Former Smiths front-man Steven “Morrissey” Morrissey spends his days quietly scanning the Times obituary columns for news of Queen Elizabeth II, knowing that when she finally does pass away, his 1986 Album ‘The Queen is Dead’ will most likely be swept to number 1 by a sombre, patriotic nation.
Morrissey practising his mournful look
“We [The Smiths] toyed with the idea of a perennial Christmas song, like Mariah Carey and Wham did, but the market was a bit crowded, so ‘How Soon is Christmas?’ eventually became the track we all know as ‘How Soon is Now?’, and ‘Santa in a Coma’ just got binned,” chirped the happy-go-lucky crooner.
“Then Johnny [Marr] said we should put down a track that played the long game – a little retirement bonus for us if you will – and we bounced around some ideas for blue ocean strategies, where we would be guaranteed to be the go-to track when some inevitable future event happened.”
That track was ‘The Queen is Dead’, and the album of the same name became one of the defining albums of the eighties, but Morrissey expects a revival of its success when the Queen finally does die.
Morrissey points to the boost Prince got when 1999 eventually happened, and the windfall enjoyed by The Primitives following the death of Princess Diana, and chuckles, “This is one set of royalties I’m really looking forward to.”
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