The Smiths album covers ranked
The Smiths made only four albums, and their sleeves were as much a statement as the songs: black-and-white photographs of film stars, boxers and soldiers, chosen by Morrissey with the care of a curator. No band's artwork has ever felt so much like a manifesto.
Here are all 4 Smiths album covers we have in the game, ranked from the most recognisable to the least.
1. The Queen Is Dead (1986)
The Queen Is DeadThe Smiths · 1986
Alain Delon, arms folded, looking impossibly cool and slightly disdainful — a still from the 1964 film L'Insoumis. It's the most iconic Smiths image by a distance, the cover that defined the band's whole aesthetic: French cinema, androgynous glamour, and a title that scandalised the tabloids.
2. Meat Is Murder (1985)
Meat Is MurderThe Smiths · 1985
A young soldier in a helmet, staring into the camera with a vacant, haunted expression — a still from the 1968 film In the Year of the Pig, about the Vietnam War. The title and the image together made the band's animal-rights point with a force no sleeve had managed before.
3. The Smiths (1984)
The SmithsThe Smiths · 1984
Joe Dallesandro, the Andy Warhol star, naked to the waist — a still from the 1968 film Flesh. It's the debut that introduced the band's visual language in one image: black-and-white, homoerotic, borrowed from underground cinema, and instantly, unmistakably theirs.
4. Strangeways, Here We Come (1987)
Strangeways, Here We ComeThe Smiths · 1987
Richard Davalos, the actor from East of Eden, standing against a wall — a moody, shadowed still. It's a fine sleeve, but by the final album the formula had become familiar, and this cover reads as a variation on the three that came before rather than a new idea.
The cover as manifesto
Four albums, four borrowed film stills, four black-and-white faces — and yet each one feels like a deliberate act of curation rather than repetition. Morrissey treated the sleeve as a piece of the argument the band was making, and no other group of the era was as single-minded about it.
That single-mindedness is what makes them such good quiz material. Alain Delon, a soldier's stare, Joe Dallesandro — see how few tiles it takes to name The Queen Is Dead in today's VinylPeek, or browse every indie cover in the archive. If you liked this, rank Nirvana's sleeves next.