Popular Culture Review Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994 | Page 81

The Smiths While glam rock mutated into the 'New Romantics' movement, evidenced by Spandau Ballet, ABC and Haircut One Hundred, heralding just as much artifice and fashion albeit in a heterosexual context, the punk movement went underground with the formation of the Situationists, an alliance of radical European artists.^ The juxtaposition of the two movements can be located however in The Smiths, a band formed originally by Steven Morrissey and Johnny Marr in Manchester in 1983. In interviews, Morrissey foregrounds the ii\fluence of punk on the next generation of British music, with a stress on the importance of the Sex Pistols as an influence on the Smiths.^ To underline the coimection. The Smiths signed with the small label Rough Trade, which had been a significant force in the punk movement, rather than signing with a major company which would ensure adequate distribution and publicity.^ The Smiths functioned primarily through transforming overtly political messages, often anarchic as in the punk movement, into issues of personal style. In other words, whereas the punks were confrontational in their rhetoric. The Smiths transformed this confrontation into personal terms, describing the effect of living in a devalued society as a marginalized individual. Through this transformation, the anarchy of the punks became illustrated through the lyrics of The Smiths, describing their utter inability to exist within society. While the form of The Smiths' stardom is based on the punk aesthetic of revolt colliding with glam emphasis on artifice and theatricality as evidenced in personal style, a minority of their songs do, in fact, concern political and social unrest explicitly. More specifically, these songs offer stinging indictments of Thatcherism, the Royal Family and the inequity between the depressed industrial North of Britain and the relatively affluent South. Recalling the Sex Pistols' Anarchy in the UK, The Smiths' single "The Queen is Dead" (also the title for their fourth album) advocates, in no uncertain terms, destruction of the Royal Family and all Royal institutions, with the (Jueen described as "her very Lowness with her head in a sling." Similarly, the song "Still 111” offers a manifesto for the Thatcher-depressed youth: "I decree today that life is simply taking and not giving/England is mine and it owes me a living/Ask me why and I'll spit in your eye, ask me why and I'll spit in your eye." The England of Thatcher can offer no hope for the young in the eyes of Morrissey and The Smiths: in "Interesting Drug," Morrissey warns of