As the punk poet prepares to tour and reissue Horses for its 50th anniversary, we count down the best of her rich, rabble-rousing work
Not all the politicking on Gung Ho landed right – Stange Messengers is unbearably clumsy – but Glitter in Their Eyes’ plea for a younger generation not to get hooked on materialism is impressively punchy and potent, abetted by the presence on guitar of her old sparring partner, Television’s Tom Verlaine.
Like its predecessor, Gone Again, Peace and Noise was an album awash with loss and mourning. Don’t Say Nothing sounds like a note to self, a concerted effort to shake free from the torpor of grief and start over: “Gonna straighten up, gonna get well, I’m gonna do something, gonna face the fact.”
A streetwise rock’n’roll strut, married to a lyric in which an alien invasion, or possibly the revenge of simians used in space exploration, gets mixed up with the French actor Pierre Clémenti. If Easter was Smith’s most commercial album thus far, you never forgot you were in the presence of a one-off figure.
Written for Robert Mapplethorpe after the death of his partner, Sam Wagstaff, the beautiful Paths That Cross offers a warm, optimistic view of eternity as “a glow we all will know”. Given that Mapplethorpe was also sick – he died within a year of the song’s release – you suspect Smith was equally engaged in preparing herself for his loss.
