The Smiths reissue ‘The Queen Is Dead’ single on vinyl but Morrissey’s not happy

HMV find themselves in the firing line.

The Smiths have released 1986 single (and lead track from album of the same name) ‘The Queen Is Dead’ on limited 7″ and 12″ vinyl.

However, following the release on Friday, HMV invoked the ire of The Smiths’ garrulous frontman, who took umbrage at the “Limited To One Per Customer” stickers slapped on the records at HMV.

As Clash reports, writing on Facebook, he concluded that “An attempt to freeze sales is, of course, an overwhelming insult to the Smiths … as if artistic freedom must struggle in our current culture of banality … as if only counterfeit emotions ​may ​apply.”

He went on: “The Queen is Dead is also the only song currently in the UK top ten that has not been played on radio, and yet still sits at #4 on today’s sales chart. Over thirty years since their death, and the Smiths are still thought too radical for the slow reader! It is evident, to me at least, that music audiences must only feel and think the very same thing at all times.”

Quoting Freud along the way, he closed the post with a call for fans to resist HMV’s draconian agenda by donning “false noses, multiple-sized plastic clip-on ears, a nurse outfit, a set of stilts, a Superman cape, and a variety of oddly shaped spectacles” and buying as many copies as they like.

If you do, you’ll find that the 12″ features the 1992 edit of the track and B-sides ‘Oscillate Wildly,’ ‘Money Changes Everything,’ and ‘The Draize Train,’ while the 7″ comes backed with ‘I Keep Mine Hidden,’ from the 1987 cassette release of Girlfriend In a Coma, said to be the last recorded Smiths song.

Of course, you’ll know where to go to get a copy.