{"id":479065,"date":"2026-03-16T19:21:20","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T19:21:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/479065\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T19:21:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T19:21:20","slug":"i-find-it-amazing-that-people-are-singing-along-in-such-a-celebratory-way-about-being-involved-in-a-car-crash-we-speak-to-the-smiths-producer-stephen-street-and-learn-how-t","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/479065\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI find it amazing that people are singing along in such a celebratory way about being involved in a car crash\u201d: We speak to The Smiths\u2019 producer Stephen Street and learn how their most beloved song came to be"},"content":{"rendered":"

British poet and author, Brian Bilston, recently published a short and pithy poem entitled Morrissey\u2019s Fridge. It reads:<\/p>\n

Morrissey
was filled
with sudden
self-doubt<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

as he shut
his fridge door \u2013
did the light
never go out?<\/p>\n

Article continues below <\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

The poem references arguably the greatest song by the ever-controversial singer\u2019s former band, The Smiths; There Is a Light That Never Goes Out.<\/p>\n

Despite never being released as a single in the UK while the group were together, the song is firmly established as one of their most-loved and quintessential recordings. Four decades on, and it\u2019s been well-cemented in the canon of indie anthems.<\/p>\n

Co-written by Morrissey and the Smiths\u2019 veritable musical director – guitarist Johnny Marr, There Is a Light\u2026 is the penultimate track on the band\u2019s 1986 third album, The Queen Is Dead, and has been covered by artists including The Divine Comedy, Noel Gallagher, The Cranberries, The Courteeners, Miley Cyrus and Dum Dum Girls.<\/p>\n

It has been a mainstay of Morrissey\u2019s own live set – at his O2 Arena show in London on 28 February this year, There Is a Light That Never Goes Out was played as the encore, and he\u2019s even opened some of his 2025 US shows with it.<\/p>\n

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The song is also a staple of Marr\u2019s solo concerts – he usually finishes with it, leading to a mass singalong from the crowd.<\/p>\n

In 2014, NME voted There Is a Light That Never Goes Out the 12th-greatest song of all time and in 2021, it was ranked at No.226 on Rolling Stone\u2019s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The track also features in a memorable scene from the 2009 US romcom-drama film, (500) Days of Summer, when central characters Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel) first meet in a lift. Hansen is listening to the song on his headphones and Finn recognises the song, telling him how she loves the Smiths, which impresses him – their shared music taste leads to them starting a relationship, which, sadly, doesn\u2019t end well.<\/p>\n

What to read next<\/p>\n

It\u2019s fitting really, as There Is a Light That Never Goes Out is widely seen as the ultimate ode to doomed romanticism.<\/p>\n

The Smiths – There Is A Light That Never Goes Out (Official Audio) – YouTube
\n\"The<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

In the chorus, Morrissey sings:<\/p>\n

And if a double-decker bus
Crashes into us
To die by your side
Is such a heavenly way to die
And if a ten-ton truck
Kills the both of us
To die by your side
Well, the pleasure, the privilege is mine<\/p>\n

As author Simon Goddard writes in his excellent book, The Smiths: Songs That Saved Your Life, \u201cThe song encapsulates the Smiths at their most morbidly romantic; a love song that celebrates the existential transience of human mortality by fantasising about being cut down in the prime of happiness. Preserving bliss, but only through death.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Morrissey and Marr\u2019s masterpiece – the perfect balance of the former\u2019s tragicomic lyrics with the latter\u2019s lush, intricate and melancholic, pop-influenced orchestration.<\/p>\n

In his autobiography, Set The Boy Free, Johnny recounted how he wrote the music for some of the songs that would end up on The Queen Is Dead, including There Is a Light That Never Goes Out, and recalled how he first played his ideas to Morrissey on a Martin acoustic guitar – recording them on a cassette machine while the two of them were sat in Marr\u2019s three-storey Victorian house, on Marlborough Road in Bowdon, a leafy suburb in Altrincham, Greater Manchester.<\/p>\n

\n

\"The\n<\/p>\n

Marr and Morrissey were an excellent songwriting team, but terrible at orienteering (Image credit: Clare Muller\/Redferns\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The Martin was a D-28 Natural model from 1971, a guitar favoured by the likes of Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Bert Jansch, which Marr bought in 1984. He also conjured the sparkling Cemetry Gates<\/a> chords with this guitar.<\/p>\n

Marr wrote the chords for There Is a Light That Never Goes Out during the late summer of 1985. \u201cIt had a breezy minor chord pattern that went to an uplifting chorus, and I\u2019d inserted a rhythmic skip from The Velvet Underground for some mischief, as they\u2019d copied it from The Stones,\u201d Marr said in his book.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first, I thought the song might be a B-side because it came to me so easily, but as I played it there was something certain about it, an indefinable quality that comes out of nowhere. We were getting the feeling that we had something good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marr added that at the end of the night, he drove Morrissey back to his place with a cassette of three new songs that would ultimately become I Know It\u2019s Over<\/a>, There Is a Light That Never Goes Out and Frankly, Mr Shankly<\/a>, all destined for inclusion on The Queen Is Dead.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Select magazine in 1993, Marr said of the Velvet Underground and Rolling Stones influence on There Is a Light That Never Goes Out: \u201cThere\u2019s a little in-joke in there just to illustrate how intellectual I was getting.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the time everyone was into the Velvet Underground, and they stole the intro to There She Goes Again<\/a> from the Rolling Stones\u2019 version of Hitch Hike<\/a>, the Marvin Gaye song. I just wanted to put that in to see whether the press would say, \u2018oh, it\u2019s the Velvet Underground!\u2019 \u2018Cos I knew I was smarter than that. I was listening to what the Velvet Underground were listening to.\u201d<\/p>\n

That part Marr is referring to is the bridge ascent from F# minor to A, then B.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Johnny\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a little in-joke in there just to illustrate how intellectual I was getting\u201d Johnny Marr was just 21 when he wrote There Is a Light\u2026 beyond impressive (Image credit: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Writing in The Smiths: Songs That Saved Your Life, Goddard stated that the chords for There Is a Light That Never Goes Out were based on a sequence of C# minor, A,B, E and either F# or F# minor – he added that the flute section, which was originally written as a guitar part, was based around an arpeggio in its home chord of C# minor.<\/p>\n

The flute part and the string arrangement were created by Marr on an Emulator digital sampling synthesizer, allowing him to orchestrate the song, opening up new possibilities and expanding the sound of the band, which, on their first two albums had largely been a guitar, bass and drums set-up.<\/p>\n

On The Queen Is Dead, the orchestration was wryly credited to the fictitious \u2018Hated Salford Ensemble\u2019.<\/p>\n

The first sessions for The Queen Is Dead took place in August 1985, in Studio Three at RAK Studios in St John\u2019s Wood, London, with Morrissey and Marr as producers, and Stephen Street on engineering duties, although the first song to be recorded for the album, The Boy With The Thorn In His Side<\/a>, was captured at Drone Studios in Manchester, in July of that year.<\/p>\n

According to Goddard, a raw rehearsal of There Is a Light That Never Goes Out took place at RAK in autumn 1985 – the session was taped on 2 September. Goddard stated that this version was originally in a higher, ill-fitting key, F# minor, but that a more comfortable monitor mix, lowered to C# minor, was completed four days later.<\/p>\n

The song was finished in winter 1985 at Jacobs Studios, a residential recording complex located in a Georgian house in the Surrey countryside near Farnham, where Morrissey redid some of his vocal takes.<\/p>\n

In earlier versions of the song, Morrissey sang: \u2018There is a light in your eyes and it never goes out,\u2019 but in the final recording, this was amended to simply \u2018There is a light and it never goes out,\u2019 adding ambiguity to the song\u2019s meaning.<\/p>\n

As Goddard pointed out, the narrative of the song was influenced by the \u2018death discs\u2019 of the \u201860s, as well as Karel Reisz\u2019s 1960 film version of Alan Sillitoe\u2019s seminal novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and the 1955 coming-of-age movie, Rebel Without a Cause, starring James Dean – a significant idol of Morrissey\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Writing about the initial RAK sessions for There Is a Light That Never Goes Out in his book, Set The Boy Free, Marr said: \u201cI decided to record it using the Martin acoustic I\u2019d written it on, so as to capture the breezy quality, and I ran through the chords with Andy [Rourke – bass] and Mike [Joyce – drums], who were hearing it for the first time, while Stephen Street made some adjustments to the sound.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Smiths\"\n<\/p>\n

“Every line was perfect as the words and the music carried us along on our new anthem” (Image credit: Pete Cronin\/Redferns\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe music came together quickly, which is usually the sign of a good song. It was always an important moment for me when we were putting down something new, but with There Is a Light\u2026 it was obvious that we might have some magic, and it felt like the music was playing itself.\u2019<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cAll my expectations were surpassed though when Morrissey got behind the microphone, and we played the song as a band for the first time. Every line was perfect as the words and the music carried us along on our new anthem. We were high with it, and after a few takes we had one of our best ever songs, and something that felt at the time like pop music and beyond.”<\/p>\n

We spoke to Stephen Street to get some more perspective on the There Is a Light\u2026 sessions, and interestingly, he contradicts Marr\u2019s recollection. Stephen tells us that the first time he heard the song was at Jacobs Studios, rather than RAK.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey might have done There Is a Light\u2026 in a rehearsal session [at RAK], but not in the main session that I worked on there, where we focused on recording Bigmouth Strikes Again<\/a>,\u201d he tells us.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a smaller studio down the corridor, and they might have gone in there for a day or two to do some run throughs, but, certainly, for me, I didn\u2019t hear There Is a Light\u2026 until we actually recorded it at Jacobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reminiscing about the sessions for the song at Jacobs Studios, Street says: \u201cWe were working on a Mitsubishi digital multitrack tape machine, it was quite new technology. I remember doing There Is a Light\u2026, it came together like a breeze. Johnny came in one afternoon, running through it with Mike and Andy, and we recorded it. I think within two or three takes, we had the one we wanted. Morrissey did a vocal on it quickly and it was evident straight away what a great melody and lyric he had prepared for it. He was pretty impressive with his vocal performances.\u201d<\/p>\n

He adds: \u201cWhen I was working with Johnny, I always had a couple of delays on the go because he liked his guitar going into them, there would be a 3\/16 delay or an eighth delay, and I would play around with them to see which one worked with which part.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Stephen\n<\/p>\n

Stephen Street produced the final two Smiths records, and continued working with Morrissey on his debut solo album Viva Hate (Image credit: Stephen Street\/PR)<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce we had Morrissey\u2019s vocal on, we knew what else we needed to embellish – I can remember a lovely afternoon in the studio with Johnny when we had the Emulator there. We did the arpeggiated flute thing. I put an echo on it, which really made it bounce around. I remember that working, it was wonderful. Once we had that idea down, all the extra bits, like the strings, just seemed to come out of the ether.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe used the Emulator even more on the next [and final Smiths\u2019] record [Strangeways, Here We Come] \u2013 they were quite expensive to hire in for the day.\u201d<\/p>\n

The recording budget for The Queen Is Dead couldn\u2019t stretch to hiring in a real string section for the sessions, hence the use of the Emulator, and, as Street points out, having guest musicians in the studio might not have sat well with the band\u2019s gang mentality anyway. The Smiths treated outsiders with suspicion\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think Morrissey would\u2019ve been happy working with a string section, he liked everything contained within the band,\u201d says Street. \u201cWhen we had a trumpet player in to play on Frankly, Mr Shankly, I could see him slightly squirming. He might be a little bit more open to working with session players now, but back then he wasn\u2019t.\u201d Tellingly, the version of Frankly, Mr Shankly featuring the trumpet player didn\u2019t make The Queen Is Dead – an alternate take was used.<\/p>\n

Recalling working at Jacobs, Street tells us: \u201cIt was quite a nice studio, a stately home-type thing, but with a barn as a side extension, with glass doors, which was the main recording studio. The control room was in one of the rooms of the house. I can remember that Status Quo were recording in the other studio there and I think there was a coming together one evening, but Morrissey didn\u2019t want to mix with Status Quo, that was obvious!\u201d<\/p>\n

On the recording process, he says: \u201cI\u2019d get up in the morning, go downstairs and work on the tapes. Morrissey would be around and do a vocal or two, but Johnny was quite a night owl back then, you wouldn\u2019t see him much before lunchtime. The most productive part of the day would be in the afternoon, from two or three o\u2019clock onwards until dinner.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Goddard wrote in The Smiths: Songs That Saved Your Life, audio evidence of Marr\u2019s initial awe at hearing There Is a Light That Never Goes Out when it was first played in the studio has survived.<\/p>\n

Following the song\u2019s first rehearsal at RAK on 2 September, the tapes were left rolling long enough for the microphones to pick up Marr\u2019s excited adulation of his co-writer. “Aw, your singing on the end of that,” he glowed towards Morrissey, “was brilliant.”<\/p>\n

\n

\"Morrissey\n<\/p>\n

“Morrissey didn\u2019t want to mix with Status Quo, that was obvious!\u201d (Image credit: Pete Still\/Redferns\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Says Street: \u201cThe chord structure for There Is A Light\u2026 just has a nice natural flow to it and once Morrissey added the lyric and the melody, I thought it was going to be a very special track. I knew it was going to be one of the highlights of the record. What links everything together for me is the emotion of it, it\u2019s so celebratory, but Morrissey is singing about dying in a car crash and how beautiful that would be if you were with the person you loved.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you go to indie clubs and that record comes on, everyone gets together and sings along – I find it amazing that people are singing in such a celebratory way about being involved in a car crash. It\u2019s quite a strange and very English thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

He adds: \u201cJohnny and I treated it with a lightness of touch – we didn\u2019t want to go too big or heavy or make it into a single. It was just like; let it be what it is\u2026 It\u2019s lovely and it\u2019s still one of my favourite Smiths songs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew we had recorded an important track, we were excited about the whole album, but for me it\u2019s a highlight. I was a bit worried that The Queen Is Dead was getting a bit dark, but we got the balance right with There Is a Light\u2026, as it provided some light and poppy relief. There\u2019s nothing wrong with pop music, you know.”<\/p>\n

The song was eventually released as a single in the UK in 1992, five years after The Smiths had split up, reaching number 25 in the official Top 40. By then, it was already widely-known.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Johnny\n<\/p>\n

Johnny Marr still regularly performs the song live, as does his estranged former songwriting partner (Image credit: Ollie Millington\/Redferns via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

In 2005, Morrissey put out a live version of the song as a double-A side with his cover of Patti Smith\u2019s Redondo Beach, which – impressively – got to number 11 in the UK Singles Chart.<\/p>\n

From its pivotal place on The Queen Is Dead, to massed singalongs in indie clubs and its frequent outings at 2020s Morrissey and Marr gigs, There Is a Light That Never Goes Out is perhaps the Smiths’ most iconic song – a timeless anthem for love, longing and romantic fatalism that will endure long after Morrissey\u2019s fridge has packed up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"British poet and author, Brian Bilston, recently published a short and pithy poem entitled Morrissey\u2019s Fridge. It reads:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-479065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}