CULT RECORD:THE SMITHS:"THE QUEEN IS DEAD"(1986)

Oscar Wilde used to make fun of people going out to moon over the London fog:"Where the cultured catch an effect, the uncultured catch cold." Morrisey understands. His gracious affectations have always given the sniffles to the rock nation. Solo and as lead singer for the Smiths, Morrisey has invented a whole new arsenal of ways to irritate vast numbers of people with his own shamelessly fey vocal overkill. He's just a funny guy, hand-wringer, pop singer, herbivore stress-god, wearer of hearing aids, the type of guy who thinks "last night I dreamt that somebody loved me" is a clever pickup line. He stacks up adjectives and adverbs the way his beloved New York Dolls used to stack Marshall amps. He's the Wilde thing who makes our mood swing. The Smiths had degenerated so swiftly into the planet's dreariest band that the wit of The Queen Is Dead came as a seismic shock. Johnny Marr sank his teeth into the crass guitar flash he'd always carefully avoided, while Morrisey unbuttoned his lip to cringe, whimper, gossip, smear the royal family, and yearn for the ultimate orgasm in a car crash. Marr pulls everything from metal to flamenco out of his trick bag, but it's the Mozzer's album, and not because he'd grown up--his catchiest song here is the one that starts "A dreaded sunny day/So I meet you at the cemetery gates." Instead, he flaunts his vocal plumage as a musical end in itself, so that the choked sobs and moans of "Bigmouth Strikes Again" are ever funnier than the words they're attached to. An absolute classic,wimpdom's proudest moment, and it established Morrisey as rock's clown prince, heterosexually unintelligible and louder than a bomb.

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