It’s difficult not to think of That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore as the one that got away for The Smiths. Unquestionably one of the group’s most haunting, yet beguiling songs, it’s been referred to as the “centrepiece” of their second album, Meat Is Murder, yet when it was released as a standalone single, it barely scraped the UK Top 50 – a result which didn’t entirely surprise the band.
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“Why would they play that continuously on radio?”
“I’d secretly wanted it to do well, because I thought it would be our big torch song, our Dusty [Springfield] single,” guitarist Johnny Marr told Uncut in 2006. “For about two days I got excited thinking we might have a big All I See Is You-type torch song in the charts. Then reality struck. Why would they play that continuously on Radio 1?”
This singular track, which biographer Tony Fletcher later described as “a lengthy, brooding waltz” came together surprisingly easily for The Smiths, as Johnny Marr later revealed: “It just fell through the roof. It was one of those lovely times when the feeling just falls down on you from a ceiling somewhere and it almost plays itself.”
“A monolithic ballad of tender, yet imposing grace”
Quickly sensing the song’s promise, the band immediately pounced on it, honing the arrangement during soundchecks on a mini-tour of the UK in September 1984, before Morrissey then perfected his lyrics during the Meat Is Murder sessions at Liverpool’s Amazon Studios.
In keeping with other key Smiths tracks from the same period, such as Rusholme Ruffians and What She Said, That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore touched on mortality (“When you laugh about people who feel so very lonely/Their only desire is to die”), though its repeated kiss-off line, “Kick them when they fall down,” is rumoured to relate to The Smiths’ relationship with the music press and its desire to turn on those it’s previously championed.
However, while Morrissey’s nuanced lyric remained open-ended, his words worked perfectly when pitted against Marr’s waltz-time signature and the band’s restrained performance, allowing the song to exude a dark allure which has drawn in listeners ever since.
