‘Back To The Old House’: The most British song by The Smiths, according to Johnny Marr
‘Britishness’ is an ever-elusive buzzword that has been attributed to everything from drinking tea (imported from Africa and Asia) to repressing your emotions. In the modern age, however, one of the main aspects of ‘Britishness’ worthy of boasting about has been the music of the nation. From the days of The Beatles and British Invasion back in the 1960s, to the 1990s rebellion of Britpop, this sceptred isle has produced a wealth of legendary musicians, including The Smiths.
Emerging from Manchester in the wake of the city’s punk rock boom, The Smiths were founded on the songwriting partnership of guitarist Johnny Marr and vocalist Morrissey. Together, along with Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke, the band set about creating a wide range of now-iconic tracks, and always stuck rigidly to their independent ethos. As a result, The Smiths became a definitive band for the emergence of indie during the 1980s.
Within their beloved discography, The Smiths explored countless different themes and musical influences, drawing upon everything from Phil Spector’s ‘Wall of Sound’ girl groups from the 1960s, to the disco basslines that dominated New York during the 1970s. This diverse range of sounds was largely down to the ever-expanding record collections of Morrissey and Marr, which together soundtracked this endlessly exciting period in British music.
Back in 2022, Marr was asked by Vulture for The Smiths’s most British track, to which the guitarist responded, “The most British melody is probably ‘Back to the Old House’ by the Smiths because it’s very folky.” Explaining, “‘Back to the Old House’ and quite a few of the early The Smiths stuff is very Irish, so I’d have to include Ireland as well in there, all right?”
A definite fan favourite among Smiths devotees, ‘Back to the Old House’ is a pretty devastating track which only added to The Smiths’ reputation as being an incredibly melancholic outfit. Included on the compilation album Hatful of Hollow in 1984, the song is certainly rooted in acoustic folk music, although it is difficult to see just what makes it so apparently British.
As Marr states in his answer, the song is much more in keeping with Irish or even Appalachian folk. Even if you are among the people who inexplicably class the nation of Ireland as being indistinguishable from Britain (which is an issue we will not delve into within this article), Ireland still has a vastly different musical history and sensibility from that of folk artists on the other side of the sea.
In truth, it is difficult to earmark any particular Smiths track as being overtly British in its output. As mentioned previously, the band took a colossal amount of influence from the old-school pop and R&B which emerged from America during the 1960s, in addition to American-centric sounds like disco, and even punk groups like the New York Dolls.
There is no doubt that the band took influence from their surroundings in Manchester when writing songs, but it seems needlessly reductive to reduce the band’s material to its varying degrees of Britishness. Aside from anything else, both Johnny Marr and Morrissey were born to Irish parents and remain outspoken about their proud Irish heritage.
