Smiths - The Queen Is Dead CDs • Vinyl Records • LPs • Music Albums

as "Now I know how Joan of Arc felt/As the flames rose to her Roman nose/And her Walkman started to melt."

The shift came because he learned to express his self-loathing through mockery -- on "I Know It's Over," when he moaned, "Oh, Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head," it was both a parody of his affectations and the only way he knew how to express his extreme gloom. Guitarist Johnny Marr matched his verbal excess with witty, supple music, ranging from glam rock to country jangles.Morrissey sang about England like he'd never been there. He was more comfortable with his poetry (Keats, Yeats and Wilde) and his imagination. So when he fantasized about meeting the queen, he provided a capsule review for a career of glorious pretensions: "So I broke into the palace with a sponge and a rusty spanner/She said, 'Eh, I know you, and you cannot sing'/I said, 'That's nothing -- you should hear me play piano.' " If the queen's reaction to Morrissey was "We are not amused," then she was the only one.

GAVIN EDWARDS
(From RS 920, April 17, 2003)