Girlfriend in a Coma

Lol, I couldnt believe how different this song was to everybody, so I signed up! So first post! I always saw this song as soooo different from what everyone else is saying...I guess I saw it as like, the guy is kinda falling in love, and he's accepting that he's in love, but is going through a kinda bittersweet emotion (Let me whisper my last goodbye, I know its serious) - and 'Do you really think she'll pull through' meaning 'Do you think we'll make it?' Ok, I can see where there might be flaws in my theory lol, but I only got into The Smiths and Morrissey a few months ago, and I love metaphors and stuff, so I guess I saw it all as one big metaphor! HOW fab is this site, though? It's the best best idea for a website I've ever seen!

For added hilarity imagine the protagonist as Humbert Humbert after his wife's been hit by a car.

In an interview with Morrissey he alluded to the fact that this song is about drug use and experimentation. The 'girlfriend' has overdosed and the boyfriend has yet to fully understand the seriousness of the situation (as this possibly happened before). He needs to be told that its serious because he keeps saying stupid things like ' there were times when i could have murder her'.. its really not the right time to say things like that! When i hear the song i always picture Morrissey in his younger days pacing the corridoors of a hospital looking for ppl to talk to and trying to be mature about the situation in his arrogant manner.

This is why I love the Smiths, you can interpret every song in any way! The sexual ambiguity, for one, helps, and it'd just great that everyone can apply it to their life in some way. This site, naturally, increased my love for them about tenfold, because now i have about ten more meanings for each song. I always saw the coma as being figurative, I saw one possible meaning being someone trying to pretend that he's over his ex-girlfriend, when he's quite clearly not, given that he still refers to her as his girlfriend. When you think about it, a coma is kind of like death with a chance of resurrection, and so he tells his friends he's over her, but he leaves the option of falling in love with her again open, so that if she ever loves him back again, he won't have to explain himself. (Is this making sense?) I also thought it could be about someone who is trying to get over his ex-girlfriend, but is failing, he's in a limbo where he realises and starts to acknowledge her failings, hence 'There were times when I could have murdered her', but he still loves her depite the fact that he can see she's not perfect. He tries to cut her out of his life ('No I don't want to see her'), but he suddenly starts to need her again ('Will you please let me see her?'). Then, he finally decides to go ahead with it, but still needs to see her one last time to 'send him on his way' ('Let me whisper my last goodbyes'). But whatever way you take it, it's still a beautiful song.

I thought this song was just trying to emphasize the bitersweet realilty of being in a relationship. You can care about someone and not always give them a lot of respect. You can also easily hurt someone you care about even though you might not have meant to, or regret it later. It think the song is pretty vague on purpose. I don't think it's about a person who is actually in a coma. It's just a senerio to provide a feeling. It's showing that every relationship has it's good an bad points and when you're put in a traumatic circumstance like that your brain goes through all these thoughts. You briefly get angry at the person and then start to cry because you remembered something great about them.. this song illustrates an emotional rollercoaster that everyone goes through when something bad happens to someone close to them.

It is interesting to see so many different interpretations of this song. I have already interpreted it as a pretty straightforward absurdist song. Most people who have a loved one in a dire condition think and say the best things about the person- e.g. I always loved them, they were the best girlfriend, wife, mother in the world etc. And here is a guy that obviously had such serious issues with his girlfriend that even in her dire state he cannot stop from thinking/saying he much he couldn't stand her. But then he comes back to reality and says "yeah, she is in pretty bad shape I really shouldn't have said those things, I really do care about her". I also like his ambivalence with wanting and not wanting to see her- very human in a situation like that.

This song means a lot to my girlfriend and I, it really is our song. I've never beaten her up or put her into a coma, but before we were going out I told her that if she was in a coma I would come and sing this song to her. We were going out 5 days later. So cute!

Irvster, I concur.

I think it's just...there's this beautiful undercurrent of youth & ignorance & innocence running through it -- and then the really dramatic 'do you really think she'll pull through?' (I mean listen to that bit! Just listen to it! It's GORGEOUS!) before going back to 'Girlfriend in a coma I know I know it's serious' which is so...well, naive sounding. But I mean...I don't know, you're a kid, right? You think you're immortal. How can you really begin to understand that situation? And you're thrown into this 'adult' situation or one that requires a depth of feeling that you're not quite capable--like the modern trend of understating & underfeeling everything has gotten far too into your bones and you want to act like it doesn't matter because it matters way, way too much.

i've always wondered whether he put her in a coma or not. its almost like he's confessing what he did. 'but you know i would hate anything to happen to her'... like he just went pyscho and didn't mean to hurt her.

Girlfriend In A Coma has always been one of my favourite Smiths songs and has remained its status over the years. The title alone made me curious from the first time that I held the cd case of Strangeways Here We Come in my hands. But the lyrics are very interesting as well.

The song basically tackles the most extreme feelings of humans (love and hatred) and brings on how close these two feelings can sometimes be to each other. Morrissey manages to, in one single sentence, bring on the both extremes and all feelings in between.

The contrast is brought on on several occasions:

"there were times I could have murdered her" expresses hatred and aggression towards the person, but is immediately followed by a desire to still not lose her: "I would hate anything to happen to her".

Also, the chorus expresses this same situation: "No I don't want to see her" expresses the wish not to see his dying partner again, but his insecurity over his own feelings rises immediately after when he somehow longs to hold her in his arms again and insecurely asks "do you really think she'll pull through?"

The song basically descibres a confused mind and shows how close human feelings can be to each other, how confused humans can be emotionally. The song uses the most extreme feelings (loving someone -vs- hating someone) and everything in between. Also, the confusion is expressed by Morrissey having to convince himself and repeat to himself "I know - it's SERIOUS" (well, of course it's serious, she's in a coma !)

Of course Morrissey wouldn't be Morrissey when there would be no political reference in his work: the song was based on a conflict in the USA about if it is acceptable to let a person die when she's comatose for too long. In that time a woman in the US was at the breathing machine for ages, with little hope she'd ever awake. She was clinically alive but also braindead. There was a huge debate over if it should be allowed to just unplug the breathing machine or not. Morrissey based the song on this ongoing moral debate, and injected it with a dose of human confusion and personal drama.

A true Smiths classic!