The room › Artists › The Smiths
Where to start with The Smiths
Start with Bigmouth Strikes Again - 2011 Remaster — The Queen Is Dead, 1986. That is the track sitting closest to the centre of all 17 The Smiths tracks in Zubissou Sounds — a listening room of 15,847 tracks placed one at a time by hand, not an algorithm.
This page is not a discography and not a ranking. It describes exactly one thing: the 17 The Smiths tracks that one person put in one room, and where they sit relative to each other. The starting point above is chosen by a rule you can check — of the 17 tracks, it is the one nearest the average position on the four knobs the room runs on, and where two sit equally close the one on a named record wins. Nothing here calls any record better than any other.
The collection leans hard on one record: 10 of the 17 tracks come from The Queen Is Dead alone.
Every dated track here falls between 1984 and 1987, so this room holds one stretch of the discography and not the whole of it.
The tracks are filed across 4 genres, most often alternative rock, new wave and eclectic, so the room does not treat this as a single-shelf artist.
The density knob swings 60 points across these tracks, the widest of the four — it is the axis this artist actually travels along in this room.
Three ways in
The one track, if you only play one
Bigmouth Strikes Again - 2011 Remaster — The Queen Is Dead, 1986. Of the 17 The Smiths tracks here, this one sits closest to the average of all of them across the four knobs the room runs on. It is the least surprising thing in the collection, which is exactly what an entry point should be.
If you want the sparse end
A Rush and a Push and the Land Is Ours - 2011 Remaster — Strangeways, Here We Come, 1987. The lowest density reading of any The Smiths track in the room (38 out of 100). This is as far towards sparse as the collection goes.
If you want the wall end
Still Ill - John Peel Session 14/09/83 — Hatful of Hollow, 1984. The highest density reading here, at 98 out of 100 — a 60-point swing across the collection towards wall.
Where The Smiths sits in the room
Zubissou Sounds does not have playlists or genres you click. It has knobs. Every track carries a position on each one, set by hand when the track was added, and you find music by setting the room to a state rather than by searching for a name. These are The Smiths's average coordinates and the range they cover.
All four run 0–100. They are placed by a person, not derived from audio analysis or from any streaming service's feature data.
What is here, record by record
| Album | Year | Tracks |
|---|---|---|
| The Queen Is Dead | 1986 | 10 |
| Hatful of Hollow | 1984 | 3 |
| Louder Than Bombs | 1987 | 2 |
| single | — | 1 |
| Strangeways, Here We Come | 1987 | 1 |
Every The Smiths track in the room
| Track | Album | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now - 2011 Remaster | Hatful of Hollow | 1984 |
| How Soon Is Now? - 2011 Remaster | Hatful of Hollow | 1984 |
| Still Ill - John Peel Session 14/09/83 | Hatful of Hollow | 1984 |
| Bigmouth Strikes Again - 2011 Remaster | The Queen Is Dead | 1986 |
| Cemetry Gates - 2011 Remaster | The Queen Is Dead | 1986 |
| Frankly, Mr. Shankly - 2011 Remaster | The Queen Is Dead | 1986 |
| I Know It's Over - 2011 Remaster | The Queen Is Dead | 1986 |
| Never Had No One Ever - 2011 Remaster | The Queen Is Dead | 1986 |
| Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others - 2011 Remaster | The Queen Is Dead | 1986 |
| The Boy with the Thorn in His Side - 2011 Remaster | The Queen Is Dead | 1986 |
| The Queen Is Dead - 2011 Remaster | The Queen Is Dead | 1986 |
| There Is a Light That Never Goes Out - 2011 Remaster | The Queen Is Dead | 1986 |
| Vicar in a Tutu - 2011 Remaster | The Queen Is Dead | 1986 |
| Ask - 2011 Remaster | Louder Than Bombs | 1987 |
| Half a Person - 2011 Remaster | Louder Than Bombs | 1987 |
| A Rush and a Push and the Land Is Ours - 2011 Remaster | Strangeways, Here We Come | 1987 |
| Sweet and Tender Hooligan | single | — |
Near neighbours in this room
These are the artists whose average knob position sits nearest to The Smiths's in this room. It is a coordinate match, not a claim that they sound alike.
- Where to start with The Replacements — alternative rock, 11 tracks
- Where to start with Pixies — alternative rock, 126 tracks
- Where to start with Weezer — alternative rock, 11 tracks
What the open databases say
MusicBrainz lists The Smiths as a group, from Manchester, the United Kingdom and formed in 1982. Its contributors tag the artist jangle pop, indie pop, post-punk, indie rock and alternative rock. These are the open database's facts, not mine — you can check them against the MusicBrainz entry.
Questions
How many The Smiths tracks are in Zubissou Sounds?
There are 17, across 5 albums. 16 of them carry a date, running from 1984 to 1987. That is the whole of what this room holds — it is one person's collection, not a discography.
Is this a best-of, or a ranking?
No. Nothing here is ranked and no track is called better than another. The starting point is picked by arithmetic — the track closest to the centre of all the others on four measured axes — and the rule is printed above so you can disagree with it.
Where do the knob numbers come from?
They are set by hand, one track at a time, by the person who added the track. They are not audio analysis and not a Spotify feature. Mood, energy, density and the head/body balance each run 0 to 100. All 17 of these tracks have been read individually — nothing on this page is running on a default.
Can I listen to these here?
Not yet from this page. Zubissou Sounds is in private beta — the room itself plays through Spotify, and 17 of these 17 tracks are matched to a Spotify ID and ready to play the moment you are in. The waitlist form is at the bottom of this page.