The Beatles grabbed most of the music-related headlines last week with the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Beatlemania. But this week also marks another significant anniversary. It was 30 years that Brit-pop icons the Smiths released their debut album. While the guys didn’t create the same kind of stir as the Beatles, they certainly made their mark during their all-too-brief run. To mark the occasion, the Smiths catalog has been reissued as part of the Mastered for iTunes release series. Starting today, the songs are available for purchase. The collection includes all four of the band’s studio albums — The Smiths (1984), Meat Is Murder (1985), The Queen Is Dead (1986), and Strangeways, Here We Come (1987) — as well as the live album Rank, the singles and B-sides compilations Hatful of Hollow,The World Won’t Listen and Complete, the ultimate collection that compiles all of the aforementioned releases in one deluxe digital product. Now, if the group would just reunite already.
This article appears in Feb 5-11, 2014.
They have to be one of the most repackaged bands – those pesky compilations – from the post-punk era. The scorecard reads….four studio albums, one live album and 10 compilation releases — oh, and one EP.
Releases, re-releases, then digitally remastered re-releases, and then finally anniversary or complete releases! Hooray for buying the same thing 4 times!
If these sound anything like the 2011 CDs, they will be horrible. The dynamic range was squashed on those, and I expect the same for these Itunes versions. I’ll stick to my original LPs which still sound fantastic.