Album of the Day

Released 35 years ago today, The Smith's self-titled debut inaugurated a new era in British alternative music. The Sire collection featured balefully crooned, literate lyrics paired with jangly Rickenbacker guitar work; songs like “Hand In Glove” and “What Difference Does It Make?” were quite unlike anything else on radio at the time. Strange as this new sound was, there was something deeply affecting about Morrissey's fey, worldly persona and guitarist Johnny Marr's precise arrangements, and listeners responded, driving the collection to #2 on the U.K. chart. The first of numerous triumphs for the Manchester quartet, THE SMITHS stands as one of the landmark albums of the 1980s.