‘The Queen Is Dead’ - The Smiths, 1986
Possibly a strange song choice given the rant that’s about to ensue: it’s hard to support the Irish football team. Good Lord, when did a 1-0 home win against Cyprus (win percentage of 12.3% in all competitive fixtures, never qualified for a major tournament) constitute a good result? Playing two holding midfielders, especially as inexperienced as Gibson and Whelan, is ridiculous when you come up against a side like Cyprus. If 1-0 at home against them is a good result, what’s a good result away against Italy or Bulgaria? </rant>
Anyway, ‘The Queen Is Dead’ is my choice of song for today. I think The Smiths are only alright really, but they’ve got some good songs and this is up there with the best. The song begins with an homesick World War I-era English woman counting off the traditional favourite ‘Take Me Back To Dear Old Blighty’ (I’m sure most of the Irish squad sang it after the game last night), before the drums and Johnny Marr’s always excellent guitar chime in. Morrissey’s first lines are among his very best lyrics:
“Farewell to the land’s cheerless marshes,
Hemmed in like a boar between archers,
Her very Lowness with a head in a sling,
I’m truly sorry but it sounds like a wonderful thing”
While the song denounces the Queen of England and all that she (being Irish, I don’t feel compelled to capitalise the “s” in “she”) represents, the archaic language and symbolism of the boar between arches contradicts Morrissey’s progressive leanings. This makes the song, to my mind, much deeper than the Sex Pistols brilliant ‘God Save The Queen’. Morrissey also questions his place in the scheme of things, almost echoing the decrepid old Tory MP who backs up the royal line:
“Oh has the world changed, or have I changed?
some nine year old tough who peddles drugs
I swear to God, I swear I never even knew what drugs were”
Morrissey always was a great lyrics-writer, but my problem with a lot of The Smiths stuff was the dated ’80s style - much of it was just a cut above crap like Bronski Beat. But Marr’s guitar work on this is amazing, a mix of glam rock (robbing Bowie to pay Suede) and Led Zeppelin-type posturing. It’s hard to decide whether the lyrics or guitar are the best part of this, but you can’t deny that both are top-class.
Here’s a video for the song made by Derek Jarman, a famous British artist of the ’80s. And here’s a live version of the song from Nottingham, which comes across as a hell of a lot punkier. Enjoy, and apologies for the rant on the Irish football team, but I was definitely more measured than Dunphy (epic rant by the man himself on a different subject) was on RTE last night.
Last 5 posts by Dave
- 'New Generation' - Suede, 1994 - January 6th, 2009
- 'Sunflower' - Paul Weller, 1993 - December 18th, 2008
- 'Brilliant Mistake' - Elvis Costello, 1986 - December 16th, 2008
- 'Icky Thump' - The White Stripes, 2007 - December 11th, 2008
- 'Careering' - Public Image Limited, 1979 - December 10th, 2008
