single most underrated smiths song

draize train?

is that a song?? but ill count it

score right now is:

m@tt H1ges0n: 1
deeznuts: 1

Off the top of my head, "Rusholme Ruffians" or "Rubber Ring," but they're all probably underrated by somebody and overrated by somebody else...

Headmaster Ritual

This will be an unpopular choice, I'm sure, but I'd say it's I Won't Share You, the closing song from their final album.

yeah all three of those seem great to me; im thinking of something like 'miserable lie'.

i think this was maybe a bad thread idea. xp

"Golden Lights" never gets much love but I've rather liked over the years. Same with "Paint a Vulgar Picture," which shows how much Moz learned about breath control and singing on-pitch.

paint a vulgar picture is also great. moz learned a shitload about singing b/w the first & second albums, but a couple of my favorite songs ever nevertheless come from the first.

draize train is on rank, i'd say it's a song...anyway i always liked it cuz it kinda reminded me of if the smiths tried to write "trampled underfoot" by led zep w/o lyrics

I like "The Draize Train" as Bryan Ferry's "The Right Stuff."

Oops -- I mean "Money Changes Everything."

Is "Oscillate Wildly" highly rated? I don't think so, and it's one of my favorite Smiths songs.

I didn't realize any of their songs were underrated.

"i won't share you"

'Well I Wonder'

'The Queen Is Dead'

'Accept Yourself'?

Stretch Out + Wait

Probably Well I Wonder or Rubber Ring.

I thought "Paint a Vulgar Picture" was rated pretty highly?

isnt 'rubber ring' beloved by every smiths fanatic everywhere? or is that the point?

i wholly accept both 'accept yourself' & 'stretch out & wait'

another vote for Well I Wonder.

Jeane

oh shit I completely forgot about Jeane. "Wonderful Woman" is pretty great too.

Golden Lights, definitely

but Jeane is a B Bragg cover, no?

Yeah I would listen to "I Won't Share You" over and over.

^^^^'Headmaster Ritual' is the only smiths song I really rate

'There is a light.....' and 'Sheila Take a bow' too.

The rest are OVERrated

Headmaster Ritual can be wonderful if you find a great long live version. On album i generally skip it but they extended it to appx 9 mins for some shows.

Jeanne is either originally by Sandy Shaw or The Smiths but not B.Bragg.

it's Marr's guitar Chords that do it for me in HR. I realise I could be in a minority here.

I'd appreciate pointers to a decent live version?

"Jeanne" is a Smiths original, but it was covered by Shaw-- or rather it was re-recorded by the band with Shaw on vocals-- and Bragg. A good choice for this thread too. "I Won't Share You" and "Well I Wonder" are also fine choices.

No mention of "London" yet?

I left the south
I travelled north
I got confused, I killed a horse
I can't help the way I feel

^^^ this one

Headmaster Ritual is fantastic, but I didn't realize it was underrated!

yeah london is a good call

agreed w/ curtis

that one is um what one is that one wanko ergo sum...its pretty good whatever it is. he does an elvis impersonation at one part.

"Is It Really So Strange?"

yes!

btw in my mind i am still winning this thread

impossible question, all Smiths songs are overrated

very funnny NOT

excuse the caps but I WAS SOOO GOING TO SAY "I DON'T OWE YOU ANYTHING"!! so wonderful!!

i don't think anything on louder than bombs can be considered "underrated"

"golden lights" more like most mis-maligned smiths song

most overrated is "There is a Light That Never Goes Out" ughhh

"Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want" transcends the very possibility of being overrated.

I'm with deeznuts on this one.

How about "Meat Is Murder"? Regardless of whether you agree or not with Morrissey's militant vegetarianism, I'd say it's a really powerful, poignant song. The intro alone is genius. My second pick would be "I Started Something I Couldn't Finish" or "I Won't Share You". Strangeways is such a great album. The most overrated is definitely "How Soon is Now". It's the one that people who don't like the Smiths like, because it's the least poppy.

most overrated is "There is a Light That Never Goes Out" ughhh

hey now

sick of people hating on "There is a Light" and "How Soon Is Now?" just because people like them, they're both fantastic, epic songs.

fucking old people

"How Soon is Now?" does kind of suck imo

this is totally true curtis

btw the score as im keeping it is now something like

us: 3
you: 1

good luck chumps

I dunno how any are rated, really, but the first thing I thought of was The Draize Train. (Not just on Rank - it was the B-side of Panic, and was a studio recording. I played it way more often than I played Panic.)

Gosh, I didn't click on this yesterday because I thought "surely everyone will mention "London," "Shakespeare's Sister" and "Handsome Devil" - aka The Smiths with teeth - so i wont' bother." Imagine my surprise today! Good thing I was bored so at least SOMEONE here can rep for the 'rockin'' Smiths!!!

"Ask"

"Ask" was a single - not underrated

not sure how well things are or are not rated by people generally but looking at the suggestions here of songs that people thing are underrated I see some great songs

-handsome devil - it is simply not possible to hear "I say, I say, I say" without smiling, but i don't know if it's really under rated

so my choice is

-please please please let me get what I want - has that guitar bit that really shines - 'transcends' (as above) is a great description of everything about that song, and it's like a hidden, blink if you miss it gem at the back of an album

"Girlfriend In a Coma". Yes, it was a single, but all of their 1987 material is so superior to anything else they did, and that song was the best of all from that year.

I said I Won't Share You upthread, and I stand by it. But I also want to mention Death Of A Disco Dancer, which I think has great drama to it as well as a less snarky vocal performance than was often the case with The Smiths (qualities the song shares, BTW, with I Won't Share You).

[all of their 1987 material is so superior to anything else they did]

!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Geir is crazy, Pinefox.

I think the best Smiths release of 1987 (if we don't count Louder Than Bombs) was perhaps 'Sheila Take A Bow'. Or 'Shoplifters'; but I think I prefer 'Sheila' to that. The B-sides of both are, as one would expect, very good.

Oh, I've forgotten: The World Won't Listen was 1987 too. Well, shall I assume that by 1987 we mean stuff that hadn't been released before? In that case, 1987 = Sheila * Shoplifters * Strangeways, I think, and the best thing on the LP is probably 'Stop Me'.

But I don't think even these best records measure up to the best of the pre-1987 work anyway.

[all of their 1987 material is so superior to anything else they did]

=

'Death At One's Elbow' is superior to 'There Is A Light That Never Goes Out'

[and many many more where that came from]

"Jeanne" is probably my favorite Smiths SONG-as-song -- i.e., not the recording, not the band, just a kind of portable chords-and-melody song for anyone to sing. I kinda, umm, "collect" covers of it. But I don't think I've found more than a dozen or so.

I tend to think of the entirety of Meat Is Murder as being underrated, which makes it hard to pick the particular songs that answer this question -- mention "Well I Wonder" or "What She Said," and the description seems perfectly fair. But I tend to think of "Nowhere Fast" as the most perfect thing on there; it's so tight, concise, has every band member working at peak quality. And no one ever tosses out "Nowhere Fast" as their ultimate Smiths favorite, so ... maybe that one.

(I would say "Paint a Vulgar Picture," but I suspect it is quietly rated quite highly by people who like the Smiths. I only have a handful of covers of that one, but there's a kind of calypso / rocksteady version out there that gets me every time.)

Man, you cannot be serious about 'Jeane'.

I have always liked 'Nowhere Fast' a lot.

Simon Reynolds has always said Meat is Murder is bad, and repeats this just after the reprinted M interview in his Bring The Noise volume. It is such an odd thing to keep saying, after 20 years of solo M records almost all of which are inferior to M is M.

Gets you how?

Hm, best Smiths cover? Well, the Pines. Otherwise ... not a lot.

"You still hold a reedy grace
As you tidy the place.
But it will never be clean,
Jeane."

Morrissey's finest hour.

'greedy'

(Nabisco: actually, covers of Smiths = a bit of a dead end, I think, for fairly obvious reasons re. the distinctiveness of the original performers, though it sounds like you don't agree)

all of their 1987 material is so superior to anything else they did

Yeah, that's way off the mark. But I do think Strangeways was very good, and probably underrated by fans.

I am so not kidding about "Jeanne!" I assume it got booted from the first record because it's such a 60s story-song kitchen-sink pastiche, but that's half of what gives it that sense of ... portability. There's a video somewhere on YouTube of Morrissey and Marr taking a bunch of kids to a zoo, and then Sandie Shaw appears and they do an acoustic version of this: it's perfect for that sort of thing. The slow Billy Bragg single version (as opposed to his sped-up live and Peel Session versions) is even better. In almost anyone's hands, the song is just terrific, a combination of mournful and impassioned that perfectly matches the subject matter: give up! We've failed!

(I've been actually working on my own cover of this lately.)

xpost - Pinefox, I semi-disagree. A lot of why I like Smiths covers is just over-familiarity with the originals, and you're right, a lot of the songs are hard to leap off from, for the reasons you mention. But I also like the fact that for me and a decent number of other people, the Smiths form a common teenage history, the "classic" songs people spread out from, the way Beatles songs are for lots of people -- and when the people doing the covers treat them that way, they can do some interesting stylistic things. Right now my favorites are the rocksteady "Paint a Vulgar Picture," an electro "This Charming Man," and an old-school emo/hardcore "Still Ill" -- the covers I actually like tend to be by random no-name bands that have fun with the basics, not known acts that approach somewhat reverently and wind up failing.

'this night has opened my eyes' or 'suffer little children' for being the epitome of that kind of noir psyche sound of the first two records, i love the heroin-haze circular guitar riff in the latter, it's blissed out yet slightly neurotic, some may dislike the lyric though

No, it can't be "greedy"; that's a propagated mistranslation. I mean it makes absolutely no sense beyond being beneath Moz's literary gifts.

Super Furries' "Some Girls" is still the best Smiths cover.

Uh -grass that is. Haha.

and 'i don't owe you anything' is sublime, i am convinced the first album is actually their best.

i think i choose 'barbarism begins at home' though - pitch it down slightly to destroy dance floors!

xp

uh, i meant noir psych

Nabisco: I really don't agree about 'Jeane'. I know that bus / kids video, and it's very funny, but the performance is hardly the essence of what's great about the Smiths. It's odd to find myself knocking a song by a band who have meant so much to me, but I just think that one is very much apprentice work. Though admittedly there is something about that judgement that doesn't work as it was B-side of 'this charming man' which is a fully realized little masterwork really.

I guess 'Jeane' doesn't have enough variation in it to me? too much drone (from a period when M. would drone a lot).

And no, we don't really agree about covers either.

[But I also like the fact that for me and a decent number of other people, the Smiths form a common teenage history, the "classic" songs people spread out from, the way Beatles songs are for lots of people -- and when the people doing the covers treat them that way, they can do some interesting stylistic things. Right now my favorites are the rocksteady "Paint a Vulgar Picture," an electro "This Charming Man," and an old-school emo/hardcore "Still Ill"]

I was at All Tomorrow's Parties (festival) once, with a tape of New Order 45s on, and someone said something similar about them - and I understood it, but grudgingly (guess I'll never really love New Order, and I suppose I don't think they've ever 'said' anything much). But sure, the Smiths are contenders for that role, for one or more generations. But that doesn't mean the Beatles rule must apply for them as it does for the Beatles. This is where the peculiarity of the Smiths kicks in, I think - and perhaps something about the peculiar historical / cultural position of the Smiths (UK 1980s), and also the fact that the Beatles were sublime at writing deeply melodic, and quite generalized / lyrically accessible Songs (etc etc) that were clearly sympathetic / ready to cover. I don't think that last fact applies to the Smiths' canon.

To be honest, while I appreciate your enthusiasm, I find it hard to imagine being at all impressed by the covers you mention. I don't know what 'rocksteady' is; I can't imagine this 'hardcore' Still Ill being any good ... really, from my POV, you are underestimating the extent to which Morrissey (let alone the rest) stamped himself on these songs - they are expressions of his ego, persona, etc, in a way that is not successfully translatable to some bunch of emo teens with guitars now.

I sort of think the entire point of New Order is that they don't say very much. They're very much an evocative mood-based band rather than a group like The Smiths who are very narrative-driven.

pf, couldnt agree more about those last qualities applying to smiths songs, or with yr points in general. (though i also think the first smiths album is seriously underrated, 'droning' isnt a bad adjective for it. i dunno how many people consider 'reel around the fountain' among the if not the best of the smiths work but if the number isnt fairly substantial, id instantly replace that as my #1.) i think the smiths had a personal quality deeply removed from the pop universiality of the beatles; they were maybe the only band in HS i wasnt eager to share w/ others because i felt they were mine. i imagine thats a pretty common feeling among smiths fans.

all these recommendations have been appreciated, was looking for a nostalgia trip/refresher course & this has been great.

I think everyone adores "Reel Around The Fountain", "What Difference Does It Make?" and "This Charming Man".

yeah, those are definitely the three i wouldve guessed from that album

reminder of what I mean about the 'peculiarity' of the Smiths -
The Miracle of the Smiths
- I am also touched by how incredibly complimentary everyone is about each other's wonderful contributions to that thread. Mary shows up 3 years late and says "very amazing stuff. So many interesting points it's hard to know where to begin".

Rank in general is underrated, so something from there. I like that version of "Cemetery Gates" a lot.

Pinefox, your point about covers is a large part of what I like about "Jeanne," and what I mean about its being "portable" -- it's one of the main moments in their catalog where you get a Morrissey/Marr song that is generalized and narrative, that other people can sing. (Or at least if you shoved me on stage with a guitar and a gun to my head and said "play a Smiths song without embarrassing yourself," I'd certainly see "Jeanne" as my best bet.)

I can't play guitar but I feel pretty confident about being able to sing pretty much any Smiths song that I know the words to.

But Nabisco - no disrespect meant - that wouldn't be good. ... would it?

a few more Smiths songs that *are* *relatively* 'generalizable': ... Please x3; Ask -- actually can't think of more serious contenders, and even 'Ask' is still laced with M's black-humorous perversity that probably doesn't sound especially right from another singer. Maybe I Don't Owe You Anything is a better bet, actually (sounds like it was written in that way, as 1960s hit idea, and of course Shaw recorded it).

i think nabisco is referring to the fact that its a smiths song w/out a definitively smiths feel to it...& looking back at yr post nabisco i think i can see where yr coming from about the smiths as part of a 'common teenage history' in regards to identifying with semi-anonymous covers, esp those with a certain lack of reverence, even if im not particularly eager to hear any of these xp

The real problem with most people who cover Smiths songs is that Morrissey is a baritone and most people who sing pop/rock music are tenors.

btw it is not often that I have seen fit to correct Nabisco on a point of fact, and I like to let a thousand flowers bloom - but however much you like that song, its title really isn't spelled with two n's. For something like proof, try this staggeringly well-stocked website across which I have just happened:

http://www.passionsjustlikemine.com/disc/smiths-d02tcm.htm

see also, for instane:
http://www.last.fm/music/The+Smiths/_/Jeane

or just look at a record, or a book, or whatever.

Though if it comes to it I think I might even prefer the Nabisco spelling.

Oops, sorry.

P.S., I just looked through the versions on my mp3 player while out on a break, and a lot of what I mean by "portability" is that different versions of the song can pull so many different and totally credible moods out of the lyrics, depending on how you're treating Jeane! There are sighs of despair (as in "we tried and we failed"), tender let-downs (as in "Jeane I'm so sorry but let's face facts"), bitter and angry ones (as in "I hate you and why can't you see this is going nowhere"), and even triumphant, liberated ones (as in "smell you later, Jeane, I am getting out of here"). I find that cool in a song, and especially cool in a Morrissey/Marr song, since it's not a very frequent occurrence; I think this one just stands out, for me, on those grounds.

Also, the best shorthand description I can come up with for rocksteady = the form of reggae probably most likely to remind you of doo-wop

Rubber Ring

I really like "Sweet and Tender Hooligan" and it hasn't been mentioned yet.

1. when Shaw covered 'Jeane', was she just about managing to imply that she was (as a woman) singing about a male partner? or was that not the idea?

2. my favourite thing about the song: the electric arpeggios - in the midst of the clatter, there is something so reassuring about their arrival before M's vocals have even started; a signature from the guitarist.

3. a degree of support for Nabisco's sense that the song is 'portable', not subject to M's own persona: yes, it's clearly a sort of story song, whose 'narrator' is a projected 'character' (perhaps a post-war kitchen-sink / New Wave one: a borrowed fiction). OK, I suppose biographically there is potentially M + Linder (living together?) behind it, but still the idea of (speaking from within) a Harrassed Couple is a fiction here, and *not* a characteristic Morrissey one - no celibacy / solitude in sight. It's not a lonely lament like 'There Is A Light' or perhaps 'I Know It's Over' -- and by the same token, it's not something the lonely (esp. male) fan could Identify With / take as their own words (singing their life). It's much more a projected fiction than that.

But then: maybe there was a lot of such 'fiction' in early M - 'The Hand That Rocks The Cradle', 'Pretty Girls Make Graves' for instance, are quite baroque pieces of imagination. Or, maybe I am underestimating the number of couples in these early songs ('Hand In Glove', never mind 'Cemetry Gates') - which might again reflect some kind of platonic-Linder scenario. ('Wonderful Woman' is the really obvious comparison.)

???

'pretty girls make graves' is everything everyone hates about morrissey all wrapped up into 3 minutes, pinefox

also 'still ill' surpasses all of those first album songs hi dere mentioned except 'ratf' & ranks up there with the very best of the smiths; i dont know if this is commonly held knowledge or not

I don't know what you're getting at, unless you are referring to the original thread title. I wasn't saying 'PGMG' was good or bad; I was raising a thought about early M lyrics of which that might be an example.

Personally I have always loved 'still ill' - I once wrote to Johnny Rogan about it.

im saying that i dont get why you refer to it as a work of 'imagination' since it encompasses & explains the very reasons for yr stated loneliness & solitude; sexual fear/revulsion etc

were morrissey's lyrics on his first album really likely to have been any less of a 'fiction' than the ones on any of his others?? 'the hand that rocks the cradle' excepted, i cant off the top of my head think of any that are blatantly so

The point about 1987 is, by 1987, they had started writing songs in a more conventional way. "Girlfriend In a Coma" gives the impression of the melody being composed throughout, not just improvised on top of Johnny Marr's guitar licks. And there's more of that on that album. Not just the minimalist repetitiveness that sometimes got so annoying about their earlier work, but actually great and nice pop tunes with verses and choruses and climax

This is also why I like Morrissey solo and Gene better than The Smiths though. Because they, too, have had more conventional and less repetitive tunes.

Deeznuts: I see what you mean now re. PGMG - but I still think it comes across as 'imaginative' with the whole very affected sea-shore scenario, dialogue ('heaven knows we'll soon be dust!'), etc.

I wasn't saying that they were *likely*, as a matter of probability, to be 'fiction' (whatever I mean by that - I think all pop songs are fictions anyway, in a broader sense) -- but that the early ones *do* seem to be. But again, perhaps I have been led astray by the excesses 'hand that rocks the cradle' and that track is actually a red herring, and the rest are not especially imaginative.

It is true, though, I think, that early Smiths includes some odd directions and tendencies that are distinct from what they then settled into (?). The weirdness and awkwardness of 'Miserable Lie' for instance, is so different from anything on the the Queen Is Dead LP.

pgmg strikes me as 'imaginative' only in the sense of 'artistic', which any song should be

the 'weirdness & awkwardness' of miserable lie & the rest of the entire first album strike me as naturalistic as much as anything else; i think the increased stylishness & simplicity of smiths songs later on was a result of moz's increased comfort w/ his role as popstar as much as anything else.

"Asleep"

Amen to that.

"What She Said" live on Rank

I knew a guy in a Smiths cover band and the first thing he would get excited about when you asked what songs they played was that they did the "What She Said" medley from Rank.

what about "half a person"? it has always been one one of my faves. great story and lyrics as well.