The Smiths: supercrap or not crap?

[Nanker Phelge]

The Smiths were not really for me. I gave them a lot of goes because people around me were really big fans. I realised the people around me were just no good. So I moved on. 6th formers. I went to work.

I like a couple of later singles. I like some of Morrissey's singles.

I always thought he was a dickhead and the band a bit average.

Which is fine. I like some average bands who make nice tunes.

They're not crap. They're not my bag.

 

[Nanker Phelge]

But still a thousand times better than the fucking Cranberries.

it has to be said

 

[mr steev]

his taste in clothes and hearing aids was something that we've never seen before and won't see again

Johnnie Ray in the 1950's:

 

[Smangus]

The Smiths and Nazi cunt Morrisey are as relevant as a new Royal Yacht

 

[killer b]

The Smiths and Nazi cunt Morrisey are as relevant as a new Royal Yacht

this isn't really true is it - as long as there's pretentious depressed teenagers - and there will always be pretentious depressed teenagers - The Smiths will be relevant.

 

[Smangus]

this isn't really true is it - as long as there's pretentious depressed teenagers - and there will always be pretentious depressed teenagers - The Smiths will be relevant.

I was one too and I hated the Sniffs. They are not a panacea for depressed teens.

 

[marty21]

I was a miserablist indie student in the 80s when the Smiths arrived , they were perfect for me , I didn't get them , so I was meh at the time. 20 years later I started listening to them again and I liked them , although Morrisey is a dick of course.

 

[ElizabethofYork]

I was in my 20s/30s when The Smiths were around. I found the lyrics witty, amusing and wry and the music was fab.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

I assumed all urbanites were alienated youth in the 80s.

Why wouldn't we like the Smiths?

One of the things I like about Urban is that even though I'm comfortably over 40 I can still be too young for the references.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

It's become fashionable to dismiss The Smiths as either hopeless hankerers for an imagined past or a band for 'middle class bedwetters'. In fact they were 4 working class sons of Irish immigrants with, if the West Midlands was representative, a very working class fanbase. If you grew up under Thatcher, became a teenager in the mid to late 1980's, were excluded/felt excluded from the dominant popular culture of the time and knew that the best period for our class had already come and gone then they made perfect sense. Added to that they were, one of the last, great autodidact bands encouraging their fans to read books, read poetry, soak up cultural influences normally closed off to the likes of us, to get into art and to express themselves in ways that directly challenged the hedonism and grotesque deification of wealth as industrial towns and the organised working class was smashed. Their singles and albums stood out like beacons from the slew of shit that Thatcherism spawned in the arts. They were by turn defiantly intelligent, witty, melancholic and makers of shimmering jewels produced from outside of the gathering culture of reflexivity.

New Order were better mind...

 

[David Clapson]

"Let me get my hands on your mammary glands." I suppose he was mocking straights?

 

[Nanker Phelge]

The sleeves were better than the records for me personally...

I gave away a Smiths 7 once. It was a good evening.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

I think I'm going to have to just agree to disagree with just about everyone, partly because I can no longer tell if people are being honest, ironic, satirical, sarcastic, mischievous or just plain bonkers.

 

[killer b]

It's become fashionable to dismiss The Smiths as either hopeless hankerers for an imagined past or a band for 'middle class bedwetters'. In fact they were 4 working class sons of Irish immigrants with, if the West Midlands was representative, a very working class fanbase. If you grew up under Thatcher, became a teenager in the mid to late 1980's, were excluded/felt excluded from the dominant popular culture of the time and knew that the best period for our class had already come and gone then they made perfect sense. Added to that they were, one of the last, great autodidact bands encouraging their fans to read books, read poetry, soak up cultural influences normally closed off to the likes of us, to get into art and to express themselves in ways that directly challenged the hedonism and grotesque deification of wealth as industrial towns and the organised working class was smashed. Their singles and albums stood out like beacons from the slew of shit that Thatcherism spawned in the arts. They were by turn defiantly intelligent, witty, melancholic and makers of shimmering jewels produced from outside of the gathering culture of reflexivity.

New Order were better mind...

I agree with your reading of The Smiths, but I think it should be ok to take a different view without it being dismissed as 'fashionable'.

 

[editor]

"Let me get my hands on your mammary glands." I suppose he was mocking straights?

He wrote some throwaway shit too.

 

[Plumdaff]

As Sean Hughes put it, everyone grows out of their Morrissey phase. Except Morrissey.

It's sad that I find a lot of it (and certainly all of his solo stuff) difficult to listen to because for a long time it was such an important part of my life. I can't hear, say, There is a Light that Never goes Out, or How Soon is Now, or Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want without being transported though. Some of their songs remain magnificent.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

I agree with your reading of The Smiths, but I think it should be ok to take a different view without it being dismissed as 'fashionable'.

I'm thinking about the endless print media reappraisals of late, which either erroneously discuss the band through the lens of Morrissey's late career artistic and political degeneration or which gloss over the bands cultural weight during their brief lifespan. I would never tar U75 users with the fashionable tag...

 

[planetgeli]

I think (know) Joy Division must be better than The Smiths because we don't reappraise them and Ian Curtis's politics quite so much...

Was never a Smiths fan. But How Soon is Now? and a few others...undeniably great tunes...undeniably largely the work of Marr as much as old cunty face.

 

[Hovercraft Eel]

I agree with your reading of The Smiths, but I think it should be ok to take a different view without it being dismissed as 'fashionable'.

Fab post, all but that last line! I like New Order, but I love the Smiths and yes, I was there for it all.

 

[Johnny Vodka]

Great

 

[Saul Goodman]

... after a rethink, maybe not

 

[Johnny Vodka]

Dodgy politics aside, has Morrissey actually made anything worth listening to since his early solo days? Just going by the singles, much of his output since then has been pretty meh musically.

 

[Aladdin]

.

 

[Saul Goodman]

He's ace !!

Proud uncle!

 

[Aladdin]

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