| The Smiths – I Know It's Over Lyrics | 11 months ago |
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This song serves as the emotional climax of The Queen Is Dead. For me, it is about the fear and dread associated with the return to a void of loneliness that is all too familiar to the speaker. After the last embers of hope that he can build something with his love interest fade and die, the speaker is left with.. nothing. His attachment to her was all that he had in his life – the only thing that made it worth living. Even following the departure of any hope, still he 'clings' on in blind desperation, as letting go would inevitably mean succumbing to the sea that wants to take him, or the knife that wants to slit him. His life revolves entirely around his attachment, and his death on its severance. The ‘sad veiled bride/handsome groom’ lines, in my opinion, highlight the speaker's continued care and devotion for his love interest, despite it being over – devotion that overrides his inevitable feelings of jealousy. Even on her wedding day, the bride is sad, and the speaker pleads for her to be happy, urging the 'loud, loutish lover' to facilitate this by being kind and sensitive. We can be quite sure that this won't happen, and the speaker feels the same way, suggesting that their relationship is a marriage of convenience rather than one that is built on passion and true love for one another – 'she needs you more than she loves you'. The fact that the bride chooses to go with someone who she seemingly isn't even happy with rather than the speaker, who would be (and is) so strongly devoted to loving her truly, only deepens his insecurity. For me, the three lines at the end of the second chorus are some of the most moving and important of the entire song (which is saying something): 'I know it's over, and it never really began, But in my heart it was so real, And you even spoke to me, and said' These lines will speak for themselves, always. With that in mind, I won’t say much, but I absolutely love the inclusion of 'even' here; it illustrates the way in which the speaker sees his love interest really effectively. 'you even spoke to me' – it's like he doesn't feel he is worthy enough even to converse with this person who he holds so sacred, let alone declare his love for her. I believe that his love interest was never even aware of how strongly he felt about her; he never had the courage or self-belief to say anything, which is why 'it never really began'. This song is NOT (in my quite strong opinion) about a breakup, and that line ('it never really began') in particular indicates this. There was never a relationship in the first place; only a one-sided, secretive obsession – so strong that the narrator feels all the anguish of a breakup, and more, when he knows his love will never be requited by its subject. There seems to be a few different interpretations of the dialogue in the third verse in terms of who is saying what to who. To me, it is quite clear that the narration switches from the original speaker to the love interest; she is now talking directly to the speaker, but I believe it is in his imagination, and I often think it is in a dream. In reality, the one asking the doubtful questions is the ever-pessimistic subconscious of the speaker. It uses the medium of the only thing he cares about in life (his love interest) to get him to listen to its criticisms. He is swallowed by self-doubt. I like to think this verse is the speaker's subconscious doing battle with its own ego – and it triumphs as his dreamed love interest tears down the charms he thought he had. The 'it's so easy to laugh, it's so easy to hate' lines are interesting to me because, in my eyes, they don't really fit thematically with the rest of the song. Of course, we can only guess what Morrissey was really thinking when he was crafting this piece of brilliance, so perhaps it is just another piece of timeless Moz wisdom that isn't meant to be examined within the wider context of the song. The speaker then reaches a stage of acceptance – he still clings to his devotion, but he knows it is only a source of pain now. He knows the love he has is now somehow unnatural; unreal in the absence of someone to receive and reciprocate it. Of course, it wasn't received or reciprocated before anyway, but he still had the hope to believe (however slight) that it might be one day. Now, even that hope has been taken from him. In the outro of I know It's Over, The speaker is forced into a final desperate cry to the only person he thinks might care to save him from his burial: his mother. The line is repeated over, and over, and over again, each time more desperate than the last, until the soil falling over his head finally smothers him. The speaker's agony has taken him, and the song is over. |
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