This Day in Music
 
 

Classic Albums The Smiths - The Queen Is Dead

 

 
 

Release date UK & US June 1986, UK chart peak No.2 spending 22 weeks on the chart

 Features The Queen Is Dead, Vicar In a Tutu, Never Had No One Ever
 “I love the guitar playing, I love the singing, the bass playing, the drums, and together they’re even better. Even really strange tracks you really shouldn't like – Frankly, Mr Shankly, say are tremendous.” Jonny Buckland, Coldplay
"The Queen Is Dead will help bury the one-dimensional misery-guts attitude so beloved of the group’s denigrators, while further displaying to all and sundry the simple fact that this is essentially music brimming with valorous intent." Melody Maker 1986
 "...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. Morrissey sounds clearer and more melodic than ever before, wafting unlikely lines to high heaven. Like it or not, this guy's going to be around for a while." Rolling Stone  
"They were fantastic, in a way that Orson Welles was once fantastic, or Patrick McGoohan when he made The Prisoner, or Dirk Bogarde's eyebrows every time he gets asked a question about homosexuality. The Smiths' best album having now entered common folk. Simply one of the greatest albums created by a British group" Q  
“I still don’t know if its my favourite Smiths album, but enough people have told me it changed, if not the world, then their lives.” Smiths guitarist Johhny Marr 

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