16/06/2026
ON THIS DAY in 1986 - 40 years ago exactly - UK indie rock legends The Smiths released their third album 'The Queen Is Dead' through Rough Trade Records. In the aftermath of their second album 'Meat Is Murder' (1985) the band's chief songwriters - guitarist Johnny Marr and frontman Morrissey - escaped to Manchester to write songs for the next album, seeking clear air from the pressures of London and the attendant music industry (issues which Morrissey also channelled into the album's acerbic and often hilarious lyrics). That same pair also oversaw the album's production - which took place at studios in Surrey, London and Manchester - assisted by engineer Stephen Street (who'd also performed the same role on 'Meat Is Murder'). Taking its name from American writer Hubert Selby Jr.'s 1964 novel, 'Last Exit to Brooklyn', the album spawned three singles - 'The Boy With The Thorn in His Side', 'Bigmouth Strikes Again' and 'There Is A Light That Never Goes Out' - and came out to resoundingly positive reviews, with Rolling Stone offering, "this LP has songs about being buried alive, picnicking in cemeteries, Mom, Oscar Wilde and the comforts of total isolation. There’s no mistaking Morrissey’s Edith Piaf-on-the-dole vocals or Johnny Marr’s wall o’ guitars, but the Smiths sound different somehow - self-assured instead of self-obsessed". 'The Queen is Dead' went to #2 in the UK - as well as #30 in Australia and #71 in the States - and remains a revered album decades after the fact: in 2006 NME named it the second-greatest British album of all time and Q magazine placed the album at #3 in its list of '40 Best Albums of the '80s, in 2013 it was ranked the greatest record of all time on the NME's Greatest Albums of All Time list and then in 2020 Rolling Stone placed the album #113 on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time. It's still beloved to this day with AllMusic's 5-star retrospective review reckoning, "'Meat Is Murder' may have been a holding pattern, but 'The Queen Is Dead' is the Smiths' great leap forward, taking the band to new musical and lyrical heights. Opening with the storming title track, 'The Queen Is Dead' is a harder-rocking record than anything the Smiths had attempted before, but that's only on a relative scale -- although the backbeat is more pronounced, the group certainly doesn't rock in a conventional sense. Instead, Johnny Marr has created a dense web of guitars, alternating from the minor-key rush of 'Bigmouth Strikes Again"\' and the faux rockabilly of 'Vicar in a Tutu' to the bouncy acoustic pop of 'Cemetry Gates' and 'The Boy With the Thorn in His Side',as well as the lovely melancholy of 'I Know It's Over' and 'There Is a Light That Never Goes Out'. And the rich musical bed provides Morrissey with the support for his finest set of lyrics. Shattering the myth that he is a self-pitying sap, Morrissey delivers a devastating set of clever, witty satires of British social mores, intellectualism, class, and even himself. He also crafts some of his finest, most affecting songs, particularly in the wistful 'The Boy With the Thorn in His Side' and the epic 'There Is a Light That Never Goes Out', two masterpieces that provide the foundation for a remarkable album".
