‘Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me’: The Smiths’ most underrated song
When Oasis announced their reunion this year, it went some way towards proving there is nothing money can’t buy. Decade-long quarrels were put to bed to the tune of a rumoured £50million, sparking conversations amongst finished bands everywhere. All of them musing, “Should we get back together?” Oasis was always the most sought after of the lot, but there is one band who have run them close, for their musical brilliance, lengthy absence and general sense that it would be an impossibility: The Smiths.
“We got made an offer really recently, in fact, but yeah, I said no,” Johnny Marr recently said in reference to the potential of a reunion. “I’m not an idiot, the vibe’s not right. Bad vibe”, and it’s a vibe simply unfixable by invoking a brotherly bond. Marr and Morrissey weren’t necessarily kindred spirits who hunkered down in the classroom one afternoon and hatched a plan to become the country’s biggest band.
After meeting at a Patti Smith concert in 1978, the pair realised they had each found the missing piece in their creative jigsaw. Starkly different individuals yet clearly bound together by the pursuit of music, they dove headfirst into songwriting and established a new sound upon which Britain’s musical hopes could be built on.
Four years and four studio albums followed, in a rise to the top of the charts almost too meteoric, and so crushing the relatively young and naïve band under the boot of bureaucracy before they even got going. Marr, 23 at the time and having to assume the role of manager due to the management merry-go-round they experienced in those heady years, walked away, and the band have never played as one since.
Which is probably why among alternative circles, the appetite for their reunion is somewhat insatiable. With only four years of reality to use as reference, the idea of picturing the four founding members on stage once again feels more imaginary than any of the other big names whose hats have been thrown into the reunion ring, for at least two generations of music fans have never even lived through the opportunity to see them play.
It’s a fact made sorer when you take into consideration where they were, come their last album, Strangeways, Here We Come. They were arguably a band hitting their creative stride, mastering their signature sound while showing glimpses of the evolution necessary for them to continue being interesting. And in ‘Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me’, they had the perfect opening song for what would have inevitably been mammoth shows.
After two minutes of sampled audio, playing the archival mutterings of a miners’ strike accompanied by piano chords, the song drops into one of their most hauntingly captivating chord sequences. Sonically, it’s packed with drama and typifies Morrissey’s brand of deeply pessimistic lyrics delivered in a way that incites an optimistic sea of sing-alongs.
It’s a song well-loved amongst the music community as well. Bowie once referenced the track to say, “I still rate Morrissey as one of the best lyricists in Britain”, while André 3000 once claimed, “I personally wish I would have written that Smiths song ‘Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me’. Genius song”. And in 2016, The Last Shadow Puppets recruited Marr for their Alexandra Palace gig, where together they opened the show with this song, proving it’s a bulletproof choice for a gig opener.
I simply urge you to play the track and imagine a parallel universe where Morrissey and Marr have resolved their tensions, granting fans worldwide their wishes of seeing them play their string of relatively unplayed hits just once. And before they drop into that back catalogue, they burst the bubble of long-awaited tension with this song. It’s almost like a dream.
