The Queen Is Dead

Morrissey and Marr produced it, with Stephen Street engineering. The first song finished was The Boy with the Thorn in His Side, at Drone Studios in July 1985. Frankly, Mr. Shankly, I Know It's Over and There Is a Light That Never Goes Out came out of a marathon writing session at Marr's home in Bowdon that summer. Bigmouth Strikes Again and Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others were recorded at RAK in August, and the bulk of the album was cut at Jacobs Studios in Farnham. The title track's tom-tom loop was made by Joyce and Street with a sampler, and Street recalled recording the snare and bass drum apart from the cymbals. Marr's feedback, played through a wah-wah pedal, runs through it. The backing vocal on Bigmouth Strikes Again credited to Ann Coates is Morrissey, sped up through a harmoniser.

The title comes from Hubert Selby Jr.'s novel Last Exit to Brooklyn, and the cover is a still of Alain Delon from the 1964 film The Unvanquished. The album was due in February 1986, but a dispute with Rough Trade delayed it by almost seven months. It reached number two in Britain and 70 in the United States, and the RIAA certified it gold in 1990.

Simon Reynolds of Pitchfork wrote that the band crested into an imperial moment, and called it a masterpiece. Douglas Wolk wrote that it was the one studio album on which they operate at top capacity all the way through. The BBC's review called it simply the greatest Smiths album. NME named it the greatest album of all time in 2013, and Rolling Stone ranked it 113 in its 2020 list of the 500 greatest albums. The deluxe edition scored 99 on Metacritic.