Great album openers get the listeners to keep on listening. They can do this in any number of ways. Some openers set the tone by easing us in. Others jump right in and blow our minds from the very beginning. A great album opener isn’t an easy thing to create. More than a great song, it’s all about the sequence. Track 1 has to be the perfect starter. This month, I’m highlighting my favorites. #AlbumOpeningSongs
Before I got my Queen is Dead cassette on that fateful Saturday evening at Tower Records, I already knew the more well-known songs: “Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others”, “The Boy With The Thorn in His Side”, “Bigmouth Strikes Again” and, of course, “There is a Light That Never Goes Out”. But, hearing the entire album was a completely different experience. From the very beginning, it was an album that I had to listen to from beginning to end. Perfectly sequenced with not a lackluster track on either side, The Queen is Dead opened with a banger: the song of the same name.
It is an album opener that makes other album openers seem so inadequate. “The Queen Is Dead” kicks off with the sample from “Take Me Back To Dear Old Blighty”. It was magnificent. Before long, Mike Joyce launches a barrage on the drum set and Andy Rourke creates a slinging, cutting bass line, both of which make you hate yourself for ever thinking The Smiths were all about Morrissey and Marr. They’re all firing on all cylinders here. And this title track sounds like nothing else that we’ve heard before. It’s luring us in. And our lives are never the same again because this is The Queen Is Dead.
“Past the pub that saps your body. And the church who'll snatch your money. The Queen is dead, boys. And it's so lonely on a limb.”