NME Pick The Smiths' 'The Queen Is Dead' as Greatest Album Of All Time: Surprised?

One cold and windy night in August, a band of cloaked NME staffers gathered around the office's Morrissey shrine and asked The Great One what more they could do to worship his glorious name in their eternal plight of penance. A slightly bored-sounding voice answered back "Did you dispose of Elton?"

Morrissey Sticks The Knife In In 'Autobiography.'

"Yes, my Lord," the exultant congregation chimed in unison as the Editor kicked a large, lumpy black sack on the floor. "Then let it be known that The Queen Is Dead is the greatest phonographic recording in the world. Let there not be a single indie-inclined youngster spawned today who is not tearfully grateful for what We have gifted their ears and relationships."

"Yes my Lord," chanted the hoard, holding up iPads displaying lit candles aflame in burning vigil for their years of sin against Mozza.

Morrissey At A Book Signing.

As Morrissey's memoir becomes one of the fastest-selling rock biopgraphies of all time, NME, that corner-post of British music reporting, has issued a proclamation that The Smiths' 1986 LP The Queen Is Dead is the greatest album of all time. The record beat the likes of David Bowie, The Stone Roses, Bob Dylan and The Beatles for the No.1 spot with a pointless points system used to rank each of the 50 considered albums.

Upon its release, The Queen Is Dead only peaked at No.2 in the charts. The infamously cantankerous singer has had an on/off relationship with the long-running publication, after 1992 saw the magazine suggest the singer was a fascist after he draped himself in the Union Flag during a Finsbury Park gig.

Roses Were Laid Out To Appease The Great One.

In Morrissey's memoir, Autobiography, he spits and hisses at the memory, evidently still raw: "no thought whatsoever of me in the burning wreckage of it all [...] They milk and foster their racist allegations - full of high moral code and judicial thuggery."

The accusation of racism reared its head fifteen years later under the editorship of Conor McNicolas after an interview. Morrissey described the words written as "the most offensively malodorous attack [...] the editor gives the story teeth by switching the wording of my replies, and by inventing questions that were never asked.

Morrissey's Autobiography Is Out Now.

The 54 year-old singer also recalls his grating suspicion that NME was out to get him in the 90s, having written that former editor Danny Kelly "allegedly called a staff meeting at which he has passed the command that his staff writers must now 'get Morrissey' [...] the plan was underway to dislodge me as an NME staple."

The NME simply must be seeking absolution. Hopefully, the album will now be remembered as much of a classic as his book.