20. “Ask”
The Smiths frequently couched their most grim statements in their most buoyant arrangements. To wit: “Ask.” Ostensibly a song about coming out of one’s shell and overcoming crippling shyness, Morrissey finds a way to take it to an exaggerated extreme by suggesting, “If it’s not love then it’s the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb that will bring us together.” Desperate times call for desperate measures.
19. “Sing Your Life”
One of the first songs in which Morrissey took on more of a rockabilly/glam style that characterized the following year’s Your Arsenal, Kill Uncle highlight “Sing Your Life” is Morrissey’s songwriting-for-dummies how-to guide. With a touch of string accompaniment and words of near-encouragement from Moz, a typically cynical line like “Make no mistake my friend / Your pointless life will end” almost goes unnoticed. Almost.
18. “Pregnant For The Last Time”
Following his first foray into glam ‘n’ twang, Morrissey teamed up with guitarists Boz Boorer and Alain Whyte, bassist Gary Day and drummer Spencer Cobrin, who backed him for the next decade to come. Curiously, their first single recorded together, 1991’s “Pregnant For The Last Time,” wasn’t initially released in the U.S., though it’s been on a few compilations since. And while there’s some black humor in lyrical subject matter about poor life choices and poor birth control, the most notable aspect of the tune is how much it rocks.
17. “Paint A Vulgar Picture”
As a satirist, few singers can match the lethal cynicism that Morrissey can dole out. He’s taken aim at notable targets over the years (see: Thatcher, Margaret), but “Paint A Vulgar Picture” is a venomous takedown of the record industry and its pop-culture death cult. He interweaves a personal address to a tragic figure with depictions of executives frothing over profiteering of fallen-hero worship (“Reissue, repackage, repackage!”). Ironically, The Smiths’ own catalog has been reissued endlessly, despite never going out of print.
16. “The First Of The Gang To Die”
Morrissey – a sensitive anti-hero – has written paeans to tougher anti-heroes before (see: “Suedehead”), but “The First Of The Gang To Die” is essentially his “Leader Of The Pack.” A mighty tribute to the fictional “Hector,” who was the first to pack heat, get arrested and, tragically, first to eat it on gang turf, “The First Of The Gang To Die” imparts a romantic quality in a pretty unsavory character, who stole from the “rich and the poor and not very rich and the very poor.” As much a rosy view of 20th century American mythology as a truly twisted one, this is where Morrissey meets David Lynch.
15. “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me”
The last single The Smiths ever released, “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me” contains the perfect amount of discord and sadness to end one of the brightest, and ultimately volatile careers in rock music. It’s initially austere and dark, with piano chords ringing out against the sound of an angry mob, only to erupt into a dramatic dirge. There’s a lot going on, and a massive production job, but in the center of it all, Morrissey sings his lonely ballad, fittingly symbolic of the detachment happening within the band at the time.
14. “Glamorous Glue”
Morrissey’s affinity for glam rock is an inextricable part of his identity, though his most glam-influenced work didn’t arrive until 1992’s Your Arsenal, produced by none other than Spiders From Mars’ Mick Ronson. Backed by a group of musicians that had worked with him on “Pregnant For The Last Time,” Morrissey channels Bolan, Bowie and a pre-sex scandal Gary Glitter on “Glamorous Glue,” a monster of a song that musically celebrates the UK of the ’70s, while giving an elegy for the UK of the ’90s.
13. “November Spawned A Monster”
When Morrissey courts darkness, and the harshest of truths, as he does on “November Spawned A Monster,” the product can be truly devastating. Written from the perspective of a disabled girl, the song is a brutal look at the cruel perceptions of others. Add to it the anguished moans of Mary Margaret O’Hara, and the end result is one of his most sublimely uncomfortable songs.
12. “I Know It’s Over”
The final step in Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief is “acceptance,” but when Morrissey acknowledges that it’s over, he seems to have brought depression along with him. A beautifully slow-building ballad on The Smiths’ masterpiece, The Queen Is Dead, “I Know It’s Over” is one of the most eloquent songs about loss and loneliness ever written. It’s devastating from the start, with Morrissey sighing, “Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head,” and only grows to an escalated, but beautiful, anguish in its climactic outro.
11. “Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before”
One of Morrissey’s great talents is his ability to take the most seemingly mundane of circumstances and make them sound like classic tragedy. The gist of “Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before,” as best we can tell – a gent gets into a spat with a loved one, gets silly drunk and smashes his crotch on his bicycle crossbar, the pain of which was enough to “make a shy, bald Buddhist reflect and plan a mass murder.” It’s a gift. (Great Johnny Marr riffs in this one as well.)