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The Smiths were an English rock band formed in Manchester in 1982. The band consisted of vocalist Morrissey, guitarist Johnny Marr, bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce. Critics have called them one of the most important bands to emerge from the British independent music scene of the 1980s. NME named the Smiths the "most influential artist ever" in a 2002 poll.

Morrissey and Johnny Marr dictated the musical direction of the Smiths. Marr said in 1990 that it "was a 50/50 thing between Morrissey and me. We were completely in sync about which way we should go for each record". The Smiths "non-rhythm-and-blues, whiter-than-white fusion of 1960s rock and post-punk was a repudiation of contemporary dance pop", and the band purposely rejected synthesisers and dance music. However, from their second album Meat is Murder, Marr embellished their songs with keyboards. They sometimes used Sergei Prokofiev's Montagues and Capulets as entrance music at live shows.  Marr's jangly guitar-playing was influenced by Roger McGuinn of The Byrds, Neil Young's work with Crazy Horse, George Harrison (with The Beatles), James Honeyman-Scott of The Pretenders, and Bert Jansch of Pentangle. Marr often tuned his guitar up a full step to F-sharp to accommodate Morrissey's vocal range, and also used open tunings. Citing producer Phil Spector as an influence, Marr said, "I like the idea of records, even those with plenty of space, that sound 'symphonic'. I like the idea of all the players merging into one atmosphere". Marr's other favourite guitarists are James Williamson of The Stooges, Rory Gallagher, Pete Townshend of The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Marc Bolan of T. Rex, Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones and John McGeoch of Magazine and Siouxsie and the Banshees.  Morrissey's role was to create vocal melodies and lyrics. Morrissey's songwriting was influenced by punk rock and post-punk bands such as the New York Dolls, The Cramps, The Specials and The Cult, along with 1960s girl groups, and singers such as Dusty Springfield, Sandie Shaw, Marianne Faithfull, and Timi Yuro. Morrissey's lyrics, while superficially depressing, were often full of mordant humour; John Peel remarked that the Smiths were one of the few bands capable of making him laugh out loud. Influenced by his childhood interest in the social realism of 1960s "kitchen sink" television plays, Morrissey wrote about ordinary people and their experiences with despair, rejection and death. While "songs such as 'Still Ill' sealed his role as spokesman for disaffected youth", Morrissey's "manic-depressive rants" and his "'woe-is-me' posture inspired some hostile critics to dismiss the Smiths as 'miserabilists.'"  A study has found that the Smiths employed the greatest vocabulary range of all bands to emerge from Manchester, using more than 1,100 different words in their first three albums.

Entity:
The Smiths