found so appealing about The Smiths, and I think she hit the nail on the head when she said it was because she enjoys how ‘full of it’ Morrissey was.  Outwardly, we roll our eyes at his theatrical declarations that ‘the luck [he’s] had can make a good man turn bad,’ while inwardly, a part of us can’t help but relate. That’s the unique appeal of The Smiths, really. I’d argue that they're the only band who are able to articulate the angst we pretend we don’t have, while being witty and ironic at the same time. 

However, Morrissey’s moany lyrics and voice are definitely not for everybody, and are probably the thing that most Smiths haters go to when criticising the band, lumping them in with Radiohead as the bands which are ‘just too depressing’. Though I do agree that both bands have rightly earned their reputation for misery, they go about it in very different ways. While there are probably about 3 major chords in Radiohead’s entire discography, The Smiths’ sound, by contrast, is bright and nostalgic. As my friend put it, ‘they’re a band who can make you dance about to a song about a hospitalised loved one’ (‘Girlfriend in a Coma’), and this is all thanks to Johnny Marr’s genius guitar playing (my friends and I have talked late into the night about whether he might be one of best guitarists of all time).