“Still Ill” by The Smiths

"Still Ill" appears on The Smiths, the band's self-titled debut, issued by Rough Trade in February 1984: a Morrissey lyric set to Johnny Marr's music, with John Porter producing. Another version turned up on the Hatful of Hollow compilation that November.

It's a mope with muscle. Marr plays guitar and harmonica, Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce give it a nervy push, and Morrissey works through a ledger of grievances: the deadening grind of a regular job, a kiss that no longer feels the way it once did, a running argument over whether the body or the mind is really in charge, and the dawning fear that nothing will ever be easy or carefree again. Some have heard his sexuality in it, others a bitterness at Thatcher's Britain; The Independent picked up on that political sourness in 2018.

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