What is the happiest song by The Smiths?
If The Smiths had ever released a genuine, all-out, start-to-finish happy song, someone probably would have done a wellness check on Morrissey to see if he was OK.
Had the man ever been put on a dose of sertraline or got a zap or serotonin, the music world of the 1980s would have sounded very different. But the misery of the man existed in a star-making dichotomy. Stood alongside Johnny Marr putting together some jangly guitar riffs, together they made a phenomenon; devastating songs you can dance to.
“Hang the DJ!” Morrissey declares in ‘Panic’ while the whole venue moves. “Heaven knows I’m miserable now!” he declares, surrounded by major chords. Singing songs of car crashes, gruesome murders, complete apathy and utter hopelessness, The Smiths made themselves famous through their gloominess and their ability to set that to a catchy backing.
But on one song, Morrissey lightens up in a somehow sincere and self-aware way. “A dreaded sunny day / So I meet you at the cemetery gates,” he begins as if he’s keen to just describe a nice day out but still needs to play the role, throwing in the gloomy details like a nod to the caricature of himself who would never dare enjoy himself.
But on ‘Cemetry Gates’, he is. It was one of his favourite things to do throughout his youth to wander Southern Cemetery in Manchester and contemplate the lives of the people lost. To him, that was a genuine good time, so even if the scene might be morbid to some, the invitation to meet Morrissey at the gates of his favourite place as the sun beats down is perhaps one of the most joyous moments in their entire discography.
Add Marr’s upbeat guitar part on top of that, and you’ve basically got a pop song. “When we signed with Rough Trade we were being hailed as ‘The Great New Songwriters’, and I was on the train coming back thinking, ‘Right, if you’re so great – first thing in the morning, sit down and write A Great Song’”, Marr said of the making of this track where he was trying to write a hit. The result is a kind of skipping song that you can imagine frolicking around a park, too; except it’s not a park, it’s a graveyard, but the details are besides the point.
In a strange turn towards the optimistic here, Morrissey on this track seems to have a genuine lust for life and a sadness towards death, rather than the desire for it that colours plenty of other songs. Contemplating the names of the headstones, he wonders their existence as people “With loves, and hates / And passions just like mine,” he not only admits to being alive and full of life, but is sad at the thought of it all coming to an end one day, adding, “It seems so unfair / I want to cry.”
Light and bright and breezy in sound as well as substance, ‘Cemetry Gates’ is not only obviously and understandably upbeat, but represents the band’s own brand of happiness. In a moment where Morrissey remains true to himself, singing of the “dreaded sunny day”, he also lets the veil slip for a moment, finding a balance between his role as the dark poet and his joyous moments.
