I proclaimed in this blog post that The Smiths were and still are the most important British band ever. What they achieved in just five years together is nothing short of exceptional.
They released 4 iconic studio albums: 'The Smiths', 'Meat Is Murder', 'The Queen Is Dead', and 'Strangeways, Here We Come'. Alongside these, they released 18 singles that remain some of the most influential in modern music. These tracks, in my opinion, rival any band's catalogue, including The Beatles’. Yes, even The Beatles! Just look at the sheer brilliance and diversity of the singles.
'Hand in Glove', 'This Charming Man', 'What Difference Does It Make?', 'Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now', 'William, It Was Really Nothing', 'How Soon Is Now?', 'Shakespeare's Sister', 'That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore', 'The Boy with the Thorn in His Side', 'Bigmouth Strikes Again', 'Panic', 'Ask', 'Shoplifters of the World Unite', 'Sheila Take a Bow', 'Girlfriend in a Coma', 'I Started Something I Couldn't Finish', 'Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me', 'There Is a Light That Never Goes Out'.
Quite the run, isn’t it? These songs aren’t just memorable; they’re milestones in the history of music. The Smiths’ singles captured the essence of youth, longing, and disillusionment, with both a sharp bite and a tender heart. They brought emotional depth and complexity to pop music, and their impact can still be felt today. Alongside these 18 singles, the band also released compilations such as 'Hatful of Hollow', 'Louder Than Bombs', and 'The World Won’t Listen', collections of B-sides, rare tracks, and live performances that are just as important as the studio albums.
It’s important to remember that The Smiths broke up at their peak. Their last studio album, 'Strangeways Here We Come', is regarded by all four members as their best, and it’s also the one they enjoyed making the most. It marked a period of musical maturity and creative expansion, with more layered production and intricate arrangements. It was an album that proved they were still evolving as artists, showcasing the depth of their collaboration and their ability to push musical boundaries. Imagine what could have been if they had continued to make music together.
With all that being said. Here are my Top 10 songs by The Smiths.
Perhaps the perfect song to summarise the fleeting career of Morrissey, Marr, Rourke and Joyce. A song from the band's final studio album, 'Strangeways Here We Come'. Released after the band had announced their split. It marked a fitting end.
'I Started Something I Couldn't Finish' began as part of a jam session played during the sessions for the band's single 'Sheila Take a Bow'. Marr recalled, "It was just a weird chord change that I had in my pocket for a while, and we needed a song, so I pulled that out, just trying to get the key changes to work. I mean, there was a lot of throwing stuff around with that album."
Inspired by glam, in particular, David Bowie. His track 'The Jean Genie' is a marked reference for the band when recording it.
Lyrically, as with many songs by The Smiths, the song is up for interpretation; some believe that Morrissey was writing about Marr. With lines like "I grabbed you by the guilded beams, Uh, that’s what tradition means / And now eighteen months’ hard labour seems… fair enough!” as though the frontman has put pressure on his faithful guitarist to come up with the goods, and it all turned out nice again in the end.
Others have commented, stating that the song is about a relationship between two men. One who knows that knows he is definitely a homosexual, and another who knows that they are not. Only Morrissey and Marr know what the song is really about.
The song saw positive critical reception upon its release. Reviewing Strangeways, Here We Come in 1987, the NME called it "a classic pop song that seems to echo, believe it or not, the treasured oeuvre of T. Rex, Mud, and the Glitter Band!"
The last song ever released by The Smiths. Released in December 1987, the band had already broken up on release. The music for the song began with Johnny Marr's guitar riff. "It's built around the guitar riff going round and round, the heart of it is the guitar riff, but I orchestrated it using a keyboard and string sound. What I love about it is the drama in it – the drama sums up how I was feeling at the time. That song got written because at the core of it is a very melancholic and dramatic guitar riff that goes round and round and round. And first and foremost, amongst other particularly melancholic things in the Smiths, I hear myself in that. There's a side of myself, an introspective side, and probably a melancholic side, that comes out because I'm a musician. Then I just blew that up musically with a superb performance by the rest of the group, and great composition by Morrissey." Marr explained.
However, it is the piano intro that many know the song for. The album version of the song opens with a one-minute and 55-second introduction, consisting of piano playing against a backdrop of crowd noises from the miners' strike of 1984–85.
It's the most grand Smiths song, a 5 and a half minute epic. That showcases just how musically gifted The Smiths were.
Lyrically, the song tackles loneliness in its most candid form. With hauntingly simple lyrics.
"Last night I dreamt
That somebody loved me
No hope, no harm
Just another false alarm"
Both Morrissey and Johnny Marr, the co-writers, have nominated it as the best Smiths song. Marr has called the song "the best thing we'd done" and "my favourite track at the time and probably still is."
In a 1993 interview, Marr commented, "Strangeways has its moments, like 'Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me'. Last time I met Morrissey, he said it was his favourite Smiths song. He might be right."
It only makes Number Nine on my list, though.
I remember being about 14 or 15, sitting in a history lesson at school, when my teacher mentioned The Smiths to another student. She brought up this particular song, and for some reason, it’s always stayed with me.
Part of what makes the song unforgettable is Morrissey’s sharp, quick-witted lyrics:
"But last night, the plans for a future war
That was all I saw on Channel Four."
"Six months is a long time
I tried living in the real world
Instead of a shell
But before I began
I was bored before I even began."
Equally memorable is Johnny Marr’s guitar work. His solo here is one of his finest—layered, harmonised, and unlike anything else in The Smiths’ catalogue. It also marked the first time Marr took on production duties for the band, adding another layer of significance to ‘Shoplifters of the World Unite’.
In a 1987 interview with Shaun Duggan, Morrissey explained the song’s meaning:
“[It does] not literally mean picking up a loaf of bread or a watch and sticking it in your coat pocket. It's more or less spiritual shoplifting, cultural shoplifting, taking things and using them to your own advantage.”
The track was a commercial success, reaching number twelve in the UK, and has since appeared on compilation albums including ‘The World Won’t Listen’ and ‘Louder Than Bombs’. Over time, it has received widespread critical acclaim, with Morrissey himself naming it as one of his personal favourites.
The Smiths performed this song in concert only once, during their last gig in December 1986 at Brixton Academy, London (just before the release of the song as a single) It was also played live on the British music programme The Tube on 10 April 1987 (alongside previous single "Sheila Take a Bow") in the band's final live performance ever.
The first Smiths song recorded as a five-piece, featuring new guitarist Craig Gannon. 'Panic' was written in response to the contemporary pop music of the time, with Morrissey bemoaning what was being played on the radio. Exhorting listeners to "burn down the disco" and "hang the DJ" in retaliation.
Morrissey considered the song's appearance on daytime British radio a "tiny revolution" in its own way, as it aired amongst the very music it criticised. In a controversial interview with Melody Maker about the song's subject matter, Morrissey was perceived as racist due to his comments. The Smiths strongly denied the allegations of racism, and they said that Morrissey was misquoted.
One thing in later years that has come out about the song, in particular through this video, is that the song was more than just a dig at the music of the time. It was instead about Jimmy Savile and his crimes.
In particular, the lines "the Leeds side streets that you slip down” and “provincial towns you jog ‘round”
"Hopes may rise on the Grasmere
But honey pie, you're not safe here"
It's a plausible meaning; Morrissey had already written a song about the Moors Murders. Marr has instead said that the song was written in response to an incident where the BBC DJ, Steve Wright, played the trite and spunky Wham! Track, "I'm Your Man," following a news report about the Chernobyl disaster – a devastating nuclear accident that occurred on April 26, 1986, at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. Guitarist Johnny Marr recalled to NME in 1987: "'Panic' came about at the time of Chernobyl. Morrissey and I were listening to a radio report about it. The stories of this shocking disaster come to an end, and then immediately we're off into Wham's 'I'm Your Man.' I remember actually saying, 'What the f*ck has this got to do with people's lives?' And so, 'Hang the blessed DJ.' I think it was a great lyric, important and applicable to anyone who lives in England."
Whatever it's about, it's one of the band's most menacing songs, and one of the very best songs of the 1980s
The debut single by The Smiths was a real statement of intent that, at the time, was not really a commercial hit. It was released in May 1983 on the independent record label Rough Trade. It peaked at No. 3 on the UK Indie Chart but did not make the top 75 of the UK Singles Chart, settling outside at No. 124.
Written by Morrissey and Marr in January 1983, after just eight months of working together. The pair of them had written a few songs before this, and even produced a couple of demo tapes, which had led them to be rejected by both Factory Records and EMI.
Their usual composition method was for Marr to add music to Morrissey's lyrics. However, 'Hand in Glove' was different; Marr had the music first - he developed the chords on an acoustic guitar while at his parents' house. Unable to record the music there, Marr's girlfriend Angie drove him to Morrissey's house while he continued to strum the guitar, altering it with suggestions from Angie.
At Morrissey's house, the tune was recorded on a cassette tape. Morrissey said that he wrote the lyrics for it in the span of two hours.
The Smiths asked their manager, Joe Moss, to fund the recording of 'Hand in Glove'. In late February, the group booked a one-day recording session at Strawberry Studios in Stockport at the cost of £250, which they produced themselves. Morrissey claimed in later years that he was dissatisfied with his vocals and returned a week later to re-record his part, the day after which the entire group travelled to London and convinced Rough Trade owner Geoff Travis to release the record.
"It should have been a massive hit", Morrissey later said, "it was so urgent. To me, it was a complete cry in every direction. It really was a landmark." The single did raise the band's profile; a week after its release, the band gained their first major live reviews in the music press, which in turn led to their first radio session with BBC Radio 1 disc jockey John Peel.
It was the song that kicked it all off for The Smiths. It simply had to make the list.
The title track from The Smiths’ third studio album, ‘The Queen Is Dead’ (1986), stands as one of the band’s boldest and most uncompromising statements. Written by Morrissey and Johnny Marr, the song features fiercely anti-monarchist lyrics that provoked significant controversy in the UK music press at the time, cementing Morrissey’s reputation as a provocateur unafraid to attack sacred institutions. Its black humour, biting satire, and furious delivery positioned it as both a protest anthem and a piece of cultural iconoclasm.
Musically, the track grew out of extended improvisation and experimentation in the studio. Marr, along with bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce, built the foundations of the song through relentless jamming, using emerging studio technology to enhance their performances. The result is a relentless, surging track driven by distorted guitars, pounding drums, and an almost hypnotic bassline that locks everything into place.
Rourke himself reflected on the song’s creation: “Sometimes you can go into the studio and you can play for a whole day and nothing will happen. That day, magic happened, and we came up with this amazing song that became the theme of the whole album.” His contribution has often been highlighted by Marr, who described Rourke’s playing as central to the song’s power. Upon Rourke’s death in 2023, Marr paid tribute, saying: “Watching him play bass on the song ‘The Queen Is Dead’ was so impressive that I said to myself, ‘I’ll never forget this moment.’”
Mike Joyce’s drumming is another crucial yet sometimes underappreciated element. His performance adds drive, texture, and shifting dynamics, creating layers that carry the song from explosive aggression to almost cinematic expansiveness. The interplay between Joyce’s rhythms and Rourke’s bass anchored Marr’s guitar experiments and Morrissey’s lyrical assault, resulting in a track that many critics now consider one of The Smiths’ definitive artistic peaks.
Lyrically, the song explores Morrissey's antipathy for the monarchy, an institution he has since described as an "unequal and inequitable social system". Morrissey additionally makes camp references to the double meaning of queen: as he noted in the press, "There's a safety net in the song that the 'old queen' is me". The song also draws lyrical inspiration from the incident when Michael Fagan trespassed in Buckingham Palace and encountered Queen Elizabeth II. According to author Tony Fletcher, the lyric "When you're tied to your mother's apron, no one talks about castration" was a reference to Morrissey's close relationship with his mother when growing up.
Per Morrissey's request, the song begins with a snippet of 'Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty', sung by actress Cicely Courtneidge in the 1962 film The L-Shaped Room. At the suggestion of Street, about a minute of the song's jam was cut from the final recording. Originally, the band had planned for the song to fade out.
"The Queen Is Dead" has seen critical acclaim since its release. Spin called the track "exciting" and acknowledged, "You gotta admire a guy who can rhyme 'rusty spanner' with 'play pianner'." Mark Coleman of Rolling Stone praised the song for "parodying media fascination with the royal family over bombastic guitar bursts and an aggressive bass line".
Stewart Mason lauded Morrissey's lyrics as "both savage and hilarious" and named the song "one of the band's masterpieces" Rolling Stone ranked the song as the seventh-best Smiths song, writing, "By the time the Smiths are finished beating up on 'The Queen Is Dead', England is theirs".
It's exceptional.
This song summarises what The Smiths are about; it's melancholic, melodic, and truly beautiful. Every member of the band has their moment in the sun. With some beautifully delivered lyrics, where Morrissey sings about not having a home, but generations of fans have found some kind of home in this song. It’s all here – the passion, the pain, the pleasure, the privilege, the double-decker bus, the victory of love over death (even the clumsiest, most painful fumbling-in-the-underpass kind of love). It’s bitterly comic, yet life-affirming and wildly romantic, with Johnny Marr overdubbing himself into a one-man orchestra of guitars and synthesised strings. The whole song is a mix tape of perfect moments, like that softly moaned “ooooh” into the final chorus. It’s their most beloved standard – Andy Rourke once called it “the indie ‘Candle in the Wind.'”
More than just being a song for the millions of lost indie kids, it remains even today a tribute to the two writers and their friendship. Two friends who had met just four years before, when Marr knocked on the door of 384 Kings Road, Stretford, Manchester. Morrissey would invite him inside, nd the two sat down to listen to music, talking endlessly about pop culture and their shared musical tastes. Though they seemed so different in character, their discussions revealed that they had strikingly similar views on what music should be an outlet for rebellion, individuality, and expression. This meeting was the spark that ignited one of Britain’s most important and prolific songwriting partnerships. A pair who defined indie music in Britain, who became bastions of a genre, heroes to a generation.
When this song was released, that friendship and the band had only a year left to run, sadly. But like all the great music the Smiths left behind, this song is a light that never goes out and never will.
Although ‘Hand in Glove’ was the band’s debut single, it was with ‘This Charming Man’ that The Smiths made their first real impact on British youth culture, especially after their now-legendary performance on Top of the Pops. Broadcast across the nation, the appearance sent a shockwave through Britain. Audiences had simply never seen anything like The Smiths before.
Morrissey bounded onto the stage brandishing a bunch of gladioli, swinging the flowers with theatrical flourish, while Johnny Marr, Andy Rourke, and Mike Joyce stood behind him, sharp, focused, and powerful. Morrissey may have dominated the spotlight with his eccentric charisma, but the entire performance etched The Smiths into the imagination of a generation and marked a turning point in British popular music.
The performance reshaped more than music; it influenced the way young people spoke, the books they read, the art they embraced, and, above all, the band they now adored.
Reflecting on the moment in a 2011 piece for The Guardian, Marr recalled: “At the time, there’d been this question of whether it was cool to go on Top of the Pops.” The show had lost some of its relevance during the punk era, when miming to the establishment seemed outdated. “[It was] probably from the Clash refusing to do it. But we were a new generation, and it felt like there were new rules,” Marr explained.
Musically, the song is defined by Marr’s sparkling, jangly guitar riff, one of his most iconic and by Morrissey’s unmistakably arch and melancholic lyricism. The narrative follows a male protagonist whose bicycle tyre bursts on a lonely hillside. He encounters a suave stranger in a luxury car who offers him a lift. The hesitant rider deliberates, then accepts, leading to flirtation tinged with awkward vulnerability. “I would go out tonight, but I haven’t got a stitch to wear,” the narrator laments, to which the driver replies: “It’s gruesome that someone so handsome should care.”
Morrissey later explained his intentions: “I really like the idea of the male voice being quite vulnerable, of it being taken and slightly manipulated, rather than there being always this heavy machismo thing that just bores everybody.”
That vulnerability, paired with the playful yet ambiguous homoerotic undertones, gave ‘This Charming Man’ its unique power. At a time when British pop was dominated by the brash confidence of new wave and the polished gloss of synth-pop, The Smiths offered something strikingly different: literary lyrics, oblique humour, and a subversion of gender norms. The ambiguity of the protagonist’s relationship with the “charming man” was groundbreaking for 1983, resonating with listeners who saw themselves reflected in the song’s coded exploration of identity, sexuality, and attraction.
Johnny Marr’s guitar line, meanwhile, became a blueprint for the jangly indie-pop sound that would influence a generation of bands from the UK’s C86 scene to later Britpop acts. His guitar work on not just this song but throughout The Smiths' whole career cannot be understated. The word genius is thrown around a lot; Marr is comfortably a genius. One of Britain's best guitar players.
In 2004, a BBC Radio 2 retrospective noted that ‘This Charming Man’ was the first encounter most people had with The Smiths, introducing them to “the weird, wordy world of Morrissey and the music of Johnny Marr.” Uncut magazine, reflecting on the televised debut, wrote: “Thursday evening when Manchester’s feyest first appeared on Top of the Pops would be an unexpected pivotal cultural event in the lives of a million serious English boys. His very English, camp glumness was a revolt into Sixties kitchen-sink greyness against the gaudiness of the Eighties new wave music.”
Noel Gallagher also remembered the seismic impact of the performance: “None of my mates liked them; they were more hooligan types. They came into work and said, ‘Fuckin’ hell, did you see that poof on Top of the Pops with the bush in his back pocket?’ But I thought it was life-changing.”
The Smiths’ third single, ‘What Difference Does It Make?’, became their first significant chart success, peaking at number twelve on the UK Singles Chart in early 1984. Opening with Johnny Marr’s repetitive, slightly sinister riff and Morrissey’s dramatic opening line “All men have secrets and here is mine, so let it be known…” the track immediately struck listeners as something both important and transgressive. It sounded different, alternative, and even taboo, a quality that set The Smiths apart from the mainstream pop landscape of the time.
Lyrically, the song contains some of Morrissey’s most memorable couplets, addressing themes of guilt, temptation, and religious morality. The verse,
“The devil will find work for idle hands to do
I stole and I lied, and why?
Because you asked me to”
sets a confessional tone, laced with biblical imagery and a sense of moral reckoning. Elsewhere, Morrissey juxtaposes this with declarations of intense, almost reckless devotion.
“All men have secrets, and here is mine,
So let it be known,
For we have been through hell and high water,
I think I can rely on you.
And yet you start to recoil,
Heavy words are so lightly thrown,
But still I’d leap in front of a flying bullet for you.”
This tension between sin, sacrifice, and unbridled love gives the song a dramatic edge that resonated strongly with listeners, securing it as a fan favourite and a staple of early Smiths’ live sets.
Ironically, despite its popularity and commercial breakthrough, ‘What Difference Does It Make?’ has long been dismissed by the band themselves. Morrissey has repeatedly expressed disdain for the track, singling out its rock-influenced sound and what he considered clichéd lyrics, once remarking that he regretted the song “the day after the record was pressed.” Marr echoed this ambivalence, later reflecting: “It was all right. I didn’t think it was a particularly strong one. […] There was one stage where I was playing ‘What Difference Does It Make?’ seven or eight gigs on the trot, and I didn’t like the feeling. I knew that this was not why I had got involved in a band in the first place.”
In hindsight, while the band may have regarded the single with cynicism, its significance is undeniable. It provided The Smiths with their first taste of mainstream recognition and introduced their blend of jangling guitars, provocative lyricism, and emotional intensity to a wider audience. For many fans, it remains one of the quintessential early Smiths tracks charged with drama, defiance, and a sense of forbidden intimacy.
I really like this song; it's one of the highlights of the debut album, and the beginning of The Smiths ' sound that fans grew to know and love.
Quite possibly the funniest thing that The Smiths ever put on record, released as the lead single from what many believe is the band's best album 1986s, 'The Queen is Dead'.
Written by Johnny Marr and Morrissey, the song features self-deprecating lyrics that reflected Morrissey's frustrations with the music industry at the time. Musically, the song was inspired by the Rolling Stones' 'Jumpin' Jack Flash' and centres around a guitar riff that Marr wrote during a 1985 soundcheck.
Morrissey was writing a lot about his thoughts on the music industry 'Bigmouth Strikes Again' was his third effort, with the two previous being 'The Boy with the Thorn in His Side' and 'Rubber Ring'. 'Bigmouth' tackles the frontman's negative experience with the music press. When asked by the NME about the song, Morrissey replied, "I can't think of one sentence [I regret saying]. We're still at that stage where if I rescued a kitten from drowning, they'd say: 'Morrissey Mauls Kitten's Body'. So what can you do?"
Morrissey intended the lyrics of the song to be humorous; he explained, "I would call it a parody if that sounded less like self-celebration, which it definitely wasn't. It was just a really funny song". Drummer Mike Joyce commented, "What a fantastic title – one of Mozzer's better ones. And with this song, you can see why he made journalists cream their pants. Listen to the lyrical content. He was a one-off.
Johnny Marr based the song's music on a guitar riff he had written during a soundcheck of the band's 1985 tour. Marr later claimed that he had been inspired by the Rolling Stones' "Jumpin' Jack Flash", stating, "I wanted something that was a rush all the way through, without a distinct middle eight as such. I thought the guitar breaks should be percussive, not too pretty or cordial". Marr described the song as being "as close as getting to the sound of my heroes as we came"
Initially,y the band had asked Kirsty MacColl to contribute backing vocals, but Marr found her harmonies "really weird" and they were left off the final recording. Instead, the backing vocals were recorded by Morrissey and altered to a higher pitch. This is credited to "Ann Coates", a reference to the Manchester district of Ancoats.
The song that spawned a million Morrissey headlines; the eternal anthem of the mouthy teenager, its Stonesy rhythm absolutely assured and the lyrics resolutely weird. It’s the work of a band who, by 1986, had magically bent the zeitgeist to their singular will. It's also the song that kicked off their peak year, 1986 was The Smiths, just as 1977 was David Bowie's, and 1995 was Noel Gallagher's and Jarvis Cocker's.
When I've done my other Top 10, a final decision on which song is top of the tree can sometimes prove difficult, not with The Smiths, though. This is one of the easiest picks I'll ever have.
'How Soon is Now' stands out for its sonic ambition and philosophical depth. It’s a track that has not only transcended its time but has also cemented itself as one of the defining songs of that era, and one of the band's most important releases. First released as the B-side to the single "William, It Was Really Nothing" before later being featured on the compilation album 'Hatful of Hollow'. From the very first note, Johnny Marr’s hypnotic, oscillating guitar riff creates a soundscape that’s otherworldly and deeply haunting. Marr produced a sound that was lightyears ahead of its time. This riff, now iconic, seems to pulse and shimmer, evoking a sense of mystery and isolation that perfectly complements Morrissey’s introspective lyrics.
The song still sounds futuristic all of these years later. It stretched beyond the confines of post-punk and indie, dabbling in a psychedelic, almost cinematic soundscape that would later influence countless bands in the shoegaze, goth, and Britpop movements.
Lyrically, the song tackles loneliness and aching to belong, trying to find a connection where you feel constantly on the fringes. Morrissey’s lyrics capture a deep sense of alienation and longing: “I am human, and I need to be loved / Just like everybody else does.” It’s one of his most direct and painfully honest lines.
It’s a raw depiction of loneliness, of the awkwardness that so many feel but rarely articulate. “I am the son and the heir / Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar.”
While the words are simple, they hit hard, resonating with anyone who’s ever felt invisible in a crowd or struggled to connect.
An anthem for the introverts, that engulfs the listener. With hypnotic guitars and beautiful yet brutal lyrics. It's an expansive song that feels huge when listening.
Today, 'How Soon Is Now?' is widely regarded as one of The Smiths’ most important songs, not only for its sonic innovation but for its emotional depth. Its themes of alienation, longing, and the desire to belong have made it a touchstone for anyone who’s ever felt lost in a world that doesn’t quite make sense. While The Smiths are known for their biting social commentary and witty lyrics, this track cuts straight to the heart of human vulnerability.
The juddering, swampy atmospherics of Marr’s guitar soundscapes and Morrissey’s gold standard lyrics of loneliness created a dark nightclub of the soul from which the singer dejectedly walked home alone. The greatest songwriting duo since Lennon and McCartney
Providing a snapshot into the thoughts and feelings of the misfits, introverts and those who feel out of place. Giving them a sense of hope and belief that there is someone for them out there. You are not alone.
Quite simply the best b-side ever, the best song by the most important British band of all time, and if push comes to shove, the greatest song of the 1980s.
Dedicated to indie kids everywhere.
Thank you so much for reading.
Jack