31 October 2025, 17:14 | Updated: 31 October 2025, 19:31
Morrissey in 1984 and the sleeve to The Smiths’ single This Charming Man.
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Alamy Stock Photo
The classic indie floorfiller was issued on Halloween 1983 – which was also Johnny Marr’s 20th birthday! Radio X looks at the making of this landmark single.
This Charming Man was The Smiths’ second single, released on 31st October 1983. It was both Halloween and guitarist Johnny Marr’s 20th birthday. He’d co-written the song with singer and lyricist Morrissey and soon found themselves with their first British chart hit.
With its distinctive, upbeat guitar riff and witty lyric, it’s no surprise this song became a huge success for the band, who were still relatively unknown indie band, signed to the Rough Trade label.
Here’s the inside story behind this evergreen indie classic.
The Smiths – This Charming Man (Official Music Video)
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Marr was influenced by Aztec Camera’s Walk Out To Winter
The guitarist heard the Scottish band’s single getting radio airplay and felt that The Smiths deserved more coverage after the lukewarm reception to their debut, Hand In Globe. Marr wanted to emulate Aztec Camera’s Roddy Frame and said later that his vision was to compose something “bouncy,” which balanced Morrissey’s pensive lyrics.
Aztec Camera – Walk Out To Winter (Album Version)
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The lyrics were heavily influenced by Morrisey’s favourite films
The singer took direct quotes from two films when writing the lyrics to This Charmming Man. The memorable refrain “I would go out tonight but I haven’t got a stitch to wear” came from the 1961 kitchen sink drama A Taste Of Honey (which also influenced the early Smiths song This Night Has Opened My Eyes), while the line “A jumped-up pantry boy who never knew his place” was lifted from the 1972 thriller Sleuth starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine.
1961 A Taste Of Honey Official Trailer 1 Woodfall Film Productions
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This Charming Man wasn’t included on a Smiths album… at first
The original UK vinyl edition of The Smiths’ self-titled album, released by Rough Trade in February 1984, did not include This Charming Man. However, it was later added as a bonus track to the American edition where it kicked off Side 2, while This Charming Man was added to the cassette and later CD versions in the UK.
The Smiths – the self-titled debut album from 1984 that was initially free of This Charming Man.
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This Charming Man features one of The Smiths’ most fanous riffs
Johnny Marr revealed he overdubbed fifteen layers of guitar to create the backing track. This richly-texture style went on to influence countless bands, including The Stone Roses and R.E.M.
This Is The Secret Of Johnny Marr’s Guitar Sound
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Morrissey’s lyric is typically ambiguous
The “plot” of This Charming Man concerns a young man whose bike breaks down on a bleak Manchester moor. He’s soon approached by an older man in a car, who offers the cyclist a lift… but are there strings attached? Morrissey refers to the driver as “charming”, an old-fashioned term that adds a layer of ambiguity to the encounter.
Morrissey in 1995: the master of the ambiguous lyric.
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Alamy -
Johnny Marr used some unusual techniques on the recording
Even at this early stage in The Smiths’ career, the guitarist was experimenting: on This Charming Man, Marr dropped a knife across his Telecaster guitar to create a percussive sound towards the end of the chorus.
Johnny Marr on How Soon Is Now by The Smiths
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This Charming Man remains one of The Smiths’ most famous songs
The single reached Number 25 in 1983, which was no mean feat for an independent release in those days, but peaked at Number 8 on reissue in 1992, five years after the band had split. Now widely regarded as The Smiths’ signature song, This Charming Man is currently their second most-streamed song on Spotify, with 673 million plays.
Morrissey and Johnny Marr onstage in October 1983, just as This Charming Man was released.
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There were multiple mixes of This Charming Man released in 1983
If you picked up the single on its initial release, you had a choice between the “London” and “Manchester” versions – the first was taped at Matrix Studios in the Capital, but the result wasn’t considered good enough, so a second versions was laid down at Strawberry Studios in Stockport.
It was the “Manchester” take that became the A-side, while a François Kevorkian remix, called the “New York” version was issued for US consumption, but Rough Trade boss Geoff Travis liked the result so much, he issued it in Britain in December 1983. Morrissey and Marr disliked this attempt to get fans to buy more copies of the record and it never happened again with a Smiths release.
Take your pick of the This Charming Man mixes: Manchester or London?
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Alamy -
The song caused something of a political furore in later years
In 2006, Conservative MP and future Prime Minister David Cameron claimed This Charming Man was one of his Desert Island Discs. However, Marr later shared a tweet saying that he “forbid” Cameron from listening to The Smiths!
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Morrissey introduced his iconic gladioli flowers promoting the song
The Smiths performed This Charming Man on several TV shows in November 1983: Top Of The Pops, The Tube and BBC-2’s Riverside. This was the first time a lot of people experienced The Smiths and the sight of Morrissey flamboyantly swinging flowers across the screen gained the band a lot of new fans…
The Smiths – This Charming Man (Live on Top of The Pops ’83)
