The Story Behind The Smiths' Song 'There Is A Light That Never Goes Out'

JAKARTADAILY.ID – 'There is a light that never goes out' is a song from the album “The Queen Is Dead” which was released on the 16th of June, 1986 as the smiths’ third studio album.

The album's title was inspired by “Last Exit to Brooklyn”. This is a 1964 novel by American writer, Hubert Selby Jr.

In this song, morrissey as the vocalist participated as a songwriter, and Johnny Marr produced the album. 

The official audio was released in 2018 on the smiths youtube channel, this song has already got more than 34 million views on Youtube.

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In 1990, readers of SPIN magazine voted this song number 1 on their list of the “Greatest Songs of all Time”.

The song was used in the 2009 romantic comedy film “500 Days of Summer” starring Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Quoted from songfacts.com, in 1993, guitarist, Johnny Marr, told Select magazine that he thought this was "the best song" that he had ever heard:

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"I didn't realise that 'There is a light that never goes out' was going to be an anthem but when we first played it I thought it was the best song I'd ever heard."

In the same interview, Marr revealed that the song's intro was lifted from The Rolling Stones' cover of "Hitch Hike" by Marvin Gaye. The Velvet Underground also swiped this intro for their song, "There She Goes Again."

Marr recalled: "There's a little in-joke in there just to illustrate how intellectual I was getting. At the time everyone was into The Velvet Underground and they stole the intro to 'There She Goes Again' - 'da da-da-da, da-da!' - from The Rolling Stones' version of 'Hitch Hike,' the Marvin Gaye song.

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I just wanted to put that in to see whether the press would say, 'Oh it's the Velvet Underground!' Cos I knew that I was smarter than that. I was listening to what The Velvet Underground was listening to."