The Queen Is Dead

The cover features a still from the 1964 French film L'Insoumis (also known as The Unvanquished), showing the young Alain Delon looking over his shoulder with brooding intensity. Morrissey, The Smiths' vocalist and lyricist, personally selected virtually all of the band's album and single cover images throughout their career. His selections were always culturally loaded, drawing from a personal canon of actors, writers, musicians, and cultural figures.

Morrissey's cover choices for The Smiths followed consistent themes: androgynous beauty, melancholy glamour, working-class or outsider identity, and a distinctly European (often French or Italian) aesthetic sensibility. Previous Smiths covers had featured images of Joe Dallesandro (from Warhol's Flesh), Truman Capote, James Dean, Elvis Presley, and various obscure models and actors.

Using a French movie star on an album called The Queen Is Dead was characteristically provocative. The album's title track is a satirical assault on the British monarchy, and placing a symbol of Continental glamour and sophistication on its cover was a deliberate snub to British institutions. The implication: real culture, real beauty, real depth exists elsewhere — in French cinema, in European art, in anything other than the gray, conformist reality of Thatcher-era Britain.

The Smiths' cover art was distinctive in the music landscape of the mid-1980s, when most bands featured photographs of themselves on their album covers. The Smiths' front covers never featured the band members, and never included text (the band name and album title appeared only on the spine). This anti-promotional approach made The Smiths' releases instantly recognizable on record store shelves and created a visual identity that was literary, cinematic, and deeply personal.

Morrissey's cover art curation became an art form in itself, introducing legions of fans to obscure cultural figures and encouraging them to explore cinema, literature, and photography. The practice of using found images and film stills as album art — treating the cover as cultural criticism rather than band promotion — influenced countless indie bands. The Queen Is Dead cover remains one of the most elegant and culturally resonant in the Smiths' discography.