C
Cili Barnes
Guest
I know this is kind of late, but I just read the January 2000 issue of Uncut - 100 Moments that Shook Music, Movies... and the World. The Queen Is Dead is #74. It mentions Morrissey too. It's a great magazine, but the editing...
74 THE SMITHS' THE QUEEN IS DEAD (1986)
The Smiths mattered from the moment they arrived, but it was with penultimate album "The Queen Is Dead" that they reached full flowering, the title track's vision of a pinched, broken Britain inseparable from a Morrissey who breaks into the Palace to commiserate with a Queen he wants killed leading into bright pockets of humour, Billy Liar! revisited ("Frankly, Mr Shankly"), and songs which made adolescent heartbreaks and enforced virginities endurable, ennobling them with romantic passion, and the psychedelic sweep of Johnny Marr's newly epic music. It was too alive to be solipsistic, and though Morrissey today sometimes seems irrelevant in his self-absorption, the sympathies that made him visit the mind of Myra Hindley in the guise of her sobbing victims in 1984's "Suffer Little Children" are still with him: his most notorious song, "The National Front Disco" (1992), dared to humanise a lost young boy about to fall into racism's grip. It said more about Britain than many wanted to hear.
Other notables:
- Citizen Kane (1941), #7: More about Orson Welles, than the film itself.
- MAD Magazine (1952), #13: I didn't know that it had historical significance!
- Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech (1963), #22
- Billy Liar! (1963), #24
- Beatlemania (1964), #25
- Bloody Sunday (1972), #44: The shooting of 13 Irish Catholic Civil Rights protesters by British paratroops in Belfast destroys chance for peace in N. Ireland.
- John Cale's "Paris 1919" (1973), #46
- Muhammad Ali Reclaims His Crown [in Africa] (1974), #49: Ali, at 32, takes back his title and becomes "the most famous man in the world."
- John Lennon's Murder (1980), #59
- The Stone Roses' "Fool's Gold" (1989), #80: "The next leap forward: The Stone Roses."
- Primal Scream's "Screamadelica" (1991), #81
74 THE SMITHS' THE QUEEN IS DEAD (1986)
The Smiths mattered from the moment they arrived, but it was with penultimate album "The Queen Is Dead" that they reached full flowering, the title track's vision of a pinched, broken Britain inseparable from a Morrissey who breaks into the Palace to commiserate with a Queen he wants killed leading into bright pockets of humour, Billy Liar! revisited ("Frankly, Mr Shankly"), and songs which made adolescent heartbreaks and enforced virginities endurable, ennobling them with romantic passion, and the psychedelic sweep of Johnny Marr's newly epic music. It was too alive to be solipsistic, and though Morrissey today sometimes seems irrelevant in his self-absorption, the sympathies that made him visit the mind of Myra Hindley in the guise of her sobbing victims in 1984's "Suffer Little Children" are still with him: his most notorious song, "The National Front Disco" (1992), dared to humanise a lost young boy about to fall into racism's grip. It said more about Britain than many wanted to hear.
Other notables:
- Citizen Kane (1941), #7: More about Orson Welles, than the film itself.
- MAD Magazine (1952), #13: I didn't know that it had historical significance!
- Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech (1963), #22
- Billy Liar! (1963), #24
- Beatlemania (1964), #25
- Bloody Sunday (1972), #44: The shooting of 13 Irish Catholic Civil Rights protesters by British paratroops in Belfast destroys chance for peace in N. Ireland.
- John Cale's "Paris 1919" (1973), #46
- Muhammad Ali Reclaims His Crown [in Africa] (1974), #49: Ali, at 32, takes back his title and becomes "the most famous man in the world."
- John Lennon's Murder (1980), #59
- The Stone Roses' "Fool's Gold" (1989), #80: "The next leap forward: The Stone Roses."
- Primal Scream's "Screamadelica" (1991), #81
