Shahid Mahdi

Writing II
Professor T. Tomlinson
15/4/14

There Is A Light It Never Goes Out

The work tries to examine The Smiths through both an academically intensive lens, though the ultimate
triumph is to magnify the scope of the band with slight regards to the evergreen dynamism and
dithyrambic energy of the 1980s in the U.K.
Magazine articles from publications that cease to exist, including Jamming!, The Face, alongside
ones that continue to lead the musically angled journalism industry, like NME and the Guardians
music writers, give a hearth of admirable kudos to antecedent punk bands; everyone from Joy Division to
the Libertines. Credit is due to journalists like Nick Kent, whose articles significantly raised the profile of
the college-airwave surfing group and catalysed the objectification of The Smiths as being a fanciful
subject for all to write about. Danny Kellys Gathering The Thoughts of Chairman Mo and other
interviews with the enigmatic frontman began to underscore him as being worthy of enshrinement into the
bait-for-newspapers hall of fame.
As for sonic matters, the essays found in the anthology Why Pamper Lifes Complexities: Essays on
The Smiths served as an extremely useful guide, as, topic by topic, it assisted in overcoming some
substantial hurdles that I was conceptually aware of but concretely lacking evidence in. Themes like
religious devotion, suicide, romantic contemplation, and, significantly, the desolate bleak backdrop of a
hardly opportune yet increasingly colorful world that The Smiths were out to illuminate are abound. The
documentary The Rise and Fall Of The Smiths was also pivotal as it compressed a variety of opinions
to further reinforce points made in the paper, and provided panoramic images of Manchester to bulwark
against any notion of luxury at the time.
The paper aims to explore the effect of The Smiths through three of their songs in a specific manner,
and on a more macro-societal note, seeks to tie in the cultural zeitgeist of the time to the British bands
masterful and popular unorthodoxy as being a pioneer in alternative music with all their eccentricities,
from their darkly comical lyrics, masterful melodic guitar work, and contrarian views.

***
The whirring undercurrents of cultural energy that stirred in a key ten years for the U.K. knew

ang! A History Of Britain in the 1980s,

no boundaries. Andy Beckett, reviewing the crucial B

writes that Britain changed more in the 80s than in any recent decade...all [the events] made

the decade feel like a hinge of our modern history.1 It manifested itself in the eclecticism of a

new, coiffed generation populating the rosy, narrow streets of Londons Leicester Square. The

dominance of footballing culture as the Premiership - known then as the First Division - was

beginning to leave its outstretched palm on the world. Thatchers acerbic wit pierced through

any opposition, as it did through the luck of angry miners. Mills and factories were demolished

to the ground as the creation of council estates for the poor proliferated; their Soviet-style gaudy

faades forming a shadow of the polarity that was to loom. Amidst it all, dreamers: a mystical

nightlife that invigorated the tired youth.

The bleak, red brick streets and parks were at once erased by the sweat-drenched,

water-bottle passing, misty dark clubs like the Heebie Jeebies in Liverpool, Londons Camden

Roundhouse, or Manchesters infamous Satans Hollow. The atmosphere was ripe for a new

phenomenon, a rallying call to the anti-establishment frustration that bubbled in Britains now

multicolored petri dish. And so, just as the Greeks believe that the Earth was formed from an

undefined Chaos, Mike Joyce, Craig Gannon, Johnny Marr, Andy Rourke, and Steven Patrick

Morrissey emerged as The Smiths in 1982. Though their rollicking music and the controversy

it generated, the repercussions of these young Manchester-ites last long beyond the five years

they were together. The Smiths legacy builds the foundation for alternative rock to take the

1
The wealth of material that was accessible in the present day begs the question: At what point does a
particular epoch become eligible to be culturally and academically pored over? An accomplice, writing a
paper on the nature of hip hop and its fan implications, was most displeased by the lack of true scholarly
material produced. For true shrewd material must one always consult extremely thorough material? Or
does journalistic commentary qualify?
spotlight. The lyrical prowess, sonic versatility, and cultural imprint the band left as a celebrated

force remains unparalleled.

Why do we call ourselves The Smiths? Johnny Marr swiftly turned to Morrissey. The

frontman, with no hesitancy whatsoever, replied: I decided it was the most ordinary name and

its time the ordinary folk of the world showed their faces.2 The immediacy of The Smiths

inception is derived from its ordinary autonomy. Morrissey, ever the young strapping chiselled

contrarian, and his hairy guitar-stroking counterpart, Marr: a shrewd, shamanistic master of the

six strings who had plied his trade in a number of pre-Madchester bands flocking around the

scene. Thus, the sound of the emboldened Smiths had some expertise behind it. Nick Kent,

writing in a 1985 issue of The Face, finds that the rollicking guitar riffs as well as the

audaciously crooned insights of Morrissey drew upon the distraught cadavers of the British

invasion and chose not to be engulfed in any sort of hair-metal based, box-office-based,

radio-cuddling world consisting of solos and choruses that are all too easy to latch onto. The

Smiths, Kent wrote amidst the blazing trajectory of bands from Aldershot to Stornoway across

the country, had gathered all that was inherently noble about a rich verdant age and applied

these characteristics to the morose and desperate present.

Indeed, the sound of The Smiths self-titled debut album resembles the finished edifice of

rocks blueprint. Tunes like What Difference Does It Make and Reel Around The Fountain

are melodic journeys that pushed the envelope and challenged any incumbent convention. The

flower-waving, egoistic band seemed less like a unitary musical force and more like a bizarre

agglomeration of several music elements. The lyricism of the Smiths wasnt just the usual

droning exasperation of love, lust and loss, but a sort of reinvention of lyrics in the pop canon of

Many sources cite Morrissey as having a knack for being in touch with the public; this willingness to
2

maintain an energetic umbilical cord to the public was a form of insurance that perhaps the glitz and fame
would not get to his head - which it incontrovertibly did.
the time. Morrissey had a distinctively ironic, witty, and literate viewpoint whose strangeness

was accentuated by his off-kilter voice, wrote Stephen Thomas Erlewine, a critic for Rovi.

No previous band had seemed to possess such astounding maturity in their lyrics, let alone

within their debut album. One particular song that exemplifies the broodingly welcome persona

of the band is This Charming Man. Listed as one of the immense songs that, in the words of

the BBC, introduced hundreds of new-wave, anti-synth pop rockers to the weird, wordy world

of whatever fresh sound the restless 60s acolytes churned out. The beat serves as the spiritual

successor to the punky, indie sound of a plethora of todays bands. The upbeat, happy-go-lucky

nature of the song, which in itself is shrouded in sexual ambiguity, has been digested and

regurgitated by the Arctic Monkeys, Bombay Bicycle Club, the Drums, Two-Door Cinema Club,

and the Kooks, to name a few.

What strikes the listener is the paragon maturity found in what most would consider to be a

childish song. Punctured bicycle, on a hillside desolate/Will nature make a man of me yet?;

and so begins the reflective discourse on the definition of manhood in an age when glittering

flamboyance and the look of androgynous-chic was becoming more commonplace in major

cities. The song narrates a journey taken by the protagonist as he is fetched from his

incapacitated bicycle by the eponymous charming man, a nameless figure who offers this boy a

ride back to town.

Understandably, the semi-pedophilic interpretations are justified. This Charming Man was

the shot heard round the U.K.; it acted as a primer for the combination of the mature lyrics with

hy pamper life
the punk beats that would act as a strange sort of balancing act. W

complexities/when the leather runs smooth on the passenger seat? . Why worry about life and

where this strange fellow is taking me when I somewhat still feel at ease? The stalactites of irony

that hang from the roof of the Smiths tone is laced in their pessimistic beauty. Their second
release of '83, This Charming Man, the follow-up to Hand In Glove, contained almost

everything essential about the modern pop song, its go-full-tilt READY TO BURST panache

having the agitating edge that is sudden, contorted in motion, its grace ingrained in its

unpolished, unfinished surface, writes John Wilde for Jamming! Magazine.

The Smiths appeared on Top of The Pops, a music exhibition show on national television

that viewers gobbled up mercilessly. Indeed, it was the paragon of mainstream, and whilst

true-heads didnt need the numerical satisfaction of seeing This Charming Man shoot up the

charts and propel the Salford Lads to heartthrob stardom, its otiose presence was a

springboard nonetheless.

I was very aware of how important Top of The Pops was visually as a child, wrote Marr in a

Guardian article listing off the most significant moments in indie music history. Everyone

remembers Morrissey prancing about nonsensically onstage, waving gladioli flowers.[the other

members and I] provided the street-wise, gang aspect. The almost caricature like vividness of

the onstage Smiths now not only guaranteed idiosyncrasy as a band. Morrisseys flamboyance

onstage begun his almost cult-like following; it was an unspoken truth that it was the chiselled,

dreamy capital M that was the whirlwind which fans wished to be taken away, not the grungy,

quintessential Manchester lads who carved out the sound of The Smiths. The development of the

superego was in utero. Alas, In managing chart success with their debut album, the Smiths

passed the litmus test for being a tour-de-force of pop whilst simultaneously pioneering a

punkish, aesthetic sound.

From its title alone, Meat is Murder, released in 1985, set the rather hardline

humanitarian tone that the band would adopt as being part of their persona. Along with their

masterful music, a belligerent attitude for awareness of animal rights and vegetarianism arose.

This begun an anti-establishment trajectory which, again, was very much synchronised with the
bands brooding and bizarre image. Morrissey was becoming more active a spokesperson for the

barbed diplomacy that the band felt they had to assume in order for their anti-meat,

anti-nuclear weapon agenda to take full form. In a hyped-up preview of the 1985 album, the

critic Paul Du Noyer writes that Morrissey walks through the mess with a sentimental vision. A

sentimental vision is a perfect description of what the bands most seminal song is. How Soon

is Now a six minute long vessel of unfiltered emotion. It comes across as a song that has not

been extensively edited or chopped. The song demonstrates the indefatigable vigor of Johnny

Marr as a guitarist, and lets us draw a conclusion that many die-hard Smithies made by the time

the debut album ebbed: Marrs guitar work is enriched by Morrisseys voice, and vice versa. Du

Noyers piece, titled Top of the Chops, mentions Marr as being a walking phenomenon in

himself; contribut[ing] a clutch of his best melodies yet, plus some of that captivating and

thoughtful guitar work which moves a number like 'How Soon Is Now' into major league

greatness and mentioning this praise in the context of someone whos been neglected in the

shadow of the stooping jaw of the flower-waving hearthrob Morrissey. I am the son/and the

heir/of shyness that is criminally vulgar...I am the son and heir...of nothing in particular, and

so the song begins3. Lyrically, the song is profound yet short. The masterwork of Marr and co

provide a spooky, gray context to the vocals, which resemble an angel being dragged down to

hell. The inclusion of How Soon is Now on Rolling Stones The 100 Greatest Guitar Songs Of

All Time mention that Marrs masterwork The structure of the song is heliocentric; it all more

or less revolves around one refrain: You shut your mouth/how can you say/I go about things

the wrong way/I am human and I need to be loved/just like everybody else does. The crooning

3
Furthering Morrisseys literary persona, this line is borrowed from the beginning of George Eliots
seminal Middlemarch, in which the beginning is slightly modifiedTo be born the son of a Middlemarch
manufacturer, and inevitable heir to nothing in particular. Morrisseys future songs would reference many
a poet (see Cemetry [sic] Gates) including Oscar Wilde, which, by number of mentions seems to rank
his family compatriot (Morrissey is of Irish descent) as being his favorite.
found here provides a contemplative, rather than festive, setting for the dreary, almost nihilistic

view that angsty teenagers in the eighties had.

If This Charming Man was the anthem to go out and ride your bike to, How Soon is

Now, with its deceivingly simple structure, is the ballad that teenagers float around each other

with in red-brick, damp Manchester streets; a slick-haired boyfriend passing a marijuana blunt

to his blonde, mascara-canvassed girlfriend. There is an element that is most excitable to guitar

fans: a sort of shrill wail that rears its surprisingly fitting head; though it is more Edvard

Munchs Scream than a radio-friendly prequel to whatever head-bopping chorus lies ahead.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame notes that the tremolo laden guitar work evokes a rare style

popularised by Bo Diddley. Further on in the heavy tune lies an inch towards some sort of

narrative amidst the mellifluous haze of H.S.I.N. that resuscitates the sleepy energy of the

exhaustively satisfying track. Out of the meaningless epiphany comes some sort of concrete

image to hang onto: a smokily quiet, yet packed, British nightclub: Theres a club if youd like to

go/you could find somebody, who really loves you...so you go and you stand on your own, and

you leave on your own, and you go home and cry and you want to die. This tragically common

narrative carries itself steady along an almost marching band type of beat, a sort of a rousing call

to arms to all those who frolic amongst the nerves of love, with or without drugs, in the flora and

fauna of young, punkish and careless nightlife.

Photographer Derek Ridgers compiled extensive portfolios of the look of the British youth in

the 80s - from the alpha-male football hooligans to the pilfering, tattooed, beer-swigging, yet

surreptitiously intelligent hipsters of the era. There seems to be a hybridisation alive, an

absorption of not just music and the arts but of cultural crises. The 80s in the U.K. ushered in an

era in which the youth subcultures - described by Ridgers as being the abundance of truculent

punks - had, even in their sheltered lives, seen some pain, or at least vehemently tried to pull of
a look in which that was communicated. How Soon Is Now represents the scarring of the

youth, from loves abuse or lack thereof. Like an abstract artwork, the ambiguity and sparseness

of the songs nature allows for a variety of opinions. What must one make of the inexplicable

gaps that lie in between each verse? When Morrissey, like a judge issuing a ruling, utters the

immortal words When you say its gonna happen now...well, when exactly do you mean?

what sort of consummation or fulfillment is he referring to?

Furthermore, the salient success of the Smiths first album was paramount4, but not enough

to permit for valiant experimentation on their next; one can argue that experimentation is

exactly what the band got up to in giving birth to H.S.I.N. Just like Led Zeppelin galvanised the

youth of the late 60s and 70s, How Soon is Now gave an appealing portrait to whatever

frustration that bubbled within the restlessness of British youth.

As for the remainder of Meat is Murder, critics - but not fans - were left polarised. Although

the gargantuan awe of The Smiths at the time saw them as being a formidable force, opinions

will always be divided when a somewhat political agenda gets involved. Chairman Mo, as

Morrissey was nicknamed in The New Musical Express , was striking up an indelible

reputation as an enfant terrible of the British media. The irony of this is, Dave Thomas writes,

is that the same seemingly endless fountain of pronouncements that makes him fave interview

have also started to grate, to get under people's skin, and to render him (and the band) less well

regarded. The manic motion of Morrissey's motor mouth is simultaneously The Smiths' best

friend and their worst enemy.

Sure, the darkly quixotic tone of Morrisseys interview responses were in key with the

complexity of his lyrics. These, in turn, would both glorify and tarnish the image of the band.

4
The Smiths lie in the liminal world of hardcore alternative, underground hipster, college-radio derived
fandom whilst also relishing mainstream success in the U.K. Meat is Murder was The Smiths only no.1
album. All other major releases, The Smiths, The Queen is Dead and Strangeways, Here We Come
climbed to a near-tantamount number 2 on the U.K. album charts.
Despite Morrisseys seemingly agoraphobic persona, he didnt shy away from the media, most

likely because he saw interviews as opportunities to glorify either himself, and to ram home

whatever polarising point the self-declared master of shrewdness felt. Steve, as Marr and

fellow band members knew him as for a brief amount of time, was a strange concoction of a man

whipped together. Morrissey grew up a loner, and from an early age adopted a worldview that

was most skeptical of an otherwise optimistic future. In doing so, Morrissey indirectly promoted

the agenda of dismissing the notion of joining the punkish, hyper, boisterous youth that,

ironically, would later grow to worship his music.

Too many people were obsessed with the future - it was fashionable to think about,

utters Morrissey regarding his childhood in a BBC Radio interview conducted in 1984. I never

had a social life.I simply sat in and read. I would write furiouslybut you had to have a grain

of hope, which was very hard to have. Like the construction of an intricate Jenga tower,

Morrisseys views - as a concurrent stream to the brilliant output of music - began to morph into

a poison-tipped edifice of its own. His unchecked, albeit eloquent, arrogance that was so

pervasive in many media appearances. These were not the ramblings of an uneducated savage

doing his utmost to whirl up chaos in a time of change, but he was a dashing knight in musical

armor out to raise eyebrows and joust anyone in his way with the media as his platform.

It certainly didnt come as a surprise when The Smiths third album, out in 1985, was

titled The Queen is Dead. As austere as that sounds, it was the amended version; the original

prototype was labelled Margaret on the Guillotine. One doesnt need to be well versed in

record label etiquette to comprehend why the latter suggestion didnt make it past the executive

offices. The Thatcher government, administered by the Conservative party, was quick to pass a

number of controversial bills that seemed to favor the rich, free markets and a capitalist spin on

otherwise nationalised institutions that provided jobs for the lower-working class. Privatisation
of mineral extraction plants and mines - including but not limited to the famous Battersea

Power Station that, alongside a pig, is immortalised in Pink Floyds Animals album - meant

that thousands were unemployed . It was quintessential Thatcherism: a series of audacious,

seemingly confrontational policies to alter the social and economic fabric of the U.K.

Given this background,Morrissey, was, in the words of Joseph Brookers essay The Smiths

and The Challenge of Thatcherism, o

ut to actively invert the vision of what Thatcher had in

mind; the mindset that had seen her successful confrontation with organised labor close. The

disparity between the erstwhile industrial north and the product, market driven south was never

clearer, giving the impression of the renewed perceptional divide that Brooker references

often. Given the location of Manchester as one of these final bastions of industry that had fallen

to its knees in the wake of Thatcherism, its no surprise that the anti-establishment sentiment

was present in the lyrics and work of The Smiths.

Riding the wave of both cult-based and mainstream success, the year that saw the very

first mobile phone call being made in the U.K. was also the year that ceded way The Smiths

third album, The Queen Is Dead. The lead single, Bigmouth Strikes Again, was a classic

traintrack paced, Marr-driven anthem in which Morrissey excoriates that he knows how Joan of

Arc, the canonic French figure who led French battalions against those of Englands, felt as The

flames rose/to her Roman nose/and her hearing aid started to melt. Just as there is

aggression, there is concurrent melody to run alongside the repetitive riff that powers through

the track as Morrissey utilises Joan as a sort of declaratory figure to have an epiphany through.

In songs like Cemetry [sic] Gates and Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others, we get flashes of

Morrisseys somewhat sadistic, ironic humor. The former is a countryside expos into the

arrangements for a sepia-toned playdate in which the protagonist and his sexless companion
meet on a dreaded sunny day...at the cemetery gates/Keats and Yates are on your side/but

Wilde is on mine.

What truly takes the cake iced with adolescent angst as well as what can only be labelled

as aesthetically pleasing nihilism is the defining anthem, that bottled the efflorescence of youth

and color that spread from the achromatic, industrial North, is There Is A Light That Never

Goes Out. The gem, which occupies the slot for the penultimate track on the album, is almost

hidden away, but remains to this day a potent last wish. Morrissey was by no means rousing, but

the pleas to be taken away, the pleas to have a spontaneous adventure was a drug in itself; an

escapists dream turned real. The twisted beauty in There Is A Light is the infatuation and

carelessness about dying young, giving into the suicidal impulses that seemed contagious for

this lost generation.

There Is A Light is, in brief terms, a knell for excitement. It signals the death of the

menial, all too quotidian work day, when ones shift ends. In a 1983 BBC Radio interview,

displayed in the revealing which Morrissey disapproved the mass optimism towards better

horizons, he also admits to feeling like he -- entrenched in the middle class -- felt as if he was

waiting for a bus that never came, surrounded by oafish clods with all their riches. The lyrics

of T.I.A.L. dwell with a premature, but a highly enjoyable, high-speed death5

Take me out tonight/where the people are young and alive/driving in your car/I never ever want to go

home/because I havent got one anymore

5
J.G. Ballards novel, Crash ( 1973) is allegorically revived here, though most likely neither directly nor
deliberately. It, in brief terms, details the episodic misadventures of folk who have whats known as
symphorophillia - a car crash fetish. The elements of speed and risk turn on, so to speak, the
characters in the infamous novel. Though it may be a shot in the dark, the elements of unhindered thrill
and nonchalance go hand in hand with the lack of foresight found in the lyrics of There Is A Light That
Never Goes Out.
The initial plea to be taken out on the town emblematizes a sense of youth that was best

articulated by the renowned cultural theorist Stuart Hall, as depicted in a titular documentary:

[The youth] were escaping one world, and thats what the focus was on, but at the same time

they were entering another. The vice-versa interchangeability of the statement works perfectly

to ultimately support what The Smiths truly were to dozens of people: an escape. The classic, all

too filmed stereotype of the punkish, ash-laden rebel without a cause who storms out of the

house in order to loiter, consume drugs, or simply wander about the town, so to speak, with his

similarly mohawk-rearing gang of hoodlums. The live fast die young attitude injected a

sprinkle of required danger so as to enhance the insipidness of lower-middle class youth, akin to

inserting a pipettes drop of cyanide in a crystal clear glass of water.

A strange flash in the pan occurs at the end of There Is A Light, where all lyrical

mastery is compromised in favor of a message. A message that is delivered so urgently by

Morrisseys seemingly opera-trained voice which skews pop, Billboard friendly conventions and

goes for the repetitive. A chiming of the songs title as sure as a grandfather clock leads an outro

that, even at its conclusion, feels unfinished. Religious overtones, not simply to do with the

songs title, come into play, especially with regards to how Smiths fanatics created a culture; they

mandated an apotheosis to take place. The emergence of a following based off mainstream

success in the United Kingdom as well as a major cult following amongst niche fans in the U.S.

led to a certain mythology being created about them as the band that saved lives. Eoin

Devereuxs essay Catholicism and Devotion in The Smiths points out that the summative

energy of the bands music served to nurture the r ealities of the human spirit rather than, as

with psychedelic bands, offer some thriving alternate reality for a listener to get him or herself

engrossed in. The quasi-religious appeal that Devereux posits is not in the spiritual but in the

all-too real. This is one popular and plausible theory regarding why The Smiths left so deep a
musically driven cultural imprint on all who dared to set aside time to listen to them, then or

now: ironically, despite Morrisseys fascination with poetic netherworlds and references to the

writerly conscious are constant, it is the refreshing drabness and dankness and the emphasis on

the here and now that transformed the gangly collective of teenagers into a audiovisual tour de

force.

The Smiths breakneck suicidal tone seemed to be in synchronisation with the band

themselves: increasing discordance between the now severed alliance of Morrissey and Marr,

once the inseparable duo who galvanised the popularity of The Smiths. This is all counter to the

fact that the light that was meant to never go out -- a.k.a. the band itself - was both shimmering

and dwindling in its final moments. Egos clashed, and the recipe for disaster was set forth in

motion. Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke benefited from the post-apocalypse shockwaves of the

break up, whilst Marr and Morrissey fled onto what their bitterness convinced them were

greater, more fruitful ventures, the latter embarking on a solo career in which he refused to be

jostled into irrelevance, as one of his album covers blatantly elucidates. His autobiography,

penned on and off over the course of a number of years, was published - to his unsurprising

demands - as a Penguin Classic.

In his extended discussion about the nature of cult fanaticism, Devereux intriguingly

mentions the etymology of fanatic, derived from the Latin mother word fanaticus, which,

rather thans merely an acolyte, connotes someone who belongs to a temple; a temple servant, a

devotee...Smiths fans liked to construct themselves as being apostles. The Salford Lads Club -

the ultimate spot to shoot the breeze with Morrissey, Marr as well as a number of other British

behemoth band members during the efflorescent Eighties, has become something of a

Canterbury Cathedral, with all sorts of folk scrawling messages and leaving a trail of post-its

proclaiming the genius of the five year old band that saved their lives and gave them
unparalleled solace. The Guardian ran a feature article on how the infamous bands music

managed to rearrange, if not at the very least somewhat alter, the lives and social fabric of the

desolate, overwhelmingly grey kitchen sink lives that populated the U.K. at this point in time.

Indeed, the canon of rock n roll bands from The Beatles onwards have served as catalysts

for cultural salvation, but it can be argued that few bands provoked such cultural awakening as

The Smiths did. There are a plethora of issues that Smiths music relates to, not including opaque

ideas about sexuality, class warfare, the idiosyncrasy of the nascence of a new British cinema,

and further political dialogues. It, with all this in mind, seems more appropriate to fabricate or

dream up a band with such groundbreaking significance. For once, however, The Smiths -

regressing to the fact that their name was derived from its ordinariness - the bands legacy lies

not simply in its profound musical effect; Joyce, Rourke, Marr and Morrissey being one of the

pioneering magi of the alternative rock genre, but through analysis of how energizing a factor

the band acted as. That being said, perhaps the sublimity of the Smiths lies in the haze of unclear

emotional analysis. Though countless formal, academic essays and reactions have been

published about arguably Manchesters most influential band, it is futile and overly ambitious to

even begin to tackle the effect on individual lives The Smiths had. Cecila Mellos essay The

Smiths and Kitchen-Sink Cinema closes with a high-magnitude passage that best embraces the

knack for the ordinary The Smiths had, whether they were flying private or commercial planes:

People see no worth in you, he sings to the addressee in Reel Around The Fountain, before

affixing a redeeming (and highly revealing) caveat: I do.As The Smiths rose in popularity and

importance, their -- to borrow The Prodigys album title -- Music for the Jilted Generation

became, as both academics and townsfolk agreed, more profound a message for the working

class. Their music knew no luxury and was not confined to one class. The insurmountable

cultural following they have amassed grows with every generation, across every medium and
technology, leaving a significant footprint on the wondrous z eitgeist of the 1980s in a country

that was coming to terms with its fallen empire and flurry of domestic woes. The Smiths

discography alleviates these on a personal level, and gives a magnificently framed rhythm to

otherwise untamed, inconsolable lives, mixing the dark with the humorous, bold concepts with

specific poetic imagery, capturing fleeting, grainy moments and making them unforgettable.

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Beckett, Andy. "Bang! A History of Britain in the 1980s by Graham Stewart Review."

The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 19 Jan. 2013. Web. 15 May 2014.

<http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jan/17/bang-history-britain-1980s-re

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Brooker, Joseph. The Smiths and the Challenge of Thatcherism. Why Pamper Lifes

Complexities: Essays on The SmithsEd. Sean Campbell and Colin Coulter. p.22 - 43.

Manchester University Press. 2010. Print

Devereux, Eoin. Heaven Knows Well Soon Be Dust: Catholicism and Devotion In The

Smiths. Why Pamper Lifes Complexities: Essays on The Smiths.Ed. Sean Campbell and Colin

Coulter. p.65-81. Manchester University Press. 2010. Print

Erlewine, Stephen T. "The Smiths | Biography | AllMusic." AllMusic. AllMusic.com, n.d.

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 Kelly, Danny. "Gathering The Thoughts of Chairman Mo." The University of Manchester

Computer Society. NME Magazine, n.d. Web. 15 May 2014.

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