“Everyday Is Like Sunday” by Morrissey

"Everyday Is Like Sunday" comes from Viva Hate, Morrissey's 1988 solo debut on His Master's Voice, and it was only his second release after the Smiths fell apart. He wrote it with Stephen Street, the Smiths' old producer, who had first offered his musical sketches for possible Smiths B-sides and ended up building a new career partnership instead. Street produced the track and played bass on it, with a nod to Echo & the Bunnymen.

Morrissey took his cue from Nevil Shute's novel On the Beach and turned it into a lament for a drab, out-of-season seaside town, the kind of place where time crawls and nothing ever arrives. The music is grand and sweeping, swelling around a melody of real melancholy beauty, and his croon has never sounded so lordly in its gloom.

It reached number nine in the UK and drew raves for its evocative words and big, bombastic sound, and it convinced Morrissey to keep working with Street on the singles that followed. It later turned up on the compilation Bona Drag, and it has gone on to become one of his most successful and admired songs, even lending its name to a Canadian cult film.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.