It’s forty years since the Smiths released their first single ‘Hand In Glove’. We’ve already seen a slew of articles on the anniversary, and the clichés about this most singular, most wonderful pop group are doing their weary rounds yet again. The Guardian tells us that the Smiths are incredibly influential. But this is sadly not so. I don’t hear any influence, not a note, in anything that’s followed.
‘Over the past 40 years, you can see their aesthetic and spiritual influence in everyone from the Stone Roses to Oasis and the 1975,’ they tell us. If only! Those bands are derivative, certainly, but of the Smiths? Guitars and the North of England aside, it’s hard to imagine greater artistic gulfs. The comparison between the emotional open wound of the Smiths’ output with the 1975’s immaculately hollow, precision-tooled-for-Spotify tunes is laughably wide of the target. I strongly suspect you could remove the Smiths from history, and those bands – and pop music in general – would sound exactly the same.
There is also another repetition of the assertion – first made by John Peel and oddly never challenged – that the Smiths sounded like nothing else when they first appeared, and that everyone was knocked over by their originality. But this is not quite the case. Take a listen to the indie of the time just before the Smiths, and you’ll notice striking similarities with aspects of the band. Almost contemporaneous records, such as ‘Revolutionary Spirit’ by The Wild Swans – with its haughty vocal and jaunty backing – or ‘The First Picture Of You’ by the Lotus Eaters – with its rangy bass, picked mesh of guitars, arty sleeve of a male nude – sound familiar to anyone who has listened to the Smiths.
To many of us at the time, our first encounter with the Smiths saw us file them under ‘miserable rainy Northern indie’. In fact, it took a few listens to ‘get’ them, to understand their music really was something precious.
What made them special? Firstly, there was the music’s incredible unsexiness, despite often being about sex or the lack of it. The songs are often bashingly bouncy but they are totally without the earthy quality of the pop music of that time or of this time. They don’t make you feel ‘up for it’. The band bucked the trend of the day-glo multicoloured world of the 80s: all synthesisers and videos of Bowiefied men disappearing in slow motion or pouting with their cheeks sucked in. The Smiths released albums and singles with sleeves of forgotten 60s actors, their photographs washed in dun, plum, taupe and umber. People have forgotten how funny that was.
Most pop music takes place in some unfathomably remote dream world of aspiration, or a drugged withdrawal from reality. But, as their name suggested, the Smiths were bread and butter, more Ena Sharples than Brian Eno.
Look at the chasm in January 1984 between Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s ‘Relax’ at number one in the charts and ‘What Difference Does It Make’ by the Smiths at number 12. The first is a pounding multi-platform extravaganza of acrobatic homoeroticism; the latter, the story of a thwarted confession of…something, conveyed in the language of the everyday. The lyrics took in school, jobs, money troubles, fumbles and messy approaches; the actual warp and weft of teenage life.
The reaction from many to this saying of the unsayable by the Smiths, their open self-pity and searing honesty, was embarrassment or laughter. It’s been strange in the years since their passing to read of how loved the Smiths supposedly were. Most people despised and rejected them, and their singles barely scraped the top ten. They were gone before many realised they were even there.
Much as it annoys people to acknowledge it, a lot of their uniqueness came from Morrissey. The rule-breaking sprawl of his vocal lines, the words nobody else would dare sing; take Morrissey out and some of the Smiths’ songs, the shining guitar riffs and the melodic and oddly funky bass of the late great Andy Rourke, would sound almost like Haircut 100 (not that there’s anything wrong with that). The musical brilliance of the other members didn’t translate in the same way afterwards. All of Morrissey’s solo songs sound like the Smiths; none of Johnny Marr’s do.
The disregard of the musical cognoscenti for Morrissey’s post-Smiths career has obvious motivations. Standing under the same umbrella as three ordinary-looking blokes made him more palatable. If they were ok with him, we could be. And we like groups – the relationships between the young members as they navigate their sudden success. We love to remember the first rush of a musical infatuation. Like a husband or a cat though, after a while they’re probably not going to surprise you any more. They’re just there on the chair, reminding you you’ve got old. Morrissey has made some of his best records much later on in his life, but they go unheralded – even, now, unreleased.
Which brings us to another of the caveats, what the Guardian calls ‘the singer’s current views’. Morrissey’s trenchant opinions during the lifetime of the Smiths (wishing death on Mrs Thatcher, supporting animal rights terrorists, etc) didn’t bother the music press, when these could be categorised as left wing. There is also a silly attitude to Morrissey’s character. His every song, right from day one, is about being strange and spiky and having awkward social interactions. Yet his critics delight in pointing out that he’s strange and spiky and has awkward social interactions, as if they’d uncovered a shocking hidden truth. You may as well splash the headline Rod Stewart dyes his hair.
Morrissey remains almost unique as an artist in the pop world, as his only means to communicate clearly and sincerely is in the poetic, lyrical mode. Everyone else seems to have forgotten that’s what we have the poetic, lyrical mode for.
For forty years, he has seemed like an interloper in the milieu of indie – the priggish students, the turgid music press and the Guardian. Of course, these people always get it so wrong. The Smiths were always too big, too exceptional, for that narrow little world.
www.spectator.co.uk
‘Over the past 40 years, you can see their aesthetic and spiritual influence in everyone from the Stone Roses to Oasis and the 1975,’ they tell us. If only! Those bands are derivative, certainly, but of the Smiths? Guitars and the North of England aside, it’s hard to imagine greater artistic gulfs. The comparison between the emotional open wound of the Smiths’ output with the 1975’s immaculately hollow, precision-tooled-for-Spotify tunes is laughably wide of the target. I strongly suspect you could remove the Smiths from history, and those bands – and pop music in general – would sound exactly the same.
There is also another repetition of the assertion – first made by John Peel and oddly never challenged – that the Smiths sounded like nothing else when they first appeared, and that everyone was knocked over by their originality. But this is not quite the case. Take a listen to the indie of the time just before the Smiths, and you’ll notice striking similarities with aspects of the band. Almost contemporaneous records, such as ‘Revolutionary Spirit’ by The Wild Swans – with its haughty vocal and jaunty backing – or ‘The First Picture Of You’ by the Lotus Eaters – with its rangy bass, picked mesh of guitars, arty sleeve of a male nude – sound familiar to anyone who has listened to the Smiths.
To many of us at the time, our first encounter with the Smiths saw us file them under ‘miserable rainy Northern indie’. In fact, it took a few listens to ‘get’ them, to understand their music really was something precious.
What made them special? Firstly, there was the music’s incredible unsexiness, despite often being about sex or the lack of it. The songs are often bashingly bouncy but they are totally without the earthy quality of the pop music of that time or of this time. They don’t make you feel ‘up for it’. The band bucked the trend of the day-glo multicoloured world of the 80s: all synthesisers and videos of Bowiefied men disappearing in slow motion or pouting with their cheeks sucked in. The Smiths released albums and singles with sleeves of forgotten 60s actors, their photographs washed in dun, plum, taupe and umber. People have forgotten how funny that was.
Most pop music takes place in some unfathomably remote dream world of aspiration, or a drugged withdrawal from reality. But, as their name suggested, the Smiths were bread and butter, more Ena Sharples than Brian Eno.
Look at the chasm in January 1984 between Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s ‘Relax’ at number one in the charts and ‘What Difference Does It Make’ by the Smiths at number 12. The first is a pounding multi-platform extravaganza of acrobatic homoeroticism; the latter, the story of a thwarted confession of…something, conveyed in the language of the everyday. The lyrics took in school, jobs, money troubles, fumbles and messy approaches; the actual warp and weft of teenage life.
The reaction from many to this saying of the unsayable by the Smiths, their open self-pity and searing honesty, was embarrassment or laughter. It’s been strange in the years since their passing to read of how loved the Smiths supposedly were. Most people despised and rejected them, and their singles barely scraped the top ten. They were gone before many realised they were even there.
Much as it annoys people to acknowledge it, a lot of their uniqueness came from Morrissey. The rule-breaking sprawl of his vocal lines, the words nobody else would dare sing; take Morrissey out and some of the Smiths’ songs, the shining guitar riffs and the melodic and oddly funky bass of the late great Andy Rourke, would sound almost like Haircut 100 (not that there’s anything wrong with that). The musical brilliance of the other members didn’t translate in the same way afterwards. All of Morrissey’s solo songs sound like the Smiths; none of Johnny Marr’s do.
The disregard of the musical cognoscenti for Morrissey’s post-Smiths career has obvious motivations. Standing under the same umbrella as three ordinary-looking blokes made him more palatable. If they were ok with him, we could be. And we like groups – the relationships between the young members as they navigate their sudden success. We love to remember the first rush of a musical infatuation. Like a husband or a cat though, after a while they’re probably not going to surprise you any more. They’re just there on the chair, reminding you you’ve got old. Morrissey has made some of his best records much later on in his life, but they go unheralded – even, now, unreleased.
Which brings us to another of the caveats, what the Guardian calls ‘the singer’s current views’. Morrissey’s trenchant opinions during the lifetime of the Smiths (wishing death on Mrs Thatcher, supporting animal rights terrorists, etc) didn’t bother the music press, when these could be categorised as left wing. There is also a silly attitude to Morrissey’s character. His every song, right from day one, is about being strange and spiky and having awkward social interactions. Yet his critics delight in pointing out that he’s strange and spiky and has awkward social interactions, as if they’d uncovered a shocking hidden truth. You may as well splash the headline Rod Stewart dyes his hair.
Morrissey remains almost unique as an artist in the pop world, as his only means to communicate clearly and sincerely is in the poetic, lyrical mode. Everyone else seems to have forgotten that’s what we have the poetic, lyrical mode for.
For forty years, he has seemed like an interloper in the milieu of indie – the priggish students, the turgid music press and the Guardian. Of course, these people always get it so wrong. The Smiths were always too big, too exceptional, for that narrow little world.
What the Smiths' critics don't get
It’s forty years since the Smiths released their first single ‘Hand In Glove’. We’ve already seen a slew of articles on the anniversary, and the clichés about this most singular, most wonderful pop group are doing their weary rounds yet again. The Guardian tells us that the Smiths are incredibly...
www.spectator.co.uk
