King Street Cat wrote:
Ah, The Smiths. You either get them or you don't, and if you don't get them the first time you hear them you never will. Personally, I love their happy miserabilism, it's disco music for masochists.
I feel the same way; much like Radiohead, it's easy to label them as miserable - but if you actually listen to Morrisey's lyrics, his arch, kitchen sink writing style contains a fair amount of humour - albeit delivered with an arrogant sneer, which understandably pisses a lot of people off. For me, the greatest lyricist of his generation, if only for this line:
"If a double-decker bus crashes into us / To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die / And if a 10-ton truck kills the both of us / To die by your side, the pleasure, the privilege is mine.”