The Smiths' 'The Queen Is Dead' named the 'Greatest Album of All Time'
As Morrissey's Autobiography flies off the shelves, a publication he has clashed with in the past honours the Smiths' third album, writes Harriet Gibsone
It's a good week to be Morrissey: just as Autobiography becomes one of the fastest-selling memoirs ever, the Smiths' The Queen Is Dead has been named the Greatest Album of All Time by NME.
The band's 1986 LP beat albums by the Beatles, the Stone Roses, Bob Dylan and David Bowie in the list of 500 albums, which was voted for by NME journalists past and present. Published in this week's magazine, each journalist's top 50 albums were awarded points, 50 being the number given to their No 1 choice.
The Smiths third studio album was released in 1986 and peaked at No 2 in the UK singles charts on its release. The Queen Is Dead pipped the Beatles' Revolver to the top spot, with third place going to Hunky Dory by David Bowie, the Strokes' This Is It at four and the Velvet Underground & Nico's eponymous album at five.
In previous NME polls, The Queen Is Dead has reached the top 10, hitting No 9 in 2006 and creeping up the charts to No 8 three years later. Although a continual supporter of Morrissey's music, the singer has had a tempestuous relationship with the publication, a subject which crops up frequently throughout his book.
Asserting that the editor of NME in 1992 "allegedly called a staff meeting at which he has passed the command that his staff writers must now 'get Morrissey'", he also discussed the famous NME cover which bore the words: "Is Morrissey flirting with fascism?" and an interview with the magazine 15 years later, which prompted further accusations of racism, something which the singer describes as "the most offensively malodorous attack … the editor [then Conor McNicholas] gives the story teeth by switching the wording of my replies, and by inventing questions that were never asked. It is catastrophically controversial."
The digital edition of this week's NME is available now.
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