The Queen Is Dead
| The Queen Is Dead | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio album by The Smiths | |||||||||
|
Publication |
|||||||||
| Label (s) |
Rough Trade Records Sire Records |
||||||||
|
Format (s) |
|||||||||
|
Title (number) |
10 |
||||||||
|
running time |
36:47 |
||||||||
| occupation | |||||||||
|
Studio (s) |
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
The Queen Is Dead is the third studio album by the British rock band The Smiths . It was released on June 16, 1986 in the UK on Rough Trade Records and reached number 2 on the album charts there. On June 23, 1986, the album was released in the US, where it reached number 70 on the Billboard charts.
background
The album was recorded in London and Farnham in the winter of 1985 . On The Queen Is Dead, The Smiths combined different styles of music , such as rockabilly , pop and post-punk , and thus shaped the music of the late 1980s in England.
The fact that lead singer Morrissey is a fan of British films in the style of " Kitchen Sink Realism " from the 1960s becomes clear at several points on the album. For The Queen Is Dead, for example, he used parts of the soundtrack for The L-Shaped Room from 1962. The album cover he designed shows the French actor Alain Delon from the French film noir The Hell of Algiers from 1964.
The song There Is a Light that Never Goes Out was chosen by Morrissey as the closing song of his concerts on the 2004 "You Are The Quarry" tour.
Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others was regularly played on the US tour "Tour Of Refusal" 2009 by Morrissey .
On October 20, 2017, Warner released a Deluxe Edition, which includes a new remaster of the album as well as demo and live recordings on 3 CDs and a DVD or on 5 LPs. The DVD contains the short film The Queen Is Dead by Derek Jarman (1986) and the album in high-resolution audio quality.
reception
| source | rating |
|---|---|
| Allmusic |
|
| Rolling Stone |
|
| Pitchfork Media |
|
| Laut.de |
|
The Smiths' Magnum Opus is not only one of the most influential albums in indie rock , it is also considered a milestone in pop music today and is at the top of the list. It took first place in the “Best Album Ever Made” list (1989) and fifth in the “300 Best Albums of the Past 30 Years (1985-2014)” (2015) by Spin magazine .
The Melody Maker magazine named The Queen Is Dead in 2000 for best album of all time.
The music magazine Rolling Stone leads The Queen is Dead at number 218 of the 500 best albums of all time .
In the New Musical Express selection of the 500 best albums of all time , the album reached number 1 in 2013.
Tempo magazine named it the best music album of all time in the early 1990s.
Laut.de voted The Queen Is Dead at number 1 of the 100 best albums of the 1980s.
It ranks fourth in the selection of the 50 best albums of the 1980s by Musikexpress magazine .
Pitchfork Media selected The Queen Is Dead as # 6 of the 100 Best Albums of the 1980s in 2002. As of 2018, it has been number 13 of the 200 best albums of the decade.
The Queen Is Dead is one of the 1001 albums You Must Hear Before You Die .
Track list
With the exception of the marked exceptions, all songs were written by Morrissey (lyrics) and Johnny Marr (music).
page A
- The Queen Is Dead (1) (Miller, Godfrey, Scott, Morrissey, Marr) - 6:24
- Frankly, Mr. Shankly - 2:17
- I Know It's Over - 5:48
- Never Had No One Ever - 3:36
- Cemetry Gates - 2:39
Side B
- Bigmouth Strikes Again - 3:12
- The Boy with the Thorn in His Side - 3:15
- Vicar in a Tutu - 2:21
- There Is a Light That Never Goes Out - 4:02
- Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others - 3:14
Chart placements
| year | title | UK | United States | FRG | NL | SWE | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Awards | |||||||
| 1986 | The Queen is Dead | 2 | 70 | 33 | 17th | 39 |
 UK: Gold (July 1, 1986) USA: Gold (September 19, 1990)
|
Quotes
“The title doesn't necessarily refer to Queen Elizabeth. There is a safety net ... that the old queen in the text actually means me. So if they lynch me or nail me to the cross, I have this trapdoor to slide through. But, with that said, the song is certainly some kind of general state of the nation observation. "
“It has never happened to me that people would take the title offensively. The song existed and I thought it was so strong it deserves special attention, which as a title track did it justice. (…) Another aspect was that no top 10 groups, or an English band with a great status, tried to put together a thoughtful language. And I thought The Queen Is Dead, as a title between Invisible Touch and A Kind Of Magic and Picture Book, would be something you pause about. "
“Some things we did are not as good as they are remembered. "The Queen Is Dead" is not our masterpiece. I should know I was there. I delivered the sandwiches. "
Individual evidence
- ↑ Review by Thomas Erlewine on AllMusic.com (accessed August 13, 2015)
- ↑ Review by Gavin Edwards on RollingStone.com (archived) (accessed December 28, 2018)
- ↑ Review by Douglas Wolk Pitchfork.com (accessed August 18, 2015)
- ↑ Review by Martin Mengele on Laut.de (accessed on August 18, 2015)
- ↑ The 300 Best Albums of the Past 30 Years (1985-2014) on spin.com (accessed May 3, 2018)
- ↑ Top 100 Greatest Music Albums by Melody Maker (2000) on besteveralbums.com (accessed May 3, 2018)
- ↑ 218th place: The Queen is Dead on RollingStone.com, accessed on October 20, 2015
- ↑ 500 Greatest Albums of All Time on nme.com, accessed October 20, 2015
- ↑ The best albums of the 80s on laut.de (accessed May 3, 2018)
- ↑ Musikexpress, 3/2003
- ↑ Top 100 Albums of the 1980s on pitchfork.com (accessed May 3, 2018)
- ↑ The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s on pitchfork.com (accessed December 28, 2018)
Web links
- The Queen Is Dead on Allmusic (English)