| The Smiths – Rusholme Ruffians Lyrics | 10 years ago |
|
"And though I walk home alone I might walk home alone... ...But my faith in love is still devout" This perfectly describes young Morrissey's naive attitude towards love. This is a prerequisite for what is to come in his love life. At the age of maybe eleven or twelve, he believes that even though he walks home alone among the loved-up couples, he still has a chance to impress a girl and fall in love. Which then turned out to be wrong, given Morrissey's lack of a love life in his teenage years. |
|
| The Smiths – What She Said Lyrics | 10 years ago |
|
First of all, I'd like you to know that this is my favourite song by The Smiths, and they are my favourite band, and Morrissey is my favourite person in the whole world. So, this song means a lot to me. As we all know, Morrissey is one hell of a writer! His lyrics have many layers of mystique and no one really manages to peel these layers off, which I find very appealing. This song has a thousand interpretations and here is mine. "What she said: 'How come someone hasn't noticed that I'm dead? And decided to bury me God knows I'm ready!' La la la la" I picture a fragile woman around the age of twenty-eight. I have also imagined someone in their fifties or sixties but that doesn't match the early death implication. This is an intelligent and quiet young woman who lives in an industrial city in England, perhaps London, presumably Manchester; she has a very good job, perhaps as an apprentice at a law firm; she lives on her own in a lonely apartment ("with its cupboard bare"); she is single, has never had a serious relationship, partly because she is confused about her sexuality, partly because she is shy and spends her time reading heady books and prophesising. Even though she has secured a stable job and platonic success, she knows that she is growing old and she feels worn and torn. She decides to go out one Friday night, she meets a tattooed boy from Birkenhead. He unearths her and for once she feels alive. He takes her virginity. But their romance is not to last and he leaves her bare after a few weeks. She resumes to her life as it was before and is again successful at her job though she is not happy. She grows depressed and takes up smoking and doing drugs. She finally takes her own life. No one seemed to understand WHY she did so because she was an intelligent woman who had a good job, but she had an inner conflict, something that Morrissey knows all too well. I could write a much thorougher description of this poem but I feel like that could ruin the song! But I'd like to add that the line "I smoke 'cause I'm hoping for an early death And I need to cling to something!" reminds me of this: "‘Why do you smoke so damn fast?’ I asked. She looked at me and smiled widely, and such a wide smile on her narrow face might have looked goofy were it not for the unimpeachably elegant green in her eyes. She smiled with all the delight of a kid on Christmas morning and said, ‘Y’all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die.’" John Green, Looking for Alaska |
|
| The Smiths – What She Said Lyrics | 10 years ago |
|
First of all, I'd like you to know that this is my favourite song by The Smiths, and they are my favourite band, and Morrissey is my favourite person in the whole world. So, this song means a lot to me. As we all know, Morrissey is one hell of a writer! His lyrics have many layers of mystique and no one really manages to peel these layers off, which I find very appealing. This song has a thousand interpretations and here is mine. "What she said: 'How come someone hasn't noticed that I'm dead? And decided to bury me God knows I'm ready!' La la la la" I picture a fragile woman around the age of twenty-eight. I have also imagined someone in their fifties or sixties but that doesn't match the early death implication. This is an intelligent and quiet young woman who lives in an industrial city in England, perhaps London, presumably Manchester; she has a very good job, perhaps as an apprentice at a law firm; she lives on her own in a lonely apartment ("with its cupboard bare"); she is single, has never had a serious relationship, partly because she is confused about her sexuality, partly because she is shy and spends her time reading heady books and prophesising. Even though she has secured a stable job and platonic success, she knows that she is growing old and she feels worn and torn. She decides to go out one Friday night, she meets a tattooed boy from Birkenhead. He unearths her and for once she feels alive. He takes her virginity. But their romance is not to last and he leaves her bare after a few weeks. She resumes to her life as it was before and is again successful at her job though she is not happy. She grows depressed and takes up smoking and doing drugs. She finally takes her own life. No one seemed to understand WHY she did so because she was an intelligent woman who had a good job, but she had an inner conflict, something that Morrissey knows all too well. I could write a much thorougher description of this poem but I feel like that could ruin the song! But I'd like to add that the line "I smoke 'cause I'm hoping for an early death And I need to cling to something!" reminds me of this: "‘Why do you smoke so damn fast?’ I asked. She looked at me and smiled widely, and such a wide smile on her narrow face might have looked goofy were it not for the unimpeachably elegant green in her eyes. She smiled with all the delight of a kid on Christmas morning and said, ‘Y’all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die.’" John Green, Looking for Alaska |
|
| The Smiths – Miserable Lie Lyrics | 10 years ago |
|
First of all, this song is one of my all-time Smiths favourites. I first heard it when I was 15 and struggling in my personal relationships. Miserable Lie helped me through that phase. Though I hate to bring this up, I think there is a definite hint at a closeted homosexual desire lingering througout the whole song, mixed with doubtful existential questions ("What do we get for our trouble and pain?!"). The protagonist asks this question twice, as if to state that he is desperate for an answer to a seemingly rheotorical question but then he grumbles "just a rented room in Whalley Range", making a clear statement that life is really not worth living and that he too, a Mancunian teenager, is doomed to lead a horrid working-class life despite all his efforts ("trouble and pain") and literary quotes (Oscar Wilde had a poem with the words "flower-like life"). The protagonist is a vain teenage boy who fancies older men and the descriptions of a farewell ("so, goodbye") are all in his head. He finds some comfort and escape in fantasising - don't we all - but it struck him out of the blue that the imaginary romance was inappropriate and wrong by the many unwritten laws of society and thus he stages the farewell. He ANALyses - pun intended, you dirty minds - the loss of a loved one and finds himself blaming the imaginary lover for having "(You have) destroyed my flower-like life Not once, twice You have corrupt my innocent mind Not once, twice" The line about the lover corrupting the protagonist's mind is easily misinterpreted, but I think of it as the contradiction that leads up to the "I need advice" line. As I said, the older man only exists in the boy's head, thus proving the boy's claims about the man having corrupt his mind to be a civil-war in the boy's mind. He accused a creature of his very mind of corrupting his very mind, like a mother that kills her infant. And when the boy realises that he is fighting but himself, and that his is solely an inner conflict, he feels desperate for help, hence proclaiming "I need advice!". Lastly, contrary to "I need advice", the protagonist shouts "take me when you go!". I find that line to be quite witty because, again, the boy comes up with an answer to his own existential quests, as he does in "what do we get for our trouble and pain? Just a rented room in Whalley Range", which is classic Morrissey wit at its best: stating something, then quickly re-evaluating that statement and coming up with a solution. "Take me when you go" sounds like him begging the older man, the lost lover, to take him back to the comfort zone of a corrupt mind. Miserable Lie is a great song and I like Morrissey's dolphin-like cries... which reminds me of the words "and the hills are alive with celibate cries" in the second verse of These Things Take Time - perhaps these are the celibate cries that he spoke of? Johnny Marr deserves praise as always as well as whoever thought of the tempo change, be it Johnny, Andy or Mike. |
|
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.