F

Flavorwire

The Smiths

Design

Comic Book Covers Featuring ’80s Post-Punk/New Wave Singers as Superheroes

By Tom Hawking on

If you’re a regular-ish reader, you might remember that Flavorwire has featured the work of a pop culture and Smiths-obsessed Brazilian artist by the name of Butcher Billy a couple of times over the last few years. Well, he’s back, and this time he’s designed a series of faux comic-book covers featuring ’80s post punk/new wave singers (including Morrissey, of course) as superheroes. They’re amazing. Obviously. … Read More

Music

A Selection of Great Smiths and Morrissey Covers by Female Artists

By Tom Hawking on

Today is the 30th anniversary of the release of The Smiths’ first single, the enduringly excellent “Hand in Glove.” The song failed to chart — but it was later covered, curiously enough, by British pop singer Sandie Shaw, whose version reached #27 in the UK charts and helped a great deal in introducing the general public to the band. The idea of female singers covering the Smiths and/or Morrissey is interesting, simply because their songs are so quintessentially male in their own effete way. And so, in a repeat of the thought exercise we carried out with Leonard Cohen a few weeks back, we’ve rounded up a selection of Smiths covers (with the occasional Morrissey song for good measure) by female artists — including one particularly amazing track by Tiffany, of all people. … Read More

Music

20 of the Flat-Out Funniest Songs in Rock ‘n’ Roll

By Tom Hawking on

In an attempt to save you (not to mention ourselves) from the general Monday-morning awfulness that tends to follow a lovely spring weekend, Flavorwire has compiled a playlist of indie/rock/generally guitar-based songs that are genuinely funny. These are 20 of the flat-out wittiest and most amusing songs we know — and we guarantee that at least one of them will make you chuckle. (Note: we’re discounting actual comedy songs here, so no Lonely Island/Flight of the Conchords/etc.) Keep the hilarity going by adding to our list in the comments. … Read More

Music

The Smiths and Joy Division Albums As Shelves of Books

By Tom Hawking on

There are certain songwriters whose work has a decidedly literary bent, so much so that you could totally imagine their songs being turned into prose — or, maybe, their entire albums into books. Such is the idea behind these prints from UK design studio Standard Designs, which reimagine classic albums by The Smiths, Joy Division, and New Order as shelves of books. They’re pretty great, honestly, and they’re for sale — if you fancy investing, the prints are available via this Etsy shop. … Read More

Music

Great Bands That Made (Relatively) Forgettable Debut Records

By Tom Hawking on

In an interesting cosmic coincidence, this week marks notable anniversaries for two of the more significant debut albums in the world of rock ‘n’ roll: 25 years ago yesterday, the Pixies released Surfer Rosa, while 50 years ago today, the Beatles released Please Please Me. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this is the contrast between the quality of the records — Surfer Rosa was a fully realized artistic vision, while Please Please Me only hinted at what the Beatles would go on to achieve. Still, the Fab Four are in pretty good company as far as bands who overcame relatively unimpressive debut albums go. As these ten records prove, there’s hope for everyone! … Read More

Music

A Brief History of Morrissey’s Many, Many Feuds

By Tom Hawking on

Unless you’ve been under a rock this week, you’ve doubtless heard about the slanging match between Morrissey and Jimmy Kimmel, centering on the former’s decision to cancel his appearance on the latter’s show. Morrissey is famous for hating just about everyone who isn’t an animal, so much so that it gets rather difficult to keep track of who he’s feuding with at any given moment. It’s also hard to keep track of whether such feuds represent a man more sinned against than sinning — the Kimmel thing, for instance, has generally been framed as Morrissey being Morrissey, whereas a less cursory examination of the facts reveal that he actually had a point. This isn’t always the case, of course, so we thought we’d review the history of some of his most memorable spats and the reasons behind them. … Read More

Music

The Most Beautiful Song Lyric Tattoos We’ve Ever Seen

By Tom Hawking on

Song lyrics are clearly a popular choice for tattoos, but the vast majority of lyrical quotes are pretty much plain old script tattoos. We have nothing against this, but it’s interesting to see tattoos where lyrics are combined with an artistic flourish, so we’ve gathered some examples of truly beautiful work that we thought we’d share with… Read More

Music

10 Great Comedown Songs to Soothe Your New Year’s Hangover

By Tom Hawking on

If you’re like us and basically everyone else in the world — unless you don’t drink, in which case we’re happy for you — you probably greeted 2013 with a fairly sizable hangover yesterday. There’s a surprising amount of complexity to be found in waking up and feeling like shit after a big night out, and it’s a subject that’s been addressed by a host of songwriters over the years. So we thought we’d welcome 2013 with an exploration of musical renditions of the morning after the night before, from the quietly contented to the morbidly, morbidly hung over. We hope the way you’re feeling roughly 36 hours into the new year falls somewhere toward the former end of the scale. … Read More

Design

The Smiths Songs as 8-Bit Video Games

By Judy Berman on

Mediocre pop-culture mashups are everywhere on the Internet, but when you mess with The Smiths, you’ve got to bring some inspiration. Thankfully, Brazil-based designer and illustrator Butcher Billy has done just that with a series of unexpectedly appropriate images combining Smiths song titles with 8-bit video game characters. We can’t imagine how Moz would feel about this project, which we discovered via It8Bit — but we’ll certainly have “Bigmouth Strikes Again” running through our head the next time we play a Mario game. … Read More

Music

Smiths Lyrics as Penguin Classic Book Covers

By Emily Temple on

If you’re anything like us, you’ve spent many an afternoon kicked back on your bed, listening to the plaintive tones of The Smiths and reading a tattered Penguin Classic, nodding fiercely at the injustice of the world. Even if not, we think you’ll probably be able to appreciate these excellent imagined book covers by Raid 71, aka Chris Thornley, which we spotted over at Creative Bloq. Thornley cherry-picks lyrics and turns them into book titles, dressing them up in that classic 60s Penguin iconography we all know so well. Click through to take a gander, and if you love them as much as we do, you can head on over to Hunting Bears to pick up a few of the illustrations in poster form. You know, to hang above your bed as you keep on reading the classics and listening to sad sack ’80s pop. … Read More