“That Joke isn't funny anymore” by The Smiths

The Smiths put the full-length "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore" on Meat Is Murder in 1985, and an edited cut became the album's only UK single. Morrissey wrote the words to Johnny Marr's music: a scene in a parked car, the narrator standing up for the lonely and the suicidal against those who sneer at them, in a lyric that keeps slipping between literal and figurative. That year he told Melody Maker it was his answer to writers who mocked his gloomy streak and kept trying to unmask him as a fraud.

Marr's rhythm guitar carries it, strident chord changes over a lilting, waltz-like sway that sweeps you along. He adds piano, with Andy Rourke on bass and Mike Joyce on drums; the band produced it with Stephen Street engineering, and Marr has named it one of his favorite Smiths songs.

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