The Smiths were one of those bands that were active when I was a kid. We’re all born into an existing culture and for a while it’s just there, being taken for granted. The radio played them and I must of heard them hundreds of times without really paying attention. For all I knew I was born with these songs in my head.
Then one day, during my teens after I’d started paying attention to music and they were no longer active, they stopped being in the background. I put down whatever I was doing and listened for the first time.