Life Is A Pigsty

Im forced to concur with so many here. Especially xdarkentries and girl least likely.

How does morrisey consistently thread this fine needle? Humour, and pain. When I'm not amused and deeply feeling every inch of this sone lines like " shoot me or throw me off a train" are so dramatic i cant help but feel a twinge of empathetic pain...and yet i can't help but giggle a bit too!

And when i'm happy he can still bring me back to this drafty damp place, wandering shells of building, mourning some imagined lost love. A true artist writer and performer every inch.. Thanks Moz. I hear you voice in my head and think of you kindly.

I get the feeling that last line is much darker than most people interpret it. I don't think he's insinuating that he's found someone to fall in love with again, contrasting the stark reality of death, as most people would seem to conclude. I think he's saying that in his final hour, he's accepted the fact he's going to die and he's fallen in love with that reality.

This whole album seems preoccupied with the realities of getting older and dying. Morrissey has always written about pain and sadness, but this album in particular has an extremely dark subject matter, concerned specifically with a kind of finality and an focus specifically on getting on in life and death.

This is easily one of Moz's most beautiful songs. It has an almost kind of "dumb" honesty to it, where some of the lines, if written by anyone else would be considered bland, passe, flip, or potentially even just bad writing, but Morrissey has an amazing sense of juxtaposition and the whole is greater the sum of its parts, and the whole is one of the most blisteringly devastating songs ever written.

Mozz has this wonderful way of conveying emotion and hitting my heart while making me smile. The line about throwing him off a train just ruins my composure.

keli_1989, you definitely need to get out more; the world is FULL of pigs (and crashing bores). If you don't know this, then what do you know?

Definitely one of the best build-up songs, even if the lyrics do lack a bit of detail.

InsertEmoNameHere, you're quite right. I adore the album version of this song, but there is NOTHING like hearing it live. It hits you right in the gut.

One of my (many) favorite bits is:

I feel too cold And now I feel too warm again

It's so simple, but it immediately conveys an absolute discomfort and restless unhappiness. Morrissey has, in my opinion, always been very good at using physical details to represent emotional or mental states, and this is a perfect example of that.

This has one of the best build ups i've ever heard

This song is so sad. It makes me cry

Keli_1989, from your username I'm guessing you're 17/18... u just wait a few years and then you'll be jaded like the rest of us! ;-)

Great song by the way

You dont need to be older than 17/18 to know that life is a pigsty. I quickly found that out years ago. Thats the reason I got into Morrissey and The Smiths. This songs one of his best solo efforts and great live. To its meaning, well the name says it all.

I think this song represents Morrisey's Job-like lamentations about the pain and distress of life. One gets one's hopes up, things seem to get better for a time, and then the crash comes and one finds new "broken fortunes." Morrisey also reflects that even after all his fame and fortune, "I'm the same underneath"--a reference, no doubt, to unhealed childhood traumas that no amount of wealth and fame can heal.

And yet for all his agony and angst, Moz loves life and the Source of life, to which this song is addressed: ("Every second of my life I only live for you.")

Yet like Job, who suffered so much at the hands of God, for no apparent reason, Morrisey questions why he must endure all the pain: "Can you please stop time?/Can you stop the pain?" Like Job, he WILL speak his mind to God, consequences be damned: "And you can shoot me, and you can throw me off a train/I still maintain/Life is a pigsty."

By the song's end he has come full circle, from the opening's distress and broken fortunes; he has not given up on life or on God; though he is angry and hurt, he cannot give up, and even in "the final hour of my life/ I am falling in love again."