Oscillate Wildly (1985) Instrumental, piano driven song appears as a b-side for “How Soon Is Now?, depending on what part of the world you live, was a b-side for “The Headmaster Ritual, on the compilations of “The World Won’t Listen (UK)” and “Louder Than Bombs (US), and finally appears on “The Sound of The Smiths”.ħ2. Marr kind of steals from his own song “How Soon is Now?” with the guitar riff.ħ3. Nothing spectacular, I chalk it up to a band breaking up and Morrissey not being inspired enough to put lyrics to Marr’s music. The Draize Train (1986) Instrumental, appears as a b-side for “Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others”, also performed for the live album “Rank”, and finally appears on the compilation of “The Sounds of The Smiths”. This list is for and dedicated to Sean Murphy and all fans of The Smiths.ħ4. Now, I’ve repeatedly apologized to Sean and even offered to replace the cassette in multiple formats, but Sean being such a wonderfully nice and kind man, refused, only stating “I’m so happy it has brought you joy over the years my friend”.ġ985 also started my obsession with the record store Music Machine in Pikesville, MD, the only place I could find The Smiths near Baltimore. The cassette remained in my car cassette deck for almost a year, I listened repeatedly until the car’s engine blew up, I could never retrieve the cassette from the player, it died with the car. A cassette of the album Hatful of Hollow plays all evening and when everyone is drunk and or passed out, I “stole” the cassette tape. My story of the Smiths begins in earnest in the summer of 1985 - even though the Smiths are on my radar before 1985 - it isn’t until a beach party in Ocean City, MD, hosted by Sean Murphy that my love for the band is locked forever. There are different versions of some of the songs, in this case I chose in my mind the most popular or the version that appears first. I listened to each song again and had the catalog playing as I made this list. I list each song and the year of release along with a brief description, as well as with my favorite line from each song. Using this process I came up with 16 songs in the bottom, 24 songs in the middle, and 28 songs in the top (which separates the catalog nicely for ranking purposes), then clicking and dragging each song into folders and pitting each song against themselves. I went through the catalog, writing out each song on paper, separating and grouping songs to bottom, middle, and then top, and starting this project that way to keep me semi-sane, hahaha. My attempt to try and separate my personal feelings in trying to deliver “the best” has been challenging to say the least. I took considerable care with this list, obviously ranking “instrumentals” the very lowest because they do not include Morrissey, which Sheffield doesn’t. He doesn’t even do his homework of the fact that there has been 74 songs recorded and released by The Smiths, not 73, plus he plays the “critic” to much, instead of celebrating their catalog. By Bob Popik The glimmer twins, circa 1980-something.īy way of introduction: This list is in direct response to Rob Sheffield’s (Rolling Stone) list, which I deem as piss poor and very lazy.
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