Product Description

This 'best of' compilation takes in 19 Morrissey solo tracks from his pre-1997 EMI albums. The album contains several of the legendary indie romantic's biggest hits including 'Tomorrow', 'Last Of The Famous International Playboys' and his cover of The Jam's 'That's Entertainment'.

Track Listing

1. Suedehead
2. Interesting Drug
3. Boxers
4. Last Of The Famous International Playboys
5. Sunny
6. Tomorrow
7. Interlude
8. Everyday Is Like Sunday
9. Hold On To Your Friends
10. My Love Life
11. Our Frank
12. Piccadilly Palare
13. Ouija Board Ouija Board
14. You're The One For Me Fatty
15. We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful
16. Pregnant For The Last Time
17. November Spawned A Monster
18. More You Ignore Me The Closer I Get
19. That's Entertainment

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36629 in Music
• Released on: 1997-09-08
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

A great introduction to Morrisseys solo career
Despite the slightly embarassing cheesy cover this album is a lovely collection of Morrisseys songs in his solo career. This does not include the singles from You are the Quarry or any albums since then.
I wouldn't say this is the best of Morrissey and I wasn't pleased that the song 'Disappointed' wasn't included. But this is still a great collection of his tunes and ideal for a newly recruited fan who has his last few albums and are interested in an introduction to some of his early stuff. If you are interested in buying the whole collection of his albums, I would suggest having a listen to this first to see if this appeals to you! In my humble opinion though this should be called a collection rather than the best of.
Hope this helps.

The Second Best of Morrissey
The difficulty of an album called `The Best of Morrissey' is that the best of Morrissey can really only be found on an album called `The Best of The Smiths'.

However, this album was released in 1997 and is based around the four studio albums and various singles that Morrissey recorded for the HMV imprint after The Smiths split. A 70 minute compilation from such material was always going to be a bit weak and a shorter more focussed album may have worked better.

This collection does have some marvellous songs on it like `Suedehead', `Everyday is Like Sunday' and `The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get' but they are thinly spread across the whole affair with little attention paid to running order or any attempt to actually construct an album out of the assembled songs. The inclusion of the cover of The Jam's `That's Entertainment', originally released as a b-side highlights the failings of this anthology, its original sequencing was the right choice. What can I tell you, `We Hate it When Our Friends Become Successful'.

Interesting
I think it's fair to say that Morrissey's solo output has never really matched the brilliance of The Smiths, but there is evidence on this 'Best Of' cd that he's sometimes come close. 'Suedehead' and 'Boxers' in particular are brilliant tracks and wouldn't have been too out of place on 'Strangeways Here We Come'. His cover of 'That's Entertainment' is good and 'Every Day is Like Sunday' is a bit of a classic, although the lyrics do tie it to the late eighties.

The middle of the cd takes a bit of a dip I think, a lot of the tracks sounding a bit sub-standard. But it picks up again when he gives full vent to his strange sense of humour with songs like 'You're the One for Me Fatty' 'Last of the Famous International Playboys' and 'We Hate it When our Friends Become Successful'.

It's a shame he and Johnny Marr don't work together anymore - together they produced music touched by genius. But this is worth a listen for the stand out moments outlined above.