Favourite opening line of a Smiths studio album

Last one is "Oh Hello"

I did consider that but it always sounded more like a vocalisation than an opening line to me 🤷🏻‍♂️

iirc the lyrics on the record sleeve have it as

HELLO
I am the ghost of Troubled Joe
hung by his pretty white neck
some eighteen months ago

Surely "some eighteen months ago" is when he travelled to a mystical time zone?

I hear an "a" before troubled even if it's not there on the lyric sheet.

As purely text, it's The Headmaster Ritual.
But with the accompanying music playing in my head, it's hard to beat that first one.

Surely "some eighteen months ago" is when he travelled to a mystical time zone?

I hear an "a" before troubled even if it's not there on the lyric sheet.

Fair enough!

Surely "some eighteen months ago" is when he travelled to a mystical time zone?

I mean, yes, but it is because he died. He’s talking to us 18 months later, describing how he died and why he came back:

Oh, hello
I am the ghost of troubled Joe
Hung by his pretty white neck
Some eighteen months ago
I traveled to a mystical time zone
And I missed my bed
And I soon came home

Also stanza-wise, the verse doesn’t scan as well if you tie “Some eighteen months ago” to the following line rather than the preceding line. It’s right there in how Morrissey sings it, the phrase ends after “ago” and he starts an additional thought with the next line.

I also think the “a” you’re hearing after “of” is a shadow vowel intended to emphasize the diction

Hard to top the debut opening, IMO.

Most of the songs on the debut that I love, i closing “Reel Around the Fountain”, I first heard as Peel Sessions recordings that just sound cleaner and bright to me than how they’re recorded on the debut, which makes it physically challenging for me to listen to the debut; it just comes across as muted and murky to me

Have you heard the original Troy Tate version of "Reel"? The drums are a lot more kickin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfxaWbPTXRs

All of these kinda come from the less pleasant side of his lyrics — the tendencies toward bile and self-pity and solipsistic superiority. If "Louder than Bombs" counted I'd probably vote "I left the North / I traveled South" for that reason alone. I mean, I will never not-love Smiths songs and Smiths lyrics but that includes recognizing the more ... maladaptive streaks

(That said, venting bile at gym teachers and such is fine and a pretty great lead-off)

FWIW, I think the BBC performance of "Reel Around the Fountain" might be the best one they recorded in a studio. Had they been able to mix it better (the later studio takes produced by Troy Tate and John Porter sound better in that regard), it might be definitive, but it's tough to say - the vocal's in a higher key so it wouldn't be a case of finding the best take of the same arrangement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynbdAwr-9zY

All of these kinda come from the less pleasant side of his lyrics — the tendencies toward bile and self-pity and solipsistic superiority.

I can see the argument for the others, but I don't hear much bile, self-pity or solipsistic superiority in Reel Around the Fountain? (to an extent that's unusual for Morrissey tbh, those three qualities seem present to some extent in almost all his lyrics, both good and bad)

The bile, self-pity and solipsistic superiority are what I come to Morrissey for.

Seriously. If those qualities of the lyrics grate, I'm curious which songs got you into the Smiths. Maybe something like "Ask"? (which seems to be a lyrical outlier)

I know it doesn't count here, but Louder Than Bombs has

I left the North
I traveled South
I found a tiny house
And I can't help the way I feel

(whoops, nabisco mentioned that too)

birdistheword, that is PRECISELY the version of “Reel Around the Fountain” I was referencing, it’s so good

I got into the Smiths when I was filled with teenage bile, self-pity, and solipsistic superiority!

Not like I'm above revisiting some of those things in song, but with the passing decades there are some things that feel less praiseworthy. (Morrissey has not exactly helped with this; loving him always involved some level of chuckling fondly at certain qualities, but now you see how others of those qualities can really ... curdle.)

The other passing-decades thing is how funny it is to look back at the early line on him as indefinably sexually complicated and celibate and so on. Smiths lyrics are repeatedly suggesting things like: (1) "I like men," (2) "I'm vaguely offput by women's sexuality and take a dim view of a lot of heterosexual romance," (3) "I want to experience genuine deep love like other people get to, but society will not afford me that option," and (4) "what I'm offered instead is unsatisfying, secret, or seedy connection with people who aren't able to engage in real love." (I could probably top-of-mind a dozen lines for each of those categories.) I almost started a thread once about the variety of 80s songwriters who wrote about stuff like this in slightly roundabout or metaphorical ways, such that basically any listener could receive it as matching their own feelings, even if their position was pretty vastly different from the songwriter's — like, the things that kept the artist from being fully open may have ended up aiding the effect of the songs, making them about widely shared feelings instead of specific details — but I was having trouble phrasing this without sounding weird about it.

Yeah, I was intensely naive about that aspect of Morrissey's lyrics when I started listening to him in high school. I was a very sheltered young man. But apart from maybe "Hand In Glove" I almost never associated his lyrics with gay sexuality. But when I listen to them now, yes, its very hard not to hear that. Actually hearing that aspect has deepened my appreciation for his lyrics.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

The best version of Reel Around the Fountain is the David Jensen BBC session imo – not quite as dry as the Peel session.

It was tempting to pick Reel Around the Fountain here just cause the line has an almost scriptural quality as an opening to the Smiths mythos. And the ambiguity of the first line of ARAAPATLIO only magnifies its appeal. The Queen Is Dead's is marvellous but surpassed by what comes later in the song. In the end it had to be The Headmaster Ritual. I filled out the line for the sake of consistency with the others, but really "Belligerent ghouls run Manchester schools" is the bravura unit that will always leave me giddy.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

It was tempting to pick Reel Around the Fountain here just cause the line has an almost scriptural quality as an opening to the Smiths mythos. And the ambiguity of the first line of ARAAPATLIO only magnifies its appeal. The Queen Is Dead's is marvellous but surpassed by what comes later in the song. In the end it had to be The Headmaster Ritual. I filled out the line for the sake of consistency with the others, but really "Belligerent ghouls run Manchester schools" is the bravura unit that will always leave me giddy.

Such beautiful thinking. I wish I (we) could go back to talking like this.

Missed the poll, would have joined the Headmaster bandwagon. Definitely one of the first Smiths stanzas to grab my attention, in my impressionable youth.

Also: wow, I've gone thirty years thinking he left the north, traveled south, and found a *tidy* house!

I thought it was “spineless swines, some empty minds” until one second ago.

for thirty five years i would have said it was “hemmed in like a boar between arches” picturing a pig stuck between pillars in an abandoned and overgrown roman arcade

^^^ yep always heard "arches" without ever thinking about it.

I always heard "bull between arches", thought it was something to do with the Minotaur, maybe. I wonder where he got the line from.
Also always heard "tidy house".

lol i also had "boar between arches"!

Kinda surprised only one of these is 14 words

I heard it as “bore between arches” … like a dinner party where there was a boring person between two other people who were “arch”

Or else a reference to McDonalds

there is a bit in Shifty where young Steve Pat Moz is talking about how his childhood shithole home getting demolished was a personalised holocaust against him and one of the worst things ever to happen to white western civilisation. Such a worthless self-obsessed little shit of the ages.

It says "boar between arches" in the lyrics on the LP sleeve. I wonder if the error is in the transcription or in the song itself - i.e. what does he actually sing?

https://www.dianamystery.com/TQID1st_song.htm

"Morrissey's first verse on THE QUEEN IS DEAD has two consecutive lines corresponding firstly to Diana's death, and secondly to Jayne Mansfield's death. ...

hemmed in like a boar between arches ................... Princess Diana

her very lowness with her head in a sling ............. Jayne Mansfield"

Didn't see this poll, would have voted A Rush and a Push, but this is how I'm discovering he actually says 'hello' at the start.

Hrm on both TQID and Rank it sounds like "arches".

lyric sheet has arches

https://www.discogs.com/release/1193876-The-Smiths-The-Queen-Is-Dead/image/SW1hZ2U6MzE1NDIwNg==

whoops, sorry click the cover and you can see the lyric sheet i'm sure you all know how discogs works

Yes, the lyric sheet says "arches" but it also says "Im truely sorry" and "Passed the Pub" etc. I do think he sings "arches" though.