The Queen Is Dead by The Smiths

Dummy

Portishead

The Bristol, UK, band’s debut forged the soothing, discomfiting sound of trip-hop.

Few debuts have arrived as distinct and fully formed as Portishead’s 1994 release Dummy, a downtempo template for the eerie sound that would go on to become known as trip-hop. Named after a ’70s British TV drama about a deaf woman who becomes a prostitute, the record is replete with turntable scratches, shuddering drums, and scrapes of fragmented guitar, all anchored in vocalist Beth Gibbons’ crystalline falsetto singing about “the blackness, the darkness, forever” (“Wandering Star”).

“We had to kind of be strong with our ideas about what we did and didn’t want to do.”

Geoff Barrow

Portishead

Standout tracks like “Sour Times” and “Glory Box” lull the listener into a trance of cinematic string swells, crisp drum grooves, and Gibbons’ velvet vocals—a sound that became ubiquitous among contemporaries like Morcheeba, Mono, and Sneaker Pimps, and even led Dummy to be misclassified as pacifying music. But don’t be fooled: It luxuriates in discomfort, as capable of soothing the listener with its warm melodies as it is of jarring them. Dummy is a record for night dwellers, everywhere and always.

The Queen Is Dead

The Smiths

Music to cry with or laugh at, all within the same songs.

Morrissey had already aspired to be the Oscar Wilde of pop music, but The Smiths’ third album is the first time he sounds like a lock for the title. The singular chemical reaction between his perpetual despair and Johnny Marr’s ringing guitars is indie rock’s often imitated but never duplicated formula—songs about sadness that are also a hoot to listen to.

The Queen Is Dead remains the band’s most dramatic—or maybe melodramatic—album, addressing Moz’s concerns with everything from stardom (“Frankly, Mr. Shankly”) to celibacy (“Never Had No One Ever”) to his usual arsenal of limitless self-pity (“Bigmouth Strikes Again,” “The Boy With the Thorn in His Side”). He even proclaims to “know how Joan of Arc felt.”

This self-parodic approach works best on the thrilling tingle of the incredibly romantic “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out,” where he croons, “If a double-decker bus crashes into us/To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die.” There was never a band as openly confessional and conversational, so willfully sincere and cheeky.

“The Smiths were crossing girl groups with electro, believe it or not.”

Johnny Marr

The Smiths

Apple Music 100 Best Albums

Dummy

The Queen Is Dead