What's your favorite Smiths album and what's your least favorite and why

My favorite is Louder Than Bombs. Technically it's not an album but it was released during their lifetime and doesn't have songs that are on any other LPs so to me it counts.

The reasons why are many...

a) the economic aspect. So many tracks. And they're all great.

b) the fact that it was recorded over four years' time but sounds like it was recorded in an afternoon is outstanding. I truly do not think that any other band could pull that off. And I do not think that it's because all of the Smiths' music sounds the same; because there are significant differences in production and feel from record to record. I just that think that somehow for some reason, all of the songs on LTB came together in such a way as to sound sonically threaded.

c) it contains so many classics: Shoplifters, Half a Person, Panic, Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want, Ask, Rubber Ring, Asleep, Shakespeare's Sister, Stretch Out and Wait, William It Was Really Nothing....to me these are unmissable Smiths tracks. And they're all on here.

d) it provides testimony to how powerful they were inasmuch as it is an album made up of b-sides and Non-LP singles and nearly every song kicks the living shit out of the best work of their peers. Including R.E.M., who as a band over all, regarding their 80s output, I actually like more than The Smiths these days.


My least favorite would be the debut.

a) I feel like Morrissey hadn't really found his footing lyrically; the words were good but too poetic and at times too aloof.

b) Good, occasionally great songs (Suffer Little Children, Hand In Glove, Reel Around The Fountain, Miserable Lie, The Hand That Rocks The Cradle) ruined by flat, weak production. The Troy Tate treatments were so much stronger and more dynamic.

OK, that's it.
 
Re: What's your favorite Smiths album and what's your least favorite and why.

not dumb, just been done before a time or 2 here :o

Not for a long time, though.

Sometimes I get tired of the shit talking and negativity.

But then I remember that the reason the shit talking and negativity exists is because there is so much shit to be talked, and so much negativity between humans.

But by then like Onan I've already cast my seed to the earth, fruitless, pointless, and dumb, in an attempt to assuage.

And like Onan I'm not even real, and it doesn't really matter.
 
Re: What's your favorite Smiths album and what's your least favorite and why.

Hatful of Hallow (if we are allowing compilations) or if we are going strictly by studio albums than Meat is Murder.

I don't have a least favorite--they are all great. But The Smiths is certainly the album I listen to the least--it's not because the songs are bad, I just can't get over the production--which is I think why I love Hatful so much. Still I would never say The Smiths is bad and whenever I do listen to it I always wonder why I don't listen to it more often. But I suppose that is true with all of their albums.
 
Re: What's your favorite Smiths album and what's your least favorite and why.

Not for a long time, though.

Sometimes I get tired of the shit talking and negativity.

But then I remember that the reason the shit talking and negativity exists is because there is so much shit to be talked, and so much negativity between humans.

But by then like Onan I've already cast my seed to the earth, fruitless, pointless, and dumb, in an attempt to assuage.

And like Onan I'm not even real, and it doesn't really matter.
oh, OK, also, I did not have much to add since I too would pick "LTB" as my fave if we are counting comps
and while I love all the albums to some degree, "Meat Is Murder" is the one whose tracks I play the least, with the exception of
That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore :guitar:
 
Re: What's your favorite Smiths album and what's your least favorite and why.

Louder Than Bombs, then Rank! and then in the original records I would pick The Smiths, today. My least favorite is Meat Is Murder. It's still great, though. I think the versions on Rank! of the Meat is Murder songs are far superior.
 
Re: What's your favorite Smiths album and what's your least favorite and why.

I agree with Skylarker on all the points on Louder Than Bombs. It is the best Smiths album.

Least is Meat Is Murder. I think it's the production. They all sound better played on bootlegs and RANK. The title song "Meat Is Murder" sounds very flat on the album and additional instruments don't add anything. "I Want The One I Can't Have" sounds very dull too on the record, but on bootlegs it has that extra punch that makes it very catchy, but somehow it's not a catchy song on the album. "What She Said" is actually quite a weak song with a bit of a naff ending and I understand why they decided to add the "Rubber Ring" ending live as it gives the ending a powerful end. "Barbarism" sounds very flat compared to bootlegs also and it's definitely a live track. Maybe it's the song listing too? Perhaps I should change it up?
 
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Re: What's your favorite Smiths album and what's your least favorite and why.

Favorite is Hatful of Hollow - it just encapsulates the intensity and energy and total commitment of their early period.

Least favorite, and by a very wide margin, is Strangeways - for the lack of exactly the same things.
 
Re: What's your favorite Smiths album and what's your least favorite and why.

My favorite is Louder Than Bombs. Technically it's not an album but it was released during their lifetime and doesn't have songs that are on any other LPs so to me it counts.

Not that I mind, but it actually has only four songs on it that aren't on any other LPs. Being predated by both Hatful of Hollow and The World won't listen. When it came out, it was just a compilation of already familiar material, it didn't add anything. You just bought it for the four extra songs (well, three - the fourth was Golden Lights). It was not at all like that with HoH or TWWL, which contained more than enough new material (or quite different versions of old material) to come across as essentially new albums. But this is timing and sequence and individual circumstance playing into it of course.

Interesting point that you think it shows a unity between the old and the newer material. I always kind of thought the opposite. Maybe I'll give it a spin one of these days, it's been a long time since I listened to those songs in that sequence.
 
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Re: What's your favorite Smiths album and what's your least favorite and why.

Not that I mind, but it actually has only four songs on it that aren't on any other LPs. Being predated by both Hatful of Hollow and The World won't listen. When it came out, it was just a compilation of already familiar material, it didn't add anything. You just bought it for the four extra songs (well, three - the fourth was Golden Lights). It was not at all like that with HoH or TWWL, which contained more than enough new material (or quite different versions of old material) to come across as essentially new albums. But this is timing and sequence and individual circumstance playing into it of course.

Interesting point that you think it shows a unity between the old and the newer material. I always kind of thought the opposite. Maybe I'll give it a spin one of these days, it's been a long time since I listened to those songs in that sequence.
shit, Qvistie makes some good points, especially since "Hatful of Hollow" was the first Smiths cassette I got :o
but I only took a couple of cassettes with me to the Persian Gulf so long ago and one that got played to death was
mc_zpse934cf19.jpg

its etched in my memory, sometimes I still expect to hear songs in the order from it, even though I don't listen to them that way anymore :eek:
so yeah, I'm out now, can't choose :confused: not that anyone cares :rolleyes:
 
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Re: What's your favorite Smiths album and what's your least favorite and why.

Not that I mind, but it actually has only four songs on it that aren't on any other LPs. Being predated by both Hatful of Hollow and The World won't listen. When it came out, it was just a compilation of already familiar material, it didn't add anything. You just bought it for the four extra songs (well, three - the fourth was Golden Lights). It was not at all like that with HoH or TWWL, which contained more than enough new material (or quite different versions of old material) to come across as essentially new albums. But this is timing and sequence and individual circumstance playing into it of course.

Interesting point that you think it shows a unity between the old and the newer material. I always kind of thought the opposite. Maybe I'll give it a spin one of these days, it's been a long time since I listened to those songs in that sequence.

Hatful of Hallow and the World Won't Listen had not been released in the US at the time when Louder than the Bombs was released and Louder than the Bombs was originally not supposed to have been released in the UK.
 
Re: What's your favorite Smiths album and what's your least favorite and why.

Faves:

Compilation - Louder Than Bombs
Studio - Strangeways, Here We Come

Meat is Murder would be my fave if I could get rid of the song, MiM. I skip that song whenever I listen to the album. When I first heard it it sounded profound and original and moving. Now it is old and preachy and lame.

Least Fave:


The Smiths. Listen to that one rarely.
 
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Re: What's your favorite Smiths album and what's your least favorite and why.

The Smiths is my least fave, it just reminds me of rainy endless days, and always being bored, before I has a job and I'd always listen to it. It's definitely the most depressing and sad album they've had. Songs like Suffer Little Children and Miserable Lie, Hand That Rocks The Cradle etc I hardly ever listen to. They're just too dark for me now and don't do much for me. I think as Smiths albums went on they became more dry, witty and really vivid and funny.

Favourite album probably Queen Is Dead, I remember going to Manchester when I was 15 and getting it from HMV I bought that and A Queen Is Dead T shirt, I remember the guy behind the till was this cool black rasta guy with big dreadlocks. He said "oh I see you like Morrissey" in a strong Mancunian accent "oh yeah I love him" I said "ahh that's cool man, Morrissey's cool" he said. Had a great day.

But yeah also reminds me of listening to it during a warm breezy summer. I think the lyrics are just exceptional too, painfully sad and desperate but always with a strong sense of humour peppered in. Paired with Johnnys guitars it just made the album perfect for me it was like being in a hazy jangly summer whirlwind.
 
Re: What's your favorite Smiths album and what's your least favorite and why.

Hatful of Hallow and the World Won't Listen had not been released in the US at the time when Louder than the Bombs was released and Louder than the Bombs was originally not supposed to have been released in the UK.

Ha, great - another layer of complication in the eternal issue of what counts as a Smiths album. :)
 
Re: What's your favorite Smiths album and what's your least favorite and why.

Not that I mind, but it actually has only four songs on it that aren't on any other LPs.

I understand but I was speaking from the point of view of the American domestic market circa late 80s, even early 90s, which is when I got involved, so that viewpoint got cemented. Admittedly it's subjective.
 
Re: What's your favorite Smiths album and what's your least favorite and why.

Louder Than Bombs

I prefer Rank over Meat is Murder. Whenever I listen to either, I also always skip MiM.
 
Re: What's your favorite Smiths album and what's your least favorite and why.

Favorite: The Smiths

Lease Favorite for one stupid reason: The Queen is Dead.

The reason is I think Never Had No One Ever and Last Night I Dreamt sound two similar and shouldn't have been put next to each other. The album is still brilliant.
 
Re: What's your favorite Smiths album and what's your least favorite and why.

Favorite: The Smiths

Lease Favorite for one stupid reason: The Queen is Dead.

The reason is I think Never Had No One Ever and Last Night I Dreamt sound two similar and shouldn't have been put next to each other. The album is still brilliant.

Do you mean I Know It's Over?

Last Night I Dreamt was off Stangeways.
 
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