Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others: Behind The Smiths’ “Hypnotic” Song

The Smiths laid down the definitive take of Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others during the sessions for their classic third album, The Queen Is Dead, at Jacobs Studio, in Farnham, Surrey, during the winter of 1985. The recording went smoothly and the song was performed with consummate ease by the band – though engineer Stephen Street was thinking outside the box when it came to capturing the song’s distinctive intro.

“The song, as it was, just faded in, so I thought we had to do something a bit more interesting,” Street recalled in Simon Goddard’s Songs That Saved Your Life: The Art Of The Smiths 1982-87.

“Basically, I put all the reverb on the drums up so it sounded like it was coming in from some large hall, and then faded it down really quickly. Then I took all the reverb back off and faded it up again. The effect was supposed to be like the music’s in a hall somewhere, it goes away, then it comes back and it’s nice and clean and dry. A bit like opening a door, closing it, then opening it again and walking in.”

“A hypnotic musical travelogue that verges on the transcendental”

Though The Queen Is Dead was widely hailed as The Smiths’ masterpiece from the off, Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others initially drew criticism from some quarters. Most of this centred around the band daring to sequence what some saw as a rather lightweight track as their magnum opus’ concluding statement – especially as the song followed in the wake of the towering There Is A Light That Never Goes Out.

With hindsight, though, placing Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others as The Queen Is Dead’s denouement absolutely feels like the right call. The song’s beguiling quality shines through on its own terms, and, after a few listens, it becomes increasingly hard to envisage The Smiths’ landmark record winding down any other way.

“As an album with humour never far from its surface, it is fitting that The Queen Is Dead should conclude with the clipped, undulating frivolity of Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others,” NME’s Adrian Thrills wrote in June 1987. “It would have made another classic Smiths single.”

In fact, it did, albeit solely in Germany, where it was given a standalone release in June 1986, backed with The Draize Train on 7” and bolstered by a third track, Frankly, Mr Shankly, for a 12” release.

“Morrissey’s muse and Marr’s musical setting collide marvellously, the track illuminated by some lovely slide guitar from the latter,” Thrills observed, asserting that Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others is “a hypnotic musical travelogue that verges on the transcendental”.

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