I was starting to get a little worried about Sophia after her first three Smiths selections. ‘Pretty Girls Make Graves,’ ‘Well I Wonder,’ and ‘Never Had No One Ever’ are bleak songs about failing to find love and connection in a cruel world.
With today’s selection she swerves into less morose territory, offering up ‘Sweet and Tender Hooligan,’ a punk-inflected satirical defense of a violent criminal on trial in the British justice system.
Fiona’s next Smiths selection gives us a break from the melancholy — the 1986 single ‘Ask’ is one of the peppiest songs in the band’s catalog.
That was by design. Morrissey worried that a dour single would be viewed as more of the same following the band’s recent releases. So the band came up with this bright anthem about getting past the crippling shyness usually depicted in his lyrics.
Continuing my look at The Smiths through the selections of my two daughters, we arrive at Sophia’s third pick, ‘Never Had No One Ever’ from the band’s 1986 classic The Queen is Dead.
The Queen is Dead is my favorite Smiths album and among my top five or ten albums of all-time. It doesn’t have a weak song, or even a weak moment. However, if there is an underdog on this album it’s today’s Song of the Day, and I’m thrilled that Sophia has chosen it.
Sophia is really going for the jugular with her second Smiths selection, a track from the band’s 1985 sophomore album Meat is Murder. ‘Well I Wonder’ is a tear-soaked lament about unrequited love sung by a narrator who is “gasping, dying, but somehow still alive.”
This is the sort of song — and The Smiths have many — that makes longing and despair achingly beautiful. It turns sadness into something sacred.
Fiona’s next Smiths selection is the 1984 single ‘William, It Was Really Nothing,’ one of the band’s signature tunes and one of nine top 20 hits they had in the UK.
This is a quick, jaunty track, and a real contrast from the melancholy songs Fiona has chosen so far. The young woman contains multitudes.
The subject of ‘William, It Was Really Nothing’ has been debated, with some claiming it is directed at Billy Mackenzie, lead singer of the Scottish band The Associates and others suggesting it’s about the 1959 Keith Waterhouse novel Billy Liar, a favorite book of Morrissey’s and one that inspired at least two other songs.
Meet Me In Montauk 