10 Perfect Compilation Albums In Rock Music History
8. The World Won't Listen - The Smiths
Looking through the Smiths' catalog, it's sometimes hard to keep track of where everything lines up. For all of the great pop music that Morrissey and Johnny Marr put out, even some of the greatest songs of their career never made it onto a proper album. Though we did have to deal with Morrissey's lecture of a title track on Meat is Murder, how the hell did half of the World Won't Listen not make a proper studio record?
When you really start to sift through this record, you have songs that are either stand alone singles or some of the most underrated songs of the Smiths' career. While you do have a few more celebrated songs on here like Panic and Ask, the strength of this album is in the introspective tracks, like when Morrissey shows his weariness with the world on Asleep or packing all of the teenage angst that he can into just 2 minutes on Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want.
Even with the more celebrated studio albums that the Smiths have released over the years, you might be better off listening to this as a proper introduction to the band, bringing some of the greatest singles of their career alongside overlooked gems and celebrated album cuts like There Is a Light That Never Goes Out or Bigmouth Strikes Again. We may not have had the Smiths with us for very long, but this one record acts as a nice gateway into what they were all about.