The Smiths

Manchester, 1982. Born of The Smiths under the impulse of two unknowns, Morrissey, unemployed writer, and Johnny Marr, guitarist. Joined by Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce, the entire band was going to mark its time and beyond, testifying to the influence on formations as confirmed as R.E.M., Blur or Oasis.
The Smiths , it is four studio albums released between 1984 and 1987, at the rate of one a year. But also a large number of singles, a posthumous live and several compilations. Four albums along which the band will sing a singular rock with light melodies, served by Marr's crystal guitar, and the striking texts in their writing and declamation ( Morrissey's melody and sad song). This rock without saturation, with nice pop hints will borrow to take shape the darkness and melancholy of the new wave, but also the dandysm of Oscar Wilde – Morrissey's favorite writer. A group-specific trademark, easily identifiable from the beginning. The strength of the great. Maybe also what will cause their loss.
On his release, their first single Hand inglove in 1983 did not work the charts like those that followed, but he had the merit of attracting the attention of critics and then the public, especially during his programming by John Peel on BBC Radio 1. Gradually the band attracted a solid base of amateurs and fans to the electric synthesizers and attacks that many contemporary groups then proposed. Far from posing themselves as an alternative, the Smiths continued to chart their path which logically led them to the release of their first eponymous album in 1984, which already laid all the bases of a style that they would constantly refine afterwards. The first single to enter the British top 10 will come the same year: Heaven Knows I As early as 1985, Meat Is Murder , second album of the band including the tube "How Soon Is Now?", one of the most famous songs of the quartet, known to all or almost via the credits of the TV series Charmed which is actually only a cover by the band Love Spit Love . He followed a tour of Britain and the United States. The following year will appear The Queen Is Dead, often considered their masterpiece, still in line with their previous productions. It should be noted that it is the French actor Alain Delon whom we see, dead, on the cover (one of the peculiarities of their records which are all illustrated by famous figures of the song or cinema). Period of glory but also of trouble, like the bassist then in the grip of drug problems, or of the more tense relations between Marr and Morrissey the thinking heads of the group, the first feeling more and more narrowly in the costume of The Smiths where his desires for experimentation come up against an ever-advanced but now established style and therefore too hermetic, while the second is the member on whom all eyes are now carried.
It is in the middle of this paradox (critical and commercial success/tensions within the band) that will be composed the ultimate album of the British, the darkest of the four. As the reflection of this period of the group's life. Johnny Marr slammed the Smiths' door in August 1987, a month before the album was finally released posthumously. End of brutal adventure for the group. Everyone will go on their side: Morrissey has had an honest solo career since then, while Johnny Marr has multiplied the projects and experiences that the Smiths did not allow him to make (The The , Modest Mouse , Electronic ...).
The Smiths is like a musical parenthesis in the 1980s. Open and fast closed. Kind of like a Joy Division, the cold wave and the tragic ending less. A separate group. But whose short presence explains a lot.