“How Soon is Now?” by The Smiths

"How Soon Is Now?" started out in 1984 as a B-side, tucked behind the Smiths single "William, It Was Really Nothing", but it didn't stay hidden for long. Morrissey wrote the words and Johnny Marr the music, and it doesn't sound much like the rest of their records: a slow, swampy groove soaked in wavering, shuddering guitar that seems to rise out of a fog, with Morrissey floating over the din, aloof and wounded at once. He took the title from Popcorn Venus, Marjorie Rosen's 1973 book and a favorite of his.

John Porter produced it and Stephen Street engineered, and the full take runs close to seven minutes; the 7-inch edit chopped it to under four. It landed on the Hatful of Hollow compilation and on several editions of Meat Is Murder, the American one among them, then came out as a single on Sire in the US in 1984 and on Rough Trade in Britain in January 1985, reaching No. 24 on the UK chart. It was a club favorite, but it had already been floating around on vinyl in so many forms that the single never did the business people expected. A 1992 reissue went to No. 16.

Marr later called it possibly the band's most enduring record, and it topped John Peel's Festive Fifty for 1984.

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