One.

The Smiths - Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want

In my opinion (which counts as law around here, right?), this is simply the best song the Smiths ever released. It is gorgeous. It is heart breaking. It is a perfect, self-contained world. It is a minute fifty-two. This is the ne plus ultra of Smiths songs, both in subject-matter (and this is a band that had songs named 'Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now' and 'Never Had No One Ever'), and in musical transcendence.

If the Smiths were the British equivalent of our R.E.M. in the eighties (terminally strange indie band with terminally strange, ultra-sensitive lead singer appears in the wake of punk and earns a cult, ends up changing the face of the nation's radio for a good while), then this is their 'Find the River.' And just as 'Find the River' in some way represents R.E.M, in that its gorgeousness is in the service of searching for meaning and eventual uplift, this song represents the Smiths in its unabashed wallowing in depression and self-pity. Don't miss this.

This is the first in a series of three versions of this song coming in the coming days; download the original so you'll at least have the pristine reference point for the 'interesting' covers. Let me know what you think.