The ne plus ultra of mopey, 80’s teenager, nobody-understands-me-but-this-band music. With titles like “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” and “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want,” you’d think The Smiths were only good for moodily staring out of your bedroom window on a rainy day while your parents searched through the Yellow Pages for the number of a good therapist.

But that’s the one-dimensional view, and The Smiths operated in many dimensions.

Let’s go back to Manchester, England in 1983: Johnny Marr played guitar, but he needed a songwriting partner, someone to sing and write the lyrics. He’d heard of a guy in town who wrote for music magazines and even had a book about James Dean to his credit, and so, in a bold move, Marr found out the guy’s address, walked up to his door completely unannounced, and knocked. And that’s how Johnny Marr met Stephen Morrissey.

Amazingly, for someone who had never sung or written a song, Morrissey’s voice and lyrics fit perfectly with Marr’s riffs and melodies. They shared common touchstones like 60’s girl groups and 70’s proto-punks The New York Dolls, and once they’d recruited a bassist and drummer, they settled on the most prosaic name possible, the anti-New Romantic moniker, The Smiths.

Signing to the Rough Trade label, the band recorded four albums, half a dozen singles, and helped lay the groundwork for moving indie into the mainstream over the next decade, particularly in the UK (in the US, you had to really want to hear The Smiths in order to find them, which led to a small, but rabid and devoted following).

And if the people stare then the people stare — I really don’t know and I really don’t care. Here’s the least you need to know:

The Smiths (1984) The debut. Immediately establishes their sound, which sounds like no one else at the time. Jingly jangly acoustic guitars with nary a synthesizer in sight. Is there darkness and melancholy? Oh yes, otherwise it wouldn’t be a Smiths album. The first version was discarded and the entire album rerecorded with a new producer.

Meat Is Murder (1985) Morrissey’s wit and humor begin to blossom and the lyrics expand to include politics and environmentalism. A great leap forward as everyone in the band grows in confidence and execution. More rock, more funk, more impact.

The Queen Is Dead (1986) The pinnacle of 80’s UK indie rock. The queen is dead but The Smiths are alive and well, even at the cemetery gates, with a thorn in their side, in a tutu. There is, indeed, a light that never goes out. One of the greatest albums of the decade.

Louder Than Bombs A collection of (almost) all of the band’s singles, both A and B sides. Like some of their favorite artists from the 60’s, many of The Smiths’ singles never appeared on their studio albums, and since those singles serve as some of their best work, a compilation is necessary.