The Smiths

The Smiths' albums depend on a productive tension between melodic guitar writing and an unusually theatrical lyrical voice. Johnny Marr's layered parts can sound buoyant, intricate or restrained, while Morrissey's singing moves between intimacy, irony and emotional exaggeration. The debut establishes that combination in a relatively clean setting. Meat Is Murder broadens the rhythmic and production vocabulary, The Queen Is Dead sharpens the contrast between force and vulnerability, and Strangeways, Here We Come develops a fuller instrumental frame. Across a compact studio catalog, those changes make complete-album comparison especially useful. Ranking the records involves listening to how humor and melancholy interact with the arrangements, and whether a sequence's shifts in mood create continuity rather than judging each album only by its best-known songs.