The Smiths A-Z: "Cemetry Gates"

BookishBoy

Well-Known Member









Next up in our Smiths A-Z project is this song from The Queen Is Dead album of 1986. "Cemetry Gates" was also released as a B-side on the "Ask" single, later that year.

The song was played live by the Smiths 41 times, all in 1986.

What do we think?
 
Another great song, I've always found it funny how the music is quite upbeat and jolly whereas the the lyrics are sad.

 
Another cracking track, based around Marr's brilliant composition and playing, whereas lyrically it almost feels like Morrissey crams two different songs into one: a sad, reflective lyric about death, the past, and the passing of time and also a wonderfully daft, playful lyric about him and a friend trying to outwit each other by nicking different lines of poetry.

When you add all of the elements together, you get a song that no other band in the history of pop could have come up with!
 
One of my absolute favourites. It is perfect. It's a long time since I've seen the live footage from Wolverhampton - I had a scratchy VHS bootleg back in the day...I think I bought it from an add in the NME? - and that has made me love the song even more. Jaysus, with Gannon in the gang, that band was fecking good!
 
One of Johnny's most beautiful, feather-light (and sadly most-butchered) compositions.
Also one of my favourite Smiths stories - in that JM almost binned it, until he played it to Morrissey in his kitchen and Moz said, "That's IT, that's it, that's the song, play it again!"
 
I love the fact that there are STILL folks out there in denial that he sings "Whale-blubber Wilde is on mine". :ROFLMAO:
 
One of the most incriminating songs in the case of ‘the Smiths are a bunch of miserable poofs’. Twee as f***, lyrics about books and death, campy singing. Luckily, I’m on the defense team. I’d say it’s a gorgeous song, mixing sunny featherlight guitar pop with witty lyrics about the passing of time and trials and tribulations of the poet.
 
more loveliness!

Who else besides Morrissey and Marr can create songs like these?
No band has yet to hold a candle to them.


If you must write prose/poems
The words you use should be your own
Don't plagiarise or take "on loan"
'Cause there's always someone, somewhere
With a big nose, who knows
And who trips you up and laughs
When you fall
Who'll trip you up and laugh
When you fall”



Has to be my favorite part of the song, the words melody and music just work so well together
 
This song could be the defining song of The Smiths, either by its words or guitars . Either way this song elevates the smiths to something completely different in British music.

This song could be easily the best on the album and beggars belief why it was never a single.
 
Another masterwork from the band, this one perhaps their most “jangly” and “indie” track of all. Despite the pigeonholing that may connote, the song floats gloriously over tired (even back then) genre conventions to instead create arguably the essence of the Smiths: Johnny unspools yet another lyrical guitar phrase that shifts between cautious strumming and ray-of-sunshine picking, characterising the best of his work in a 2 minute nutshell. Similarly, Moz’s lyrics act as a sort of admission (in song at least) to the band’s repeated accusations (as if it was a bad thing) of nabbing from literary source material: “ere has do done did...words that must surely be your own...”. This is compounded, hilariously, by the mispronunciation of “plagiarise”, tying up a Carry-On worthy tale of graveyard walks (an echo, clearly, of Moz and Linder’s similar jaunts). With a neat Rourke bassline that fills in any gaps the guitar may leave in the low end and some robust drumming from Joyce, it’s all sewn up.
10/10
 









Next up in our Smiths A-Z project is this song from The Queen Is Dead album of 1986. "Cemetry Gates" was also released as a B-side on the "Ask" single, later that year.

The song was played live by the Smiths 41 times, all in 1986.

What do we think?

I just can’t explain, so I won’t even try to…
 
This song could be the defining song of The Smiths, either by its words or guitars . Either way this song elevates the smiths to something completely different in British music.

This song could be easily the best on the album and beggars belief why it was never a single.
I actually wholeheartedly agree with you for once
 
Wow, 3 in a row from TQID and all 10/10... maybe we need to skip to "Golden Lights" next just to break up the unrivaled brilliance? ;)
 
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