Each week, SPIN digs into the catalogs of great artists and highlights songs you might not know for our Deep Cut Friday series.
Morrissey was an obsessive music lover before he was a rock star, starting a Sparks fan club as a teenager and writing many letters to the editor that were published in British music magazines in the ’70s. On The Smiths’ fourth album Strangeways, Here We Come, he wrote a withering lyric about the way record labels capitalize on the deaths of stars like Elvis Presley. In the most memorable lines from “Paint A Vulgar Picture,” the Smiths frontman mocked how the music industry finds new ways to sell the same music over and over: “Re-issue, re-package, re-package / Re-evaluate the songs / Double pack with a photograph / Extra track and a tacky badge.”
By the time Strangeways, Here We Come was released in September 1987, though, The Smiths had already broken up. And as Morrissey and Johnny Marr went their separate ways and began decades of feuding, Rough Trade, Sire Records, and other labels set about maximizing their profits from The Smiths’ small but influential catalog, with compilations, box sets, remasters, single re-releases, and music videos edited together from old footage. Every time some more Smiths products hit stores, “Paint A Vulgar Picture” took on a little more unpleasant irony.
Morrissey has continued performing many Smiths songs as a solo artist, but had dropped “Paint A Vulgar Picture” from his setlists since 1997. After postponing his first two scheduled concerts of 2026, he returned to the stage in San Antonio on January 10, and performed the song for the first time in nearly 30 years. The timing was interesting, given that Morrissey had spent the last few years airing his grievances with the music business, complaining he couldn’t find a label to release his music since being dropped by BMG in 2020, and suggesting that he was being punished for his controversial political opinions. On January 9, the day before he sang his old music industry critique again, Morrissey announced that Sire Records, the label that had released The Smiths’ albums in America and launched his solo career, would release his new album Make-Up Is a Lie in March.
Three more essential Smiths deep cuts:
“Suffer Little Children”
One of the first songs Morrissey and Marr wrote together, “Suffer Little Children” was inspired by the infamous Moors murders that took place in and around Manchester in the mid-’60s. Some retail chains refused to sell The Smiths’ 1984 debut amidst controversy over the song’s lyrics.
“Meat is Murder”
With the title track to 1985’s Meat is Murder, Morrissey planted his flag as popular music’s most outspoken vegetarian: “The flesh you so fancifully fry / Is not succulent, tasty, or kind / It’s death for no reason.”
“I Know It’s Over”
“I Know It’s Over” is one of the songs from 1986’s The Queen is Dead that has grown into a fan favorite in the years since The Smiths’ breakup. It’s been covered by Jeff Buckley and featured in the 2009 film 500 Days of Summer, and is frequently among the band’s top streaming tracks.
