Happy Anniversary: The Smiths, Hatful of Hollow

30 years ago today, The Smiths released a compilation which provided the band with their second top-10 album in the UK while providing their American fans with an item to hold up to fellow Anglophiles as proof of their devotion to Messrs. Morrissey and Marr. (It seems like a lifetime ago now, but there really was a time when the words “it’s an import” could get a gasp out of your real music obsessives.)

Emerging on the heels of the band’s self-titled debut, which had emerged earlier in 1984 and climbed all the way to the penultimate spot on the UK album charts, Hatful of Hollow was a stopgap measure suggested by Morrissey to make sure as many people as possible heard their new single, “How Soon Is Now?” By happy coincidence, however, it also kept The Smiths flying high in the public eye while the quartet worked on their sophomore studio effort, and – better yet – it proved to be a commercial success as well. Not as much of one of as their debut, mind you, but making it to #7 is still pretty swell as chart placements go. Plus, it provided the band with the opportunity to formally release versions of some of the tracks from The Smiths that they felt better served the material, so it was both a commercial and a creative victory.

Granted, the organization of Hatful of Hollow’s tracks is a bit haphazard, with singles, B-sides, and songs from sessions with John Peel and David Jensen all intermingling without any particular rhyme or reason as to their placement. Still, that seeming indifference to organization or any particular musical flow is also one of the collection’s charms, so it seems like a waste of time and effort to go on about it.

As for its contents, you can’t go wrong with any Smiths compilation that features “How Soon Is Now?” within its track listing, but of the songs that don’t appear on any of the band’s studio albums, we’ve always been most partial to “Handsome Devil,” which features a couple of Morrissey’s most unabashedly lascivious couplets: “Let me get my hands / On your mammary glands / And let me get your head / In a conjugal bed.” Brilliant stuff, that.

But, of course, we’ve all got our favorites. Give Hatful of Hollow a 30th anniversary spin, won’t you? Let’s find out what songs have held up best for you over the years…