Vinyl Record
The Smiths - The Queen Is Dead
The Smiths - The Queen Is Dead on LP vinyl. A 1986 record available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel, Ireland.
LP ยท 1986
Available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel.
Buyer notes: 1986 LP, currently available from the Kilmorna Collection vinyl shelf. Pay for pickup in Listowel or ship within Ireland for EUR 5.50.
The Queen Is Dead is The Smiths in 1986 turning all their contradictions into an album that feels complete: savage and tender, funny and hopeless, English to the point of suffocation yet musically restless enough to escape its own room. The title track opens by attacking national myth with a rush of drums and guitar, then the record moves through workplace spite on Frankly, Mr Shankly, emotional collapse on I Know It's Over, music-hall wit on Vicar In A Tutu and one of the band's most enduring romantic statements in There Is A Light That Never Goes Out. Johnny Marr's writing is unusually varied, from rockabilly snap to ringing melancholy, while Morrissey's performance turns loneliness into public theatre. The album's greatness comes from that friction: it can sound like a private breakdown, a comedy of manners and a national autopsy within the same side of vinyl.
It matters because The Queen Is Dead became the Smiths album most often treated as their definitive full-length statement. It captures Marr's melodic range and Morrissey's comic despair at a peak, helping define what independent British guitar music could aspire to.
For collectors, this is the central Smiths studio title: the album where the catalogue's emotional, literary and guitar-pop strands lock together. There Is A Light That Never Goes Out, I Know It's Over and the title track give it durable weight beyond ordinary 1980s nostalgia.
Jangling British indie rock with muscular rhythm sections, bright acoustic and electric guitars, music-hall turns, black humour, romantic fatalism, ringing melody and a sense of drama that is both intimate and grand.
Recommended for: Collectors seeking the definitive Smiths album statement; Listeners drawn to literate guitar pop with emotional extremes; Fans of There Is A Light That Never Goes Out, I Know It's Over and Cemetery Gates.
When was The Queen Is Dead released? The Queen Is Dead was released in 1986 as The Smiths' third studio album. Why is The Queen Is Dead so highly regarded? It brings together the band's sharp humour, melancholy, political bite and Marr's most varied guitar writing in one concise album. Which songs are essential? The title track, I Know It's Over, Cemetery Gates, Bigmouth Strikes Again and There Is A Light That Never Goes Out are key pieces.