“Heaven knows I’m miserable now”: The five most depressing songs by The Smiths
The Smiths never were ones for joy and optimism. Even the band’s most upbeat songs came along with some gloomy lyrics as Morrissey’s words were always far more interested in the gloom and suffering in the world than any kind of celebration.
“Heaven knows I’m miserable now,” Morrissey sings in one of the band’s most famous songs, and that pretty much sums them up. Whether the subject at hand was employment, love, having nothing to wear to a party, murder, music or countless other subjects, the Manchester troupe viewed it all from a position of pessimism and put it to a jangling 1980s instrument.
But occasionally, they sunk from gloomy to all-out depression. These are the kinds of songs that should come along with a prescription for sertraline or an invite for some talk therapy. Already dealing with incredibly dark subject matters like death, loneliness, historic murders or fictional fury at the world, they’re then paired with some of the band’s angstiest instrumental, whether that be a rare slow piano ballad or a thundering, melodramatic rock backing.
“I was never young. This idea of fun: cars, girls, Saturday night, bottle of wine. To me, these things are morbid,” Morrissey once said, admitting that he always had a tendency towards the miserable. Across these five songs enter the sad psyche of the lyricist.
The Smiths’ five most depressing songs:
‘Asleep’
The Smiths’ take on a lullaby will not send you into a peaceful and happy slumber. Instead, Morrissey says goodnight into a deep, dark night of despair as the song’s narrator begs for death. “Don’t try to wake me in the morning ‘Cause I will be gone,” he sings in a track that is essentially a suicide note.
Death is a familiar topic across The Smiths’ discography, but when paired with one of their most stripped-back instrumentals of nothing much more than a sombre piano, the balladic form of the track is guaranteed to put a listener right into a gloomy mood. Soft, deeply sad and devastatingly sincere, it’s a moment where the band ripped away any kind of metaphor or wordy poetry to deliver a simple, depressing farewell.
‘Suffer Little Children’
It seems that Morrissey was a true crime fan. Born in Manchester in 1959, The Smiths’ singer was right there when the news of the Moors Murderers terrified and haunted his city as five young children, only a few years younger than Morrissey, were kidnapped and murdered by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley when he was a young lad. Growing up with that history lingering over his home, it seemed to be a tale the singer could never forget.
‘Suffer Little Children’ is the result of that morbid fixation as he puts the horrific tale to music. “Take me to the moor, Dig a shallow grave, And I’ll lay me down,” he sings before calling out to the victims and perpetrators by name, using one of the UK’s worst crime stories to create one of their darkest songs.
‘Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loves Me’
Imagine this. You’re in love, deeply and fully. Awash with a sense of belonging and satisfaction, beaming with the knowledge that someone knows you and loves you, wants to spend their life beside you and puts you above all others. You hold hands, kiss, and live a beautiful life, and then you wake up single and alone.
As a dissonant introduction booms to life, Morrissey captures that gutting feeling of realising how alone you are as the stark light of morning brings the harsh reality of a lonely life. While instrumentally one of their most theatrical and dramatic, the band’s ultimate opus on loneliness is a gloomy one.
‘I Know It’s Over’
They say only two things are guaranteed in this life: death and taxes. Once again, The Smiths were fixated on the former as ‘I Know It’s Over’ imagines a person’s final moments as they realise they’re alone. “If you’re so funny, then why are you on your own tonight?” Morrissey croons, reminding his audience that no amount of humour or charm or good looks can promise you company in your dying moments.
But beyond the song’s obviously depressive subject matter and lyrics, the sheer beauty of this song adds to the mood. ‘I Know It’s Over’ is undeniably one of, if not the best, vocal performances Morrissey gave in the band. Even Johnny Marr said that witnessing the recording of the vocals was “one of the highlights of my life” as he was blown away by the emotive beauty his bandmate was capable of. Pair that with the devastating lyrics, and ‘I Know It’s Over’ becomes gutwrenching.
‘This Night Has Opened My Eyes’
“At least 50 per cent of my reason for writing can be blamed on Shelagh Delaney, who wrote A Taste Of Honey,” Morrissey told NME in 1986. He credited, or pointed the finger at, British writer Delaney as a major influence on his work. In this instance, ‘The Night Has Opened My Eyes’ distils one of her entire plots into song as the singer said, “‘This Night Has Opened My Eyes’ is a Taste Of Honey song – putting the entire play to words.”
Delaney’s play tells the tale of a young girl abandoned by her lover after falling pregnant, left alone and attempting to handle her situation amidst poverty, so already, the track was destined to be gloomy. But through Morrissey’s eyes, the story gets even darker as his take on the tale turns motherhood into something like a curse as he thinks up ways the child could have been killed as a baby before examining life with the kid as if it were a fate worse than death. Taking a sad story and making it even worse, that was the band’s signature.
