On the real-life agony behind ‘Laughter Lines’, the band’s epic
Sack crafted one of the greatest break-up songs of all time
In the late 1990s, when Morrissey first heard the song Laughter Lines by the Dublin band Sack, The Smiths’ frontman said that he “was staggered”. “It should be No 1 forever,” he told the world.
Written by singer Martin McCann, the song has one of the most haunting and melancholic opening lines in Irish rock history: “I drink to forget, but I only remember / That day when you said, it was over, forever.”