"Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others"
Song by The Smiths
from the album The Queen Is Dead
ReleasedJune 1986
RecordedOctober–November 1985 at Jacobs Studios, Farnham[1]
GenreAlternative rock, jangle pop
Length3:14 (album version)
3:01 (single version)
3:57 (alternate mix)
LabelRough Trade
Songwriter(s)Morrissey, Johnny Marr
Producer(s)Morrissey & Marr

"Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others" is a song by the English rock band the Smiths. Recorded in autumn 1985, it was first released on their third studio album The Queen Is Dead in June 1986. It was also released as a single in Germany.[2]

Background

As with every original recording by the Smiths, the music of "Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others" was composed by Johnny Marr and the lyrics were written by Morrissey.[1] The recording was given a distinctive intro by engineer Stephen Street, who increased the reverb on the drums, faded the track in then out again, and took the reverb back off when reintroducing the song: "A bit like opening a door, closing it, then opening it again and walking in".[1] The lyric paraphrases Hank Locklin's 1949 country hit "Send Me the Pillow You Dream On". The phrase "the Dole Age" refers to Unemployment Benefit, nicknamed the "dole"; in the year of the song's release, 1986, 3 million people in the United Kingdom were unemployed.[1][3][4]

Reception

In the mainstream British music magazine NME, Adrian Thrills wrote, "As an album with humour never far from its surface, it is fitting that The Queen Is Dead should conclude with the clipped, undulating frivolity of 'Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others', a hypnotic musical travelogue that verges on the transcendental [...] Again, the Morrissey muse and Marr's musical setting collide marvellously, the track illuminated by some lovely slide guitar from the latter. It would have made another classic Smiths single".[5]

Andy Strickland in Record Mirror said, "Morrissey and Marr still can't quite get it together all the time, 'Never Had No One Ever' and 'Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others' bearing all the hallmarks of the familiar Smiths filler, where music and words hardly embrace,"[5] while Nick Kent wrote, "'Vicar in a Tutu' and 'Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others', sensibly restrained arrangement-wise, may well be lesser songs but, constructed within their rightful limitations, sound absolutely stunning".[5]

In Simon Goddard's book of track-by-track explications Songs That Saved Your Life, Johnny Marr describes the song as "a beautiful piece of music", while the author writes, "Possessing one of his most alluring guitar melodies [...] if Marr's tune was heaven-sent, then it seemed very nearly blasphemous of Morrissey to christen it 'Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others' and bestow it with its notoriously frivolous lyric".[1]

Live version

"Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others" was performed live only once: at the final concert by the Smiths, at Brixton Academy, London, on 12 December 1986. The performance, which included a verse ("On the shop floor, there's a calendar, as obvious as snow, as if we didn't know") not used in the studio version, was recorded and later featured as a B-side on the 12" and cassette edition of the "I Started Something I Couldn't Finish" single in November 1987.[6]

Single release

In Germany, "Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others" was released as a single in slightly edited form, on 7" and 12" vinyl, with artwork modified from the cover used for "Ask".[7]

Sleeve image

The single cover depicts actress Yootha Joyce in a still from the 1965 film Catch Us If You Can. The same photograph had been used on the 1986 single "Ask".

Etchings on vinyl

7" single: "Rock and Rolling to the Top"/"A 'PRECISE DIAMOND' CUT" (Zensor – 6.14656 AC)[8]

12" maxi-single: "---NOH GIRL LIKE JAGUAR ROSE---"/"BUSY TRAIN TO THE LOKOMOTION" (Zensor – 6.20628 AE)[2]

Track listings

7" single
No.TitleLength
1."Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others"3:01
2."The Draize Train"5:06
12" maxi-single
No.TitleLength
1."Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others"3:01
2."Frankly, Mr Shankly"2:17
3."The Draize Train"5:06
  • 1995: Martin Newell covered the song on The Off White Album, produced by Louis Philippe.
  • 1996: Supergrass covered the song on the tribute album The Smiths Is Dead.
  • 1997: Slovak musician Karol Mikloš recorded the composition as "Some Boys Are Bigger Than Others" for his debut set The Same Mist Here.[9]
  • 2005: The song title was used for a musical based around the music of Morrissey & Marr.[10]
  • 2007: German band Brockdorff Klang Labor covered the song for their debut album Mädchenmusik.
  • 2009: Irish musician Janie Price of Copenhagen, Denmark, covered the song as the band Bird for her first album Girl And A Cello; in the lyrics of her version, she substitutes the word "girls" for "boys" and the word "mothers" for "fathers".[11]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Goddard, Simon (26 February 2013). Songs That Saved Your Life (Revised Edition): The Art of The Smiths 1982-87 (second ed.). Titan Books. ISBN 9781781162590.
  2. 1 2 "Smiths* – Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others". Discogs.
  3. ↑ Seager, Ashley (16 August 2006). "20 years ago the dole queue hit 3 million – today it is the workforce that's a record". The Guardian.
  4. ↑ Chignell, Hugh; Franklin, Ieuan; Skoog, Kristin (15 September 2015). Regional Aesthetics: Mapping UK Media Cultures. Springer. ISBN 9781137532831 – via Google Books.
  5. 1 2 3 "Queen Is Dead". Smiths Presumably Forever Ill. Archived from the original on 9 May 2009.
  6. ↑ Stephane. ""The Queen is Dead" discography". Passions Just Like Mine. Archived from the original on 28 December 2008.
  7. ↑ Stephane. "Some Girls are Bigger Than Others". Passions Just Like Mine. Archived from the original on 23 March 2009.
  8. ↑ "Smiths* – Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others". Discogs.
  9. ↑ Ondřejíček, Miroslav (14 September 2009). "Karol Mikloš - vzťah k hudbe sa mení". O hudbe (in Slovak). Orange Slovensko. ohudbe.sk. Retrieved 30 April 2015.
  10. ↑ "Sheila, take a bow?". BBC. 14 October 2005.
  11. ↑ Meedom, Carsten (27 August 2009). "Bird: Girl And A Cello". diskant.dk (in Danish).
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