IF IT'S NOT LOVE THEN IT'S THE POLL THAT WILL BRING US TOGETHER - ILM Artist Poll #72 - THE SMITHS - RESULTS THREAD

They got a lot of shit for 'Suffer Little Children', iirc.

i may have voted 'vicar in a tutu' but this girl i had a crush on always did this charming af performance of it at karaoke so extenuating circumstances

I remember at the time telling people "Oh I love country music, check this out" and then playing them "Vicar In a Tutu"

They got a lot of shit for 'Suffer Little Children', iirc.

yes, there's a scan of a contemporary article here: https://braceneckboy.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/smiths-moors-row.jpg

(also typed up about halfway down this page: http://www.tiptopwebsite.com/websites/index2.php?username=thesmithsfile&page=8)

after 7 years on ilx, i'm rarely surprised how much other posters' tastes differ from mine

― sarahell, Thursday, March 3, 2016 9:30 AM (1 hour ago

"what she said" is great, i nearly voted for it

I should have voted for it: it has such momentum.

love what she said, was in my top 10. great song, great vocal performance. what she said/rubber ring obv classic too

"What She Said" was in my top ten too. Largely for the lyrics, which I find hilariously over the top. "What she said was sad" obviously, but this is one that comes to mind when Morrissey insists there's more humour in his writing than is widely recognised.

I like the way that 'What She Said' sounds unlike so everything else on Meat Is Muder, murky and heavy where the rest of the album sounds clean and thin - it sounds more like a song from the debut or Hatful. and momentum is right, it sounds like it's about to careen out of control. I never heard it as being tounge is cheek, it seems like one of Morrissey's least ironic lyrics, it sounds genuinely horrified

tounge IN cheeck, rather

goes on way too long IMO. could be said of a lot of the MIM tracks mind, that's one thing they lost post-Hatful; timing. whole album could have a good 5 minutes shaved off.

I love "Suffer" despite the lyrics, which I think are pretty clumsy. I could listen to the guitar track over and over.

xp "What She Said" is the first Smiths song I ever owned, on an NME 7" I picked up in a used shop. It made me fall in love. Love "I smoke 'cause I'm hoping for an early death and I need to cling to something".

xxxxpost:

I think the humour in some of Morrissey's lyrics is impossible to miss, to be honest with you. Like the verse about breaking into the palace on 'The Queen Is Dead' ... "Eh, I know you and you cannot sing/I said 'That's nothing, you should hear me play piano'"

pian-ER

that's one thing they lost post-Hatful; timing

there are plenty of songs that go on too long both before MiM and after

xxxpost:

Hahahaha! Isn't 'What She Said', like, under 3 minutes long?

as a teen it was easy to take some of the miserablism at fake value, but it wasn't until later that the humor became evident and increased my appreciation tenfold. Morrissey is *really* funny.

face value

"I smoke 'cause I'm hoping for an early death and I need to cling to something"

this is nicked almost word for word from Elizabeth Smart, right? (no shade, I love the way Morrissey borrowed quotes and phrases for his lyrics)

it's gallows humor

I don't think I even really thought of them as sad when I first bought Smiths records. I got into them for the black humour.

3xpost

re: What She Said and most other songs, the humor in The Queen is Dead is not gallows humor, it's Morrissey making dad jokes, and is great in a different way

'Barbarism Begins At Home' could be double the length and I wouldn't mind, tbh.

Barbarism Begins At Home is a bit too long ... still voted for it, but didn't RANK it as high for that reason

This site gives the Smart quote as “I have learned to smoke because I need something to hold on to.” I really like the "hoping for an early death part" but yeah.

have i ever posted about that song being the reason i started smoking? That was my, er, "anthem" throughout the 90s

This page is a brilliant list of some of Morrissey's steals - including another from Elizabeth Smart in the same song: "I wonder why no one has noticed that I am dead and taken the trouble to bury me".

What She Said was in my top 10. Bizarre to think of it as too long - amazing guitar parts I could listen to over and over. The Rank version with the intro and outro of Rubber Ring is fantastic too.

"You've Got Everything Now" placed in the middle of my ballot. It's prime bedsit-era Moz, moping over his bad life choices. <3

"all heady books she'd sit and prophesise (It took a tattooed boy from Birkenhead to really really open her eyes)" - love this flash of contempt, kind of an echo of "there's more to life than books, you know', and all the sacred/profane stuff in Morrissey's lyrics

Good song, and I like the sequencing between "I Want The One..." and "That Joke Isn't Funny..." I appreciate that run of the first six songs on MIM more than ever, but still think "Well I Wonder" brings it to a maudlin, dreary halt.

http://i.imgur.com/RnsphRp.jpg

44. NOWHERE FAST (Album track from Meat Is Murder)
305 points | 14 votes | 1 first place vote

My #2. Another one that was going to be a single.

I don't read that moment as contemptuous, necessarily, but it does seem self-mocking, and in line with Morrissey's other appreciations of trade. Otm about the sacred/profane tension, though.

Xxp

WTFF? This should be top 15 at least! I drop my trousers to y'all.

I've never been into 'Nowhere Fast' much.

nowhere fast possibly best smiths lyric? up there anyhow

No matter what age you are a couplet like "I was looking for a job and then I found a job/And heaven knows im miserable now" is hilarious

This and 'Well I Wonder' are probably the two songs on Meat Is Murder that I don't have much to say about. I don't hate them, but neither of them have ever been favourites. They're both kinda just there for me.

One of Morrissey's very best manglings of the comic and the genuinely sad. So many brilliant lines: "Each household appliance is like a new science in my town"; "And when I'm lying in my bed I think about life and I think about death, and neither one particularly appeals to me". The latter is probably the best bit of lyric/singing he ever came up with.

shamed to say that I can't think of nowhere fast off the top of my head

xp that is the smiths lyric that will most often pops into my head. so perfectly captures the feeling it is describing.

nowhere fast possibly best smiths lyric? up there anyhow

yeah the couplet "if the day came when I felt a natural emotion / i'd get such a shock I'd probably jump in the ocean" made this song my college anthem

I think that's the song and album which made Christgau intimate that they were proto-Gamergate nerd-bullies.

Should have titled this poll "I was looking for a POLL and then I found a POLL, and heaven knows I'm miserable POLL!!!"

Nowhere Fast is one of the songs with a Peel session version that never saw official release: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L-Fg6XWT9w. Less lively and doesn't have the brilliant guitar bits in the middle eight, but has a throatier vocal.

Was trying not to embed the youtube clip there. Guess I fucked it up.

I'm up to my ears in work deadlines or I'd do it – would someone consider assembling a Spotify playlist of the rollout?

Really nervous that "This Night Has Opened My Eyes" won't place...