59. The Smiths - Shakespeare's Sister (Rough Trade)

One week at number one on w/e 6th April 1985

You have to be careful not to wholly trust your own memory - it can play tricks on you, twisting facts into new narratives for no discernable reason. This week, for instance, I misremembered Belle and Sebastian’s “chartbreaker” “Legal Man” as a number 9 hit, then realised through cross-checking with Wikipedia and other sources that I’d confused it with John Otway’s fanbase driven smash “Bunsen Burner”. A weird thing to do as, beyond the fact that both acts have excessively devoted fans, they otherwise have little in common.

Likewise, I had “Shakespeare’s Sister” filed in my mind as The Smiths first flop since “Hand In Glove”, which is also utterly wrong; the reference books prove it was a modest number 26 hit, and that their first disappointment came later. In this case, though, it’s easy to hear why my brain reshuffled the facts around and punished this single with an imaginary non-top 40 placing.

My associations with The Smiths have been ongoing throughout my life. Most of my friends love them. My wife was, for a long period, obsessed with them. I’ve been taken along to club nights that play nothing but Smiths singles, and been around people’s houses and listened to Smiths mixtapes over dinner. I never shared the fanaticism any of these people had, but their ideas of what made the group matter, and where their strong points lay, became the backbone of my understanding. When you’re not hopelessly devoted to a group yourself, you take your cues from the fans around you, the ones who have put in the studious graft with passion.

In all my life, I think I’ve involuntarily heard “Shakespeare’s Sister” a mere handful of times. It’s the Smiths single no-one dances to and nobody I met ever cross-analysed or had pegged as their "one". Listening back to it again for the first time in years, it’s also amazing how slight it is compared to their other singles so far. The shuffling rockabilly rhythm feels more akin to the Brilliant Corners or even The Meteors, while Morrissey wails about suicide and throwing himself down on the “rocks below”. It feels like more of a tantrum than a song, the non-chorus of “Oh let me go!” intervening at numerous points to act as a brief bit of respite rather than a hook. Beyond the mysteriously tranquil instrumental interlude, the song just scrabbles its way up some jagged scree on a steep slope, occasionally losing its grip or catching its breath, then starting up all over again.

Morrissey has made it clear that it was inspired by a concept in Virginia Woolf’s “A Room Of One’s Own”, where the writer theorised that if Shakespeare had an equally talented sister, she would have been equally mistreated by her parents and society and forced to live a dissatisfied and mentally anguished life. What we’re hearing, then, is the sound of that torment; a retro rock and roll tantrum, a scramble of malcontent, a gibbering fit which never quite settles down enough to make its lyrical ideas coherent. In fact, in places the lyrics feel rather random and almost baffling - over the years I’ve had a total failure of imagination about the final lines “I thought that if you had an acoustic guitar/ it meant you were a protest singer”, and I still can’t understand why it's relevant now; if it turns out that Morrissey half-inched them from another source and that book or article would hold the key to their relevance and meaning, I wouldn’t be at all surprised, but nothing seems to have turned up so far.

57b. Jesus & Mary Chain - Upside Down (Creation)

 

Further 3 weeks at number one from w/e 16th March 1985

It's been a while since we've seen an old number one boomeranging back up to the top again, and I'm actually relieved about that - I dislike the way that kind of repetition messes up the narrative of the blog. Still, the facts cannot be argued with, and while The Smiths "How Soon Is Now" was a track with only a feeble grip at the top and a modest toehold in the official charts, "Upside Down" remained a curiosity to casual buyers wandering into Rough Trade. The continued Mary Chain hype kept sales steady, and as soon as The Smiths showed any signs of weakness, the Reid brothers reclaimed their crown again. 

Resting warily beneath them were this lot, who didn't really offer much of a threat.

Week One

22. Balaam And The Angel - Love Me (Chapter 22)

Peak position: 9

With a crash, a smash and a despondent but insistent reverberating guitar riff, "Love Me" cemented Balaam And The Angel's early reputation as an exciting new goth rock act. Sadly, it bears no relation to the parodical Dudley Moore track of the same name, though it does holler as loudly at times - instead, it advises children to follow their instincts, ignore hate, and find their kinfolk. Fair advice from the Balaams, really, offering the kind of hopeful thinking very few goth acts managed.

27.Billy Bragg - Between The Wars (Go! Discs)

Peak position: 27

"Marketed by Chrysalis Records" is clearly written on the back of the sleeve for this one, but in their new 1985 welcoming spirit, the NME let it in the indie charts for one week anyway. 

Stunning how much "Between The Wars" sounds even more stripped bare and underproduced than almost anything else we're discussing today, though. You could be forgiven for thinking this came out on Bluurgh Records; Bragg's honking vocals and the abrasive clang of his guitar sound bare and ragged. Nor is the lyrical content a million miles off the most politicised single on Crass Records, it's just that Bragg has more folk poetry and grandeur at his heart, despite the sonic evidence to the contrary - this is a pro-union song and a prayer for the return of more open and charitable times against the cynicism of Thatcherism, rather than a war cry to kill the rich. 

If there's one thing Bragg gets which the anarcho-punks of the era didn't, it's that sometimes you have to offer your downtrodden audience a message of unity and solidarity as well as screaming for a possible bloody revolution. "Between The Wars" is perhaps a bit too despairing to offer them everything they needed in the hopelessness of 1985, but one picket line anthem is better than none. 

28. D.O.A. - Don't Turn Yer Back (On Desperate Times): The John Peel Session (Alternative Tentacles)

Peak position: 19

29. Severed Heads​ - Goodbye Tonsils (Ink)

Peak position: 29

Australian industrial duo who specialised in synth rackets, audio junk cut-ups from film and television and an ongoing fascination with the perverse and repellant. Much of their work sounds slightly too cluttered and basic to truly surprise casual listeners in 2025, but at the time, "Goodbye Tonsils" felt inventive, threatening and strange. 

30. Rabbi Joseph Gordon - Competition (Bam Caruso)

Peak position: 30

Julian Cope masquerading as a garage rock rabbi, presumably for reasons of career slump boredom and general mischief. There's an argument to be made for "Competition" injecting a sense of purpose back into his life again, though - the road away from Mercury Records and towards Island and further Top 40 success was long at this point, but the abandonment of the introspective psychedelia of "Fried" and towards hard-hitting garage Kingsmenisms possibly started here. 

This isn't to say that "Competition" is in any way essential; it's as likeable but also as throwaway as any genuine garage obscurity you're likely to hear this month. So far as Cope was concerned, though, mission accomplished.

Week Two

9. Conflict - This Is Not Enough Stand Up And F*ucking Fight (Mortarhate)

Peak position: 3

Conflict had a fine way with snappy and abusive single and album titles - this one and "Only Stupid Bastards Help EMI" pop into my head all the time.

"This Is Not Enough" is just over two minutes of agitated noise, grinding guitars and lyrics which veer towards the incomprehensible throughout the anger, but you can guess what it is they're generally on about, and you're seldom far from wrong. Like a lorryload of spare gear boxes and biscuit tins being thrown into a thresher. 

58. The Smiths - How Soon Is Now (Rough Trade)

Two weeks at number one from w/e 2nd March 1985

There’s a huge “what if?” surrounding “How Soon is Now?”. It's one of The Smiths most enduring tracks; when I was round my friend’s houses as a teen, it was there. When I was finally old enough to go to alternative nightclubs, it shot out loud and proud. When I packed up my things and went to university, it followed me, and whenever anyone mentions The Smiths in a brief piece on radio or television, it is still to this day somewhere in the background.

Very few bands are lucky enough to write songs which end up becoming slightly clumsily described as "legendary". Most amble their way through their brief careers pushing out material which is well-liked by a small section of the public, but usually left behind by radio and television a few years later, only fondly reminisced about by fans who complain you don’t hear them in public often enough nowadays.

Ironically then, nobody at Rough Trade foresaw that “How Soon Is Now?” would be so highly regarded. They worried that it didn’t sound sufficiently Smithsian and, as a result, relegated it to the B-side of the twelve inch single of their previous release “William It Was Really Nothing”. Only the growing number of fans bothering DJ’s with requests to hear it on evening Radio One shows and continued club play forced a panicked reassessment of the situation and its eventual re-release as an A-side, but by then, everyone who owned a copy of the 12” single of “William” already had it, and the new B-sides “Well I Wonder” and “Oscillate Wildly” on the reissue didn’t seem to be creating as much excitement.

The net result was the peculiar situation of a potentially huge single peaking at number 24 in the UK chart (though it managed a fairer number 5 in Ireland) and a mere couple of weeks on top of the NME indie chart. Oops.

In Rough Trade’s defence, you can understand their concerns. The group were still establishing themselves, and the previous Smiths singles had been chiming, intricate and melodic affairs. “How Soon Is Now” consists of Johnny Marr locking himself into a shimmering but dirty hypnotic groove, offering only anguished howls from his guitar as any kind of diversion or punctuation. If The Smiths other singles are restless with possibility, with Marr’s guitar lines ricocheting all over the place and unearthing a new melody every thirty seconds, “How Soon Is Now” is locked on one killer hook and trusts it implicitly. Grooves, even of the swampy, unconventional kind, were not the kinds of things Smiths records entertained prior to this point.

On top, Morrissey delivers his anguished tale of being unloved and unlovable in some of the most unusually direct language heard on a Smiths 45 prior to this point. The opening line “I am the son and the heir of a shyness that is criminally vulgar” is probably the most poetic. The rest descends into direct emotional bloodletting which may or may not have been inspired by the singer visiting gay clubs – my lawyer has instructed me not to speculate – but nonetheless said something a lot of teenagers, whether gay or straight, wanted to hear.

As an adolescent, there’s a tendency to believe that everyone around you is either being adored by a significant other, or could be if they so chose. It’s only in adulthood that most of us look back and realise that the two 14 year olds we knew who held hands and kissed for an entire year were freaks rather than a couple to be envied, and everyone else was either being dumped and publicly humiliated by a different person every third week, or being ignored like the other 75% of the school year. Morrissey singing “I am human and I need to be loved/ Just like everyone else does” was catnip to thousands of underdeveloped brains and souls who felt that only they were missing out on tenderness, but it also became a clear message for those who were shy and awkward adults, or just plain undesirable (and there are many cruel ways people can end up “difficult to love”, often outside their control). Heard one particular way it’s a teenage whine. To another person in another set of circumstances, it’s a banner to be held aloft at a protest march society has yet to schedule.

57. Jesus and Mary Chain - Upside Down (Creation)

Number one for four weeks from w/e 2nd February 1985

Success in rock and pop music occurs due to happy accidents more frequently than managers, artists or labels alike would care to admit. This has always been true, from Mick Jagger bumping into Keith Richards by chance at Dartford train station, to the Sex Pistols dropping swear words on the “Today” programme. Had the former not met in adulthood, or the latter found themselves without an opportunity to offend on prime time television, it’s difficult to say what holes rock history would be left with.

Similarly, the Mary Chain’s “legendary” debut bottom-of-the-bill gig at Alan McGee’s Living Room club in London in 1984 feels somewhat like the music of chance. As is well documented in the excellent biography “My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry For The Prize”, McGee had very few plans for the Jesus & Mary Chain after hearing their demo tape; just the offer of a London gig and the possible inclusion of one of their songs on a (never realised) compilation of unsigned bands. By the time the group took the stage to soundcheck, though, addled by both overconsumption of alcohol and their own inexperience (they didn’t even understand what a soundcheck was) they churned out a curdled, feedback-ridden cover of Pink Floyd’s “Vegetable Man” largely by accident. Not all of the chaos and the piercing noise was intended to be a feature of The Mary Chain’s sound, and much of the mess was purely unintentional. The group left the stage feeling as if they’d failed, to be greeted by an over-enthusiastic McGee who offered them a deal, believing it to be one of the most mind-blowing spectacles he had ever witnessed.

The gig itself was, according to the dozen or so people who actually saw it, even more shambolic, the sound of a group who couldn’t play, taking their rudimentary abilities out on cheap instruments with missing strings. This shambles was submerged beneath a yelping screech of unintentionally vigorous feedback and a broken fuzz pedal, and the set ended with all the group members punching drummer Murray Dalglish, much to the amusement and entertainment of the small audience (who included a couple of music journalists). 

Under a different promoter and another set of circumstances, it’s probable this story would have ended right there, with JAMC sent back on the next coach to East Kilbride, asked to buck their ideas up – which you sense they were incapable of doing by themselves – or go back to their factory jobs. While they played their live set, however, Alan McGee worked overtime running around the quiet bar spaces in the venue trying to convince everyone that he had witnessed combustible genius, the next big sound. When the group had finished bruising each other (literally and metaphorically) he then wandered about swearing at the non-attendees for failing to witness the historic event.

As we’ve witnessed ourselves through this blog’s journey, Creation Records were a curiosity in 1984 rather than a fashionable indie label. Their roster of acts prior to 1985 issued under-produced but melodic records, each of which has waited decades to be reappraised, but ultimately hasn’t passed the test; they’re (mostly!) decent discs, but all are playing with very predictable and well-tested elements. The Jasmine Minks had a sharp pub punk edge, but even Paul Weller didn’t want to sound slightly like The Jam in the mid-eighties. McGee’s own group Biff Bang Pow sounded like that competent local indie band you knew, who might possibly have got somewhere if only they could have found That One Great Song down the back of their sofa – and there were no signs this was going to happen soon. The mysterious Revolving Paint Dream dribbled out pleasant but cliched psychedelic pop which, if it were suddenly put under another band name on Spotify tomorrow, would probably stand accused of being an AI created project. In short, McGee currently didn’t hold an impressive hand. This was music which might brighten the world of the obsessive record buyer, but wasn't going to be front page news in the music press.

He must have known that he needed a volatile, combustible group with the sound to accompany their mayhem to push Creation Records from the margins of the indie scene to the centre. In offering The Jesus and Mary Chain a contract based on nothing more than a demo tape and a live performance consisting of little more than explosive disarray, he saw opportunities to turn himself into Malcolm McLaren with the group as his Sex Pistols. And so the mission began. He fed bogus news stories about their antics to the music press and ultimately tabloid press, booked gigs where riots broke out – though in at least one instance, the word riot should probably have quotation marks around it – and issued this single.

As is often the way with rock classics, from The Kinks “You Really Got Me” to the Beach Boys “Good Vibrations”, the gestation period of “Upside Down” wasn’t necessarily straightforward. Two versions had to be recorded before the group came out with something they felt really represented their sound. In a strange inversion of the normal rules, though, the “right” version was one which had been recorded in a cheap 4-track recording studio rather than their initial attempt, which had been recorded in a more professional facility.

It sounds like it, too. “Upside Down” absolutely revels in its amateurism. Seldom has such a loud, confusing nettle soup of noise sounded both so low fidelity and also so dour. Beneath the squeals of feedback and on top of the metronomic drum patter grumbles a vaguely buoyant sixties melody. It feels like the levers were up in the recording studio on two things happening at once; a sonic art experiment akin to Lou Reed’s “Metal Machine Music”, plus a few moody teenagers testing out their idea of a perky tune with an absence of feeling or commitment. They sing “uh-huh-huh” like Elvis, but it sounds reluctant and sullen, like a Teddy Boy muttering it under his breath as a policeman walks past.

1985

  What have the 1984 indie charts taught us, exactly? The longer I plug away at this project, the more I wonder if calendar years are reliable markers for stories about popular (and unpopular) culture at all. Very often, a calendar year will sever the story at an inconvenient point of development rather than act as a natural close. 

That said, I do think 1984 is the first year where you can sense order and professionalism sneaking into the indie chart, where the hand-made and the DIY starts to be pushed to one side. It doesn't feel entirely coincidental that Crass caved in on themselves as an act very early in the year and the presence of punk rock is otherwise absent from the top slot, except in the form of The Toy Dolls novelty hit. Punk seems to have been increasingly shunted towards the lower end of the Top 30 to sell to an increasingly ageing audience. Taking its place at the top are the new breed of post-punk "hitmakers", stealing punk's do it yourself ambitions but sweetening them with strong studio enhanced sounds. 

In turn, some proper household names finally started to assert themselves. Cocteau Twins, The Smiths, and Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds all became dependable players alongside the Depeche Modes and New Orders of this world. The hall of fame becomes more bloated as a result, and niche acts begin to find it harder to reach the number one slot outside of slow periods (its notable that March Violets and The Senate both reached the top during the traditional summer sales slump). 

That dominance of big names is only going to get stronger in 1985. It won't stay this way forever, and there will be cultish surprises to enjoy in the years that follow, but - without wanting to put any of you off continuing reading - it really is a year where there are fewer surprises at the top. The bands everyone loves will only assert themselves more forcefully than ever, and the oddballs and the weirdos will struggle to reach the top five. 

The one big odd development in 1985 - which I have massive issues with and casual readers are going to get very confused by - is the NME's decision to allow some small labels with major label backing into the charts until mid-December (at which point they were promptly ejected again). Beggars Banquet, Stiff and Go! Discs - owned, part-owned or distributed by Warners, Island and Chrysalis respectively - are all given space alongside tiny household run ventures. There also appears to be no consistency to this thinking, so despite these labels getting the green light, Fiction Records and ZTT don't. Was 1985 the first year the philosophical debates around what indie labels actually were began? It would make sense if so, but the paper's final conclusions feel absurd, even if they don't upend the charts as much as you may think they might. They do, however, create one ludicrous and long-lived chart-topper, but more on that when we get to it. 

The playlist featuring everything to chart (within reason) in 1984 can be found below one last time. The new 1985 playlist can be found on the right hand side of the page. Tuck in. We've got another long road ahead.