The death of Queen Elizabeth II will no doubt have pleased Morrissey, the famously anti-royal frontman of ’80s indie legends The Smiths.
The monarch died earlier this week, aged 96, after seven decades on the throne.
The news sent fans of the band – and perhaps a few others putting the phrase into Google – rushing to their 1986 album The Queen is Dead, and its opening track of the same name.
It’s been little more than 36 hours since she died, so no chart data is available yet, but Last.fm – which tracks users’ listening in real-time across whatever platforms they use – shows a massive spike in spins of the classic tune.
In the week prior to the Queen’s death, the song had about 700 ‘scrobbles’ a day (a scrobble being the site’s term for a listen). On September 8 – the date of her death in her – and the Smiths’ – native UK, that spiked to 24,209.
That’s an increase of 3459%.
None of the band have publicly commented on the passing of Her Majesty yet. Morrissey has been silent, while guitarist Johnny Marr has only tweeted once, to promote a show in Austin, Texas with The Killers.
Fans are predicting the tune might hit the charts soon.
“#1 on spotify global in a few days,” one said on Last.fm.
“Yeah, this one is going to blow up on Spotify and YouTube now,” another added on YouTube.
“I think that a consequence of the recent events will be that many people who never heard of the Smiths will discover one of the most significant bands ever.”
Google Trends data shows searches for the term ‘the queen is dead’ have been most popular in the UK, Ireland, Jamaica, New Zealand and Australia.
The Smiths almost certainly won’t reunite to cash in on the Queen’s demise, having been at odds with each other for years, Marr as recently as March said there was “zero chance” they’d work together again.
