spent 22 weeks on the UK Albums Chart, reaching the number two position.[7] It reached number 70 on the US Billboard Top Pop Albums chart and was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in late 1990. Critically acclaimed, Rolling Stone ranked the album 113th on its 2020-updated list of the ""500 Greatest Albums of All Time"".[8] In its 2013 list, NME named The Queen Is Dead the greatest album of all time.[9]
Songwriting[edit]
Marr was heavily influenced by the Stooges, the Velvet Underground, and the Detroit garage rock scene while crafting the album.[10]
The album's title track was based on a song Marr began writing as a teenager.[11]: 78 "The Boy with the Thorn in His Side" was, according to Marr, "an effortless piece of music", and was written on tour in the spring of 1985. The song's lyrics refer allegorically to the band's experience of the music industry that failed to appreciate it.[12]: 48 In 2003, Morrissey named it his favourite Smiths song.[13]
A demo of the music for "Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others" was posted by Marr through Morrissey's letterbox in the summer of 1985. Morrissey then completed the song by adding lyrics. Marr has stated that he "preferred the music to the lyrics".[12]: 405
"Frankly, Mr. Shankly", "I Know It's Over" and "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" were written by Morrissey and Marr in a "marathon" writing session in the late summer of 1985 at Marr's home in Bowdon, Greater Manchester.[12]: 136 The first of these is reputed to have been addressed to Geoff Travis, head of the Smiths' record label Rough Trade, however Morrissey denies this.[14] Travis has since described it as "a funny lyric" about "Morrissey's desire to be somewhere else", acknowledging that a line in the song about "bloody awful poetry" was a reference to a poem he had written for Morrissey.[15]: 86
"There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" features lyrics drawn from "Lonely Planet Boy" by the New York Dolls. According to Marr: "When we first played it, I thought it was the best song I'd ever heard".[12]: 442 The song's guitar part drew on the Rolling Stones' cover of Marvin Gaye's "Hitch Hike", whose original version by Gaye himself had acted as an inspiration for the Velvet Underground's "There She Goes Again".[16]
The music for "Never Had No One Ever", completed in August 1985, was based on a demo which Marr had recorded in December 1984, itself based on "I Need Somebody" by the Stooges.[12]: 281 According to Marr: "The atmosphere of that track pretty much sums up the whole album and what it was like recording it."[12]: 282 The lyric to the song reflects Morrissey's feeling unsafe and, being from an immigrant family, not at home on the streets of Manchester.[17]
"The Boy with the Thorn in His Side", "Bigmouth Strikes Again" and "Frankly, Mr. Shankly" were debuted live during a tour of Scotland in September and October,[18]: 120–2 during which "The Queen Is Dead" and "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" were sound-checked.[11]: 78
The song "Vicar in a Tutu" was considered "throwaway" by Marr, who stated "It made a change from trying to change the fucking world."[10] "Cemetry Gates" was a late addition to the album. Marr had not believed that the guitar part was interesting enough to be developed into a song, but Morrissey disagreed when he heard Marr play it.[12]: 70 The "All those people .... I want to cry" section is largely taken from the film The Man Who Came To Dinner, which also inspired one of Morrissey's aliases, Sheridan Whitehead. The words the song's narrator has heard "said a hundred times (maybe less, maybe more)" are based on lines from Shakespeare's Richard III. The song evokes Morrissey's memories of visiting Southern Cemetery in Manchester with artist Linder Sterling.
Composition[edit]
The song "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" was a contender for lead single from the album, but was passed over in favour of "Bigmouth Strikes Again". (Later in 1986 it was released as a 7"-only single in France). The song received a belated release as a single in 1992 when WEA used it to promote Smiths re-releases and best-of compilations released in the years following the band’s breakup. In 1990 the song was voted no. 1 on a list of the greatest songs of all time by the readers of SPIN magazine in the US.
"Cemetry Gates" was Morrissey's direct response to critics who had cried foul over his use of texts written by some of his favourite authors, notably Shelagh Delaney and Elizabeth Smart. Oscar Wilde, who was also accused of plagiarism, figures as a patron saint of Morrissey's in the song's lyrics. A Wilde quote, "Talent borrows, genius steals", was etched in the vinyl run-out grooves of the single single off the album, "Bigmouth Strikes Again".[21] These etchings appear almost exclusively on the UK releases (denoted by the RT and RTT prefixes on the catalogue number).
"The Queen Is Dead", which leads off the album and notably became an expressionistic music video directed by Derek Jarman, starts with a sampled excerpt from Bryan Forbes' 1962 British film The L-Shaped Room.[22] Mayo Thompson of the Red Krayola was an associate producer for the film and through working for Rough Trade Records persuaded Jarman to direct a promotional video for the Smiths.[23][24] Another instance of Morrissey's fascination with 1960s British cinema, the film featured performances by Pat Phoenix (who had already appeared as a cover star on the 1985 single "Shakespeare's Sister") and Cicely Courtneidge as an elderly lesbian veteran of the music halls. The soundbite is Courtneidge's character nostalgically singing the First World War song "Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty". The actress had also appeared in a gala performance for the Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II, entitled God Save the Queen; she died in 1980.
A few songs, including "The Queen Is Dead" and "Bigmouth Strikes Again", feature pitch-shifted backing vocals by Morrissey. Morrissey liked to experiment with effects on his voice, so Street ran his voice through a harmoniser for the backing tracks. Street recalled, "At that time, apart from the harmoniser, he didn't go for much backing vocal or harmony work – he's done that more on recent albums – but he did like to experiment". The backing vocals are attributed to "Ann Coates" on the record sleeve (Ancoats is a district in Manchester, just north-east of the city centre).[19]
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