Track Listing

1. Panic
2. Ask
3. London
4. Bigmouth Strikes Again
5. Shakespeare's Sister
6. There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
7. Shoplifters Of The World Unite
8. Boy With The Thorn In His Side
9. Asleep
10. Unloveable
11. Half A Person
12. Stretch Out And Wait
13. That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore
14. You Just Haven't Earned It Yet Baby
15. Rubber Ring
16. Oscillate Wildly
17. Money Changes Everything

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17111 in Music
• Released on: 1993-11-15
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

Picks up where Hatful of Hollow left off.
The World Won't Listen is a similar collection to the earlier Hatful of Hollow, bringing together songs from the period between Meat is Murder and The Queen is Dead, with a few songs overlapping along the way. Together with the aforementioned Hatful... it remains, perhaps, the best introduction to the music of the Smiths that anyone is likely to find, and is probably better value for money than the endless, alternate "best of..." collections, currently available.

The songs on this album are probably more familiar to the casual Smiths fan, with songs like Panic, The Boy With the Thorn In His Side and There Is A Light That Never Goes out still getting fairly regular play on channels like VH2, and occasionally crop up on the radio. The sound here had become more pop orientated than the songs on Hatful... with Johnny Marr layering a number of different jangling guitar tracks and gorgeous melodies, which were really taking a greater dominance over the more pedestrian drums and bass. Panic is a great way to start the collection, with a sound that is very much in keeping with the other highlights of this collection and has that great lyric, "hang the DJ", which, I'd imagine, is familiar to people who don't even like The Smiths. This leads seamlessly into Ask, London (the great cover-version of this by the band Cinerama is well worth checking out), Bigmouth Strikes Again and the slight rockabilly of Shakespeare's Sister, before we reach the sublime beauty of There Is A Light... which is quite often, my personal favourite Smiths' song in the world.

Two more pop classics follow, with the storming Shoplifters of the World Unite and the bouncy, The Boy With The Thorn in His Side, which again, has that trademark Smiths' sound that has yet to be recreated by anyone since (including Morrissey solo). The collection moves seamlessly from the pure pop of songs like Ask and Shakespeare's Sister, to the cartwheeling angst of Bigmouth Strikes Again and You Just Haven't Earned It Yet Baby, right the way through to the utter despair of Unlovable and Asleep. Asleep is probably the bleakest song the Smiths' ever recorded, far surpassing previously dark offerings like How Soon is Now and I Know It's Over, with Marr and producer John Porter using atmospheric sound samples and stripping away all of the instrumentation to leave a simple, solo piano. Meanwhile, Morrissey invokes suicide ("sing me to sleep, I don't want to wake up on my own anymore") whilst singing in a voice that is at an absolute lulled peak.

The rest of the collection continues the greatness established by the first half, moving from the subdued Unloveable ("I wear black on the outside, coz black is how I feel, on the inside") to the darkly comic Half A Person, to the pastoral sounding Stretch Out And Wait (another perennial favourite of mine) and onto that great instrumental track, Oscillate Wildly. The collection comes to a close with the Paint a Vulgar Picture-precursor You Just Haven't Earned It Yet Baby (which has that classic Smiths' sound), and the experimental pop song, Golden Lights, which features the vocals talents of Kirsty MacColl (as does Ask). The World Won't Listen, along with Hatful of Hollow, is an excellent introduction to the Smiths, and is probably the best example of their style and sound.

Worth it just for Stretch Out and Wait
This album was the last 'real' Smiths album I needed for my collection (ie. ignoring Best of I and II, The Very Best Of and Singles), so I already had Louder Than Bombs and Hatful of Hollow, and didn't technically "need" this one. At least that's what my friends thought. They don't seem to realise that The Smiths (and especially Morrissey) are not so much a band, more a religion that deserves to be courted and pursued with relentless abandon. Essentially I bought this album for Money Changes Everything, because I didn't know at the time that the Stretch Out and Wait featuring on The World... is actually different to the one on Bombs. But as I discovered, The World Won't Listen is actually worth buying just for that one track; Stretch Out and Wait has always been one of my favourite Smiths songs (making it one of my favourite songs ever), and the frission of excitement this version delivers is priceless.

The World Won't Listen is an excellent accompaniment to Hatful, this album covering The Smiths' later repertoire, and Hatful their earlier work (with Louder Than Bombs a cunning blend of the two). While they may have lost their youthful sketchiness by their later work, the lyrical and musical genius of Morrissey and Marr remains dumbfoundingly evident, especially on tracks such as the jaw-droppingly beautiful Asleep, the thumping, chugging Shakespeare's Sister and London, and the almost fully without hope (but in the most wonderfully articulated way) of Unloveable. The beauty and complexity of The Smiths is even more apparent when compared to the bland, meaningless pap produced by most pop 'stars' nowadays.

Buy it and revel in the genius.

World won`t is Different!!!
World won`t listen is a super collection over Louder than Bombs, It actually contains a different version of "Stretch out and Wait"', which is an excellent song. Others differ in pitch...A Must Have!