The Working-Class Heroism of The Smiths

By Luca Johnson

The Smiths: it’s a name that is now widely recognised across multiple generations. Since the Manchester band's genesis in 1982, their music has left an indelible mark on British popular culture. In 1984, on the children's morning programme Data Run, bandmates Morrissey (vocals) and Johnny Marr (lead guitar) were asked a crucial question: "Why 'The Smiths'?" Morrissey gave an explanation: "It was the most ordinary name, and I think it's time that the ordinary people of the world showed their faces." In light of the recent tragic and untimely passing of the band's bass player, Andy Rourke, I thought it would be an appropriate tribute to examine a sample of songs from The Smiths' repertoire and how their music lived up to the philosophy of celebrating and chronicling the ordinary.

Still Ill

Hailing from their debut album, simply titled The Smiths, Still Ill starts with a rapid-fire drumbeat section, played by Mike Joyce with his unfailing percussive precision. Any hope of bodily autonomy simply evaporates as the rhythm compels you to start bobbing your head—and possibly a few limbs if you're feeling adventurous. The other three Smiths then simultaneously enter the fray: Marr's quintessential jingle-jangle guitar strums encapsulate the early sound of the band and bring a newfound whimsy and levity to the tune, accompanied by Rourke's understated bumbling bass lines. With a dogged assertiveness, Morrissey's vocals soar:

"I decree today that life is simply taking and not giving, 

England is mine, it owes me a living, 

ask me why and I'll spit in your eye" 

Singing of the "iron bridge" under which lovers "kissed until I ended up with sore lips," Morrissey illustrates with Dickensian eloquence a bleak vignette of post-industrial Manchester. The working classes now live in a world where everything "just isn't like the old days anymore," and there's a forlorn feeling to the scene. The lyrics invite the listener to reminisce about the days of their own dying romances in dying towns. A generation of youths is muddying their way through life amid the slump of post-war Britain. Yet, when the music is merry and the lyrics so genuine, they remind us of the beauty beneath the rust.

Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want

The anthem of moody brooders everywhere, this delicate ditty resonates with the part of the heart that holds out hope. Morrissey gently trills:

"Good times for a change

See, the luck I've had

Can make a good man

Turn bad"

The sublime yet simple lyrics—accompanied by a soothing mandolin outro from Marr—caress your soul. The bass lines serenade you towards a peaceful sleep. The words appeal to our deepest sense of humanity. From Plato to Boethius to Kant, we have pontificated about the value of goodness: Is being good advantageous? Would we be happier if we tyrannized and trampled on others to get what we want? My life has been inundated with good-natured folk who simply feel that fortune has rebuked them; good people suffer while the bad excel. Yet amongst the bleakness exists an unremitting hope. The "good times" might be elusive, but if we have found them once, we can find them again. Despite being hidden away as a B-Side, the track has become a classic in their discography. It's a song for the downtrodden—a consolation and an embrace for ordinary folk who exist as nameless faces in the crowds we pass. They need hope; this song brings that.

Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before

Moving away from the melancholy, let's take an investigative glance at the thigh-slapping humour of this track from The Smiths' final album, Strangeways, Here We Come. We've all had encounters in our lives with the odd compulsive liar. Armed with the wit of Wilde, Morrissey sings of more elaborate and brazen fibs:

"I crashed down on the crossbar

And the pain was enough to make a shy, bald, Buddhist reflect

And plan a mass murder,

Who said I lied to her?"

The lies are so hyperbolic that they transcend into comedy. Joyce's drums pummel their way through the song, giving the music a frantic urgency—akin to a liar desperately clutching for excuses. This is the beauty of the ordinary that The Smiths capture so well—ordinary is not a synonym for angelic. It's not just the noble that are worthy of note. In many cases, those of lesser morals make for more tantalizing character studies. Their quirks and qualities are also worth documenting. Some people are destined to make the same mistakes over and over, reflection being beyond them. Such is the case in this indie classic as the gulf between the point-of-view character and his partner frays with every fabrication. 

Barbarism Begins At Home

Only The Smiths could create a seven-minute musical juggernaut centred around child abuse. This is the ninth track from their most didactic album, Meat Is Murder. The guitars are as violent and thrashing as the theme they focus on; the music truly takes centre stage on this track. The late, legendary Andy Rourke plays his career-defining chords on this piece. His bombastic bass lines bounce from post-punk to Chic-infused funk. The lyrics that Morrissey bellows are frank and uncompromising:

"Unruly boys

Who will not grow up

Must be taken in hand

Unruly girls

Who will not settle down

They must be taken in hand"

Between the verses, the magnificently-quiffed frontman peppers a barrage of falsetto screams, stylistically emulating the vulnerable wails of children. It's ludicrously brazen, succeeding as a piece of social commentary as much as it triumphs as a track. The title itself is a reminder of the moral responsibility and sovereignty of a parent, to nurture and guide their children, or else they will engender a feedback loop of maltreatment. Rourke ends the track with a bass riff to rival all others, as Joyce's drums chug the maelstrom of music to a halt.

There is a Light That Never Goes Out

This is arguably the most famous song The Smiths ever produced, and the penultimate track from their most esteemed album, The Queen Is Dead. The spell of depression lifts from the protagonist's spirit, and the music possesses flurries of jubilation to reflect this. In some of the most famous lyrics that Morrissey has ever penned, he sings:

"Take me out tonight

Where there's music and there are people

And they're young and alive"

It is elating and beautiful: reminding us of the social and communal bonds that bring meaning to our lives—love, friends, liberty. Life can be fleeting and chaotic, but, as Sir Roger Scruton sagely summarized, "the value of life does not consist in its length but in its depth." Morrissey appears to concur with this sentiment, which is echoed in the majestic chorus:

"And if a ten-ton truck

Kills the both of us

To die by your side

Well, the pleasure, the privilege is mine"

There is a Light That Never Goes Out and the band knows that that light lives in ordinary people up and down the nation. Their deeds uncelebrated; their stories untold. But their value? Inestimable. 

The Songs That Saved Your Life

“The Smiths will always be the band of my life, and theirs the songs that saved it.” So said the British music journalist Simon Goddard. It is a sentiment that tenaciously clings to the souls of many Smiths fans. Simply through the prism of their musical output, their songs have consoled the lonely, the lost, and the languished. Coming together to create five years of, at times, genuinely life-saving music, four working-class northerners became an unstoppable force for good, devoted to holding the ordinary and forgotten in a warm and compassionate embrace. Quoting from the band's distinguished dirge, Asleep, "There is another world. There is a better world." I hope that Andy Rourke now rests in that world, safe in the knowledge that in his music, he gave ordinary people so much.