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