Modern Rock Tracks No. 1s - Morrissey and "Tomorrow"
Morrissey finally breaks into the top spot on the MRT chart with "Tomorrow," a song that forced me to confront the shame of having never listened to The Smiths
Morrissey - “Tomorrow”
Weeks atop the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart: 6 weeks (August 15 to September 19, 1992)
Previous Modern Rock #1 hit: Faith No More - “Midlife Crisis”
Next Modern Rock #1 hit: Peter Gabriel - “Digging in the Dirt”
Billboard Hot 100 chart toppers during this time:
Boyz II Men - “End Of The Road”
“You’ve NEVER listened to The Smiths?”
I can hear the chorus of my musically minded Gen X friends and fans, striking out in unison over the sheer magnitude of this unsettling reality: The guy who’s writing a newsletter about alternative music from the ‘80s and ‘90s has never listened to The Smiths.
The tragedy. The unmitigated GALL. Someone has the audacity to claim to write about music when they’ve never even set their ears to the indie-rock perfection that is Morrissey, Johnny Marr, Andy Rourke, and Mike Joyce. I am a terrible person, and I need to turn in my music-loving card right now. Any audiophilic street cred I had is effectively revoked, and subscribers should now abandon my platform en masse and nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
The Smiths, you see, are on the Mount Rushmore of Gen X’s Greatest Artists You May Have Heard Of That Your Cool Friends All Love, along with bands like The Ramones, Wilco, Bauhaus, The National, etc. But, weirdly, The Smiths are like the George Washington of this Mount Rushmore, the pinnacle of greatness, the greatest of the great, the band that will earn you a V.I.P. card into the Cool Kids Club. People who talk about their music cred inevitably cite their intimate knowledge of The Smiths as the key to unlocking their entryway into a secret cabal of all things alternative rock. Anyone who’s anyone surely knows The Smiths.
I’m belaboring the point, but I promise you that, if you’ve not listened to The Smiths, there’s a sizable population of music fandom born between 1965 and 1985 that’s silently judging you right now.
But here’s the thing: If they’re so good, why did it take me so long to hear their stuff? Is it record companies keeping them down? Is it that their music is so “underground” that it can’t find a way to get on a popular music radio station here or there? I was a DJ on a college radio station for nearly four years in the late ‘90s and I never once had the option to spin a track from either The Smiths or Morrissey.
This is my constant struggle as we get closer to the point chronologically in the ‘90s where I hit my “musical awakening” and become aware of what’s good and popular in alternative music: It’s not like I wasn’t listening to music in the ‘80s and ‘90s, but why wasn’t I listening to THIS music?
Long story short, we can’t talk about Morrissey without talking about The Smiths, and as I prepared myself for today’s discussion of “Tomorrow,” Morrissey’s first Modern Rock Tracks #1 hit, I obviously had to listen to the band that made Morrissey a household name in the first place.
Thankfully, a deep dive into The Smiths’ catalog is not terribly time consuming. The Smiths only existed for a few years, and only released four studio albums. Their content is not plentiful, but it is pretty freaking good. To distill their essence into a palatable 20-song playlist of their very best hits, I went to Billboard Magazine’s list of the top 20 songs from The Smiths and compiled them into a playlist on Qobuz, which you can access here.
[We’re going to be talking about Qobuz in the very near future, as it relates to ongoing discussions happening on the Substack music network from such fine authors as (who has written some terrific thought-provoking pieces about Spotify), (who wrote about Spotify and Qobuz here and here), and (who has written about what it means to be an audiophile), among others, about streaming sites other than Spotify and the significant improvements in musical quality for aspiring audiophiles. See my recent note highlighting an upcoming one-off article in this newsletter in the near future.]
Listening to their music, I get where people are coming from. To be honest, there are some songs on that Smiths playlist that feature some of the best drumming, guitar and bass play I’ve heard in my life (“Bigmouth Strikes Again” is stupid good, for example; and, as it turns out, I have heard “How Soon Is Now?” thanks to “The Wedding Singer,” and while tonally different from “Bigmouth,” it’s just as terrific). These guys are lightning in a bottle, and it makes sense why they’re lauded so much.
But I guess, somewhere along the way, Morrissey and Marr had some disagreements, and The Smiths parted ways. Each went on to varying degrees of success in both solo endeavors and as parts of different musical acts, but Morrissey’s name garnered the most attention on the charts after the breakup thanks to a string of solo hits. In England especially, Morrissey is on his own level, with each of his 13 solo album releases scoring a top-10 peak on the U.K. album charts, and 34 of his singles hitting the British top 40.
In the U.S., however, Morrissey was and remains more of a niche product, likely buried under the avalanche of the emerging grunge sound and the explosion of U.S.-based alternative and punk acts that dominated the MRT chart from ‘94 onward.
This doesn’t mean he wasn’t appreciated here, of course. Before the charts turned into a domestic free-for-all of American bands, Morrissey developed a strong following on alternative radio, notching five hits in the top 3 of the MRT chart (most of which I’ve already covered through the brief run of “Chart Chat”): “The Last of the Famous International Playboys” (#3), “Ouija Board, Ouija Board” (#2), “Piccadilly Palare” (#2), “Our Frank” (#2), and “We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful” (#2).
[Note: If you’re looking for an interesting deep-dive on “Piccadilly Palare” and on Morrissey, I strongly urge you to check out ’s article on her “Songs That Saved Your Life” newsletter.]
“Tomorrow” follows in these tracks’ footsteps admirably, and is a decent song overall, though hardly on the level of some of his earlier hits. Interestingly, “Tomorrow” was only released as a radio single in the U.S., and thus only charted here, a weird footnote for a track that likely would have been equally well received in other parts of the world.
While it’s good, there’s nothing remarkable about the song musically that makes it stand out as a memorable track. That said, as someone who’d been through the ringer related to unrequited love during this time and throughout the decade, I can appreciate the sincerity in Morrissey’s lyrics, quietly longing for a love interest to hold him, even in secret, so he can have a closeness that the object of his affection clearly doesn’t want to reciprocate.
All I ask of you, oh
Is would you tell me that you love me
Tell me, tell me that you love me
Tell me, tell me that you love me
Tell me that you love me
Ah, I know you don't mean it
Ah, I know you don't mean it
One thing I can say for sure about Morrissey: his voice can carry an entire track all by itself. I can’t think of a comparable voice in alternative rock music, one that both sounds like it could be a standard-issue lounge crooner while also capably hitting emotive highs and lows with a flawless transition between them. The Smiths were pretty terrific musically, but you cannot deny that Morrissey’s voice was a key ingredient to the kinetically perfect mix of what made that band successful. And it’s no wonder, then, that Morrissey went on to have such a long and illustrious career — one that continues even to this day.
I don’t know where “Tomorrow” sits in the pantheon of Morrissey’s musical greatness, but it feels like more of a footnote than anything. Given that it never charted anywhere worldwide other than the U.S. and doesn’t quite have the resonance that makes it stand out as an all-time great, this one likely falls to the middle of Morrissey’s prodigious solo catalog. We’ll see where it ranks in comparison to his second and final MRT chart topper when that discussion comes around in 1994.
As for me, I’m still working my way through The Smiths’ catalog and will eventually make my way into Morrissey’s just to see what all the fuss is about. But based on my initial observations this week, I think the fuss is absolutely warranted. The Smiths are legit, I’m foolish for having waited as long as I did to dive into their music, and hopefully it won’t be too long before I get to join the Gen X “Cool Kids Club” of Smiths/Morrissey lovers.
Rating: 5/10
Chart Check: A look at other notable MRT chart songs from this time period
The charts were on fire during the six weeks Morrissey’s hit held the top spot. Three songs came up just short of #1, several timeless classics made their way into the top 10, and somehow one of the best songs from Toad The Wet Sprocket fizzled out at #22.
“A Girl Like You” by Wolfgang Press (#2): The first of our three runners-up on the MRT charts during Morrissey’s run, “A Girl Like You” proved to be the high-water mark on the American charts by English post-punk rockers Wolfgang Press. This song is as mellow as it gets, with occasional flourishes, and would be a good addition to a Madchester playlist.
“A Letter To Elise” by The Cure (#2): The Cure almost went 3-for-3 on #1 MRT hits from their “Wish” album, but “A Letter To Elise” came up just short, peaking at #2 behind Morrissey. It’s a fine track but is admittedly not quite on the same level as “Friday I’m In Love” or “High,” so it’s not surprising that it didn’t reach the top of the charts. Going forward, The Cure will never chart as high as they did with the singles off this album.
“Not Enough Time” by INXS (#2): INXS held down the #2 spot for four weeks with “Not Enough Time,” a track I’d consider to be the best off their “Welcome To Wherever You Are” album. Much like Morrissey, Michael Hutchence’s voice is just another finely tuned instrument in the band’s arsenal, and the mix of slow rock with pianos and strings really bring this song onto another level.
“100%” by Sonic Youth (#4): Sonic Youth is so cool. The proto-grunge alt-rock group hit their all-time peak on the Modern Rock Tracks chart with “100%,” which peaked at #4 behind Morrissey. I find it hilarious that MTV originally banned the video because Kim Gordon is wearing a Rolling Stone shirt that says “Eat Me.” But at least their video-distorted the “e” in “me,” so no one would be offended. Good times.
“Dyslexic Heart” by Paul Westerberg (#4): In his first solo gig following the breakup of The Replacements, Paul Westerberg hit the top-five of the MRT charts with “Dyslexic Heart,” which peaked at #4 behind Morrissey. The song was one of the centerpiece tracks from the motion-picture soundtrack to “Singles,” which included tracks from Smashing Pumpkins, Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam, and Chris Cornell, among others. As a newly minted ‘Mats fan, I can reliably say that this track is solid.
“Jeremy” by Pearl Jam (#5): The first grunge band not named Nirvana to crack the top-5 of the Modern Rock Tracks chart is Pearl Jam, who reached #5 with the third single off their album “Ten.” The single, “Jeremy,” is notable for its controversial music video, which depicts a student’s suicide in a classroom. Even today, the video is restricted to YouTube, so you’ll have to go to the site itself to sign off on being able to watch it.
“Hunger Strike” by Temple of the Dog (#7): Temple Of The Dog was a one-off band created in the aftermath of Andrew Wood’s death. Wood, the lead singer of Mother Love Bone, died of a heroin overdose, and members of that band joined Chris Cornell to create songs like “Hunger Strike,” which peaked at #7 on the MRT chart behind Morrissey. The contributors from Mother Love Bone would eventually reform into Pearl Jam, led by Eddie Vedder, and Cornell would go on to front Soundgarden and, eventually, Audioslave.
“Walking On Broken Glass” by Annie Lennox (#7): Annie Lennox hits her high-water mark on the MRT chart with “Walking On Broken Glass,” a song that had significant crossover pop appeal as well (the song topped out at #14 on the Hot 100). Another strong vocal performance by Lennox drives this unique but catchy hit, complete with a beautifully choreographed music video which features John Malkovich and Hugh Laurie.
“Disappointed” by Electronic (#9): Speaking of The Smiths and Johnny Marr, let’s talk about Electronic again and their song “Disappointed.” I’m sure Marr was “disappointed” that this track peaked at #9 behind Morrissey’s hit, but then again, Marr was the first of The Smiths to top the MRT chart a year earlier with “Get The Message.” This is a perfect combination of New Order, The Smiths and Pet Shop Boys, and is a really catchy track.
“All I Want” by Toad The Wet Sprocket (#22): I guess Toad The Wet Sprocket is more “pop” than “alternative rock,” which might explain why the band’s superlative hit “All I Want” managed a surprisingly low #22 peak on the Modern Rock Tracks chart. The song was a mainstream pop hit, topping out at #15 on the Hot 100, but never quite got the same amount of love on alternative radio. It’s even more surprising that “Walk On The Ocean,” the band’s other major hit from their “Fear” album, didn’t even make the MRT chart despite a top-20 placement on the Hot 100 (#18).
I was also a DJ at a college radio station for four years in the late 90s. I came in with a distinct lack of appreciation for 80s music of all stripes, and the station’s programming brought me to love and respect the Smiths and tons of other acts of the era. I don’t say this in an effort to be a snob about it at all, but it’s just very hard to believe that your station existed in some alternate universe without this. What did they play?
“Girlfriend in a coma, I know
I know, it's serious”
Instant fan….