Rewind album: Louder than Bombs by The Smiths (1987)

Loder Than Bombs
The Smiths
Sire/Rough Trade

Britain in 1982 was a strange, sad old place. It was the year when the IRA stepped up its bombing campaign, the Falklands war got under way, and national unemployment reached a 50-year high of 14 per cent.

It was also the time that The Smiths formed in Manchester. They went on to become the sort of band that made many intensely proud to be British - arguably more so than The Rolling Stones or The Beatles. They combined a unique vulnerability and rawness, both in terms of their sound and their personality, and were at once anarchistic and antagonistic, as well as intensely private and oddly conservative.

They were also unafraid, in lead singer Morrissey's case certainly, of flirting with the blurred ideas of sexuality and artistic self-expression. In short, they never compromised their image or sound for anyone, raising a middle finger to the rampant prostitution of popular music at the time.

With the mysterious and controversial Morrissey at the helm, and backed up by one of the greatest rock guitarists and composers of the modern era in Johnny Marr, The Smiths reached iconic status in a relatively short period. And as Morrissey rarely grew tired of stating, the premature death of an artist tended to catapult them unjustly into the pantheon of greatness; The Smiths managed this despite remaining very much alive (although they did split up "prematurely", which may explain the intense reverence they receive).