"November Spawned a Monster" what's up with this song?

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I don't really have issue with there being a small victory at the end of "NSAM" because, as any fule can tell, there's one baldly stated there. My sticking point is that I don't see how that small victory makes all of the tragedy in the remaining 80% of the song okay.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Thursday, 13 November 2003 15:09 (twenty years ago) link

Between this thread and the "talent for making money" thread on ile, I have been in total agreement with Momus lately.

Ditto. Should we seek professional help?

― Dadaismus (Dada), Thursday, 13 November 2003 15:10 (twenty years ago) link

(ie my disagreement is more a disagreement of magnitude than anything else)

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Thursday, 13 November 2003 15:11 (twenty years ago) link

(Blush! Thanks, 'guys'!)

On with the battle!

The line about 'the last truly British people you will ever know' is from 'We'll Let You Know', a song about football fans:

We're all smiles
Then, honest, I swear, it's the turnstiles
That make us hostile
Oh ...
We will descend
On anyone unable to defend
Themselves
Oh ...

Your Arsenal !

We may seem cold, or
We may even be
The most depressing people you've ever known
At heart, what's left, we sadly know
That we are the last truly British people you'll ever know
We are the last truly British people you will ever know
You'll never never want to know'

The obvious meaning of the song didn't stop John Harris in the NME from declaring:

'There are moments on this record when the hints of hideous political sympathies that have provided his detractors with new ammunition become full-frontal reminders of why Morrissey needed taking to task in the first place.
Here, "England for the English", the line from 'National Front Disco' that began life as a non-committal slogan stolen from someone else's mouth, sounds worryingly like a sincere clarion call - and after a two-minute feedback coda Morrissey announces that he was thinking of releasing the song as a single. Very clever move.
It's not the only chilling moment, either. You listen to 'We'll Let You Know', the song that talks about bovver-booted beer lads as "the last truly British people you'll ever know", visualise Morrissey wrapping himself in the flag in front of a backdrop featuring two skinheads, and feel slightly sick.'

Is this stupidity on Harris' part, or wilful misrepresentation?

― Momus (Momus), Thursday, 13 November 2003 15:11 (twenty years ago) link

If I made some crass comment about disappearing Englishness and someone turned to me and said "Ironic given that you're far hardly 100% English" (my dad is Parsee) I'm not sure how I'd feel. On the one hand I'd be like 'I'm as English as they come - fuck off" but on the other I'd feel they had a point in undermining the narrowness of my own vision. But yeah, overall I think I'd be more pissed off about them defining ethnicity by ancestry.

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 13 November 2003 15:12 (twenty years ago) link

Both - John Harris, is that the guy who looks like he's has on a blond Beatle wig... backwards?

― Dadaismus (Dada), Thursday, 13 November 2003 15:14 (twenty years ago) link

I don't think there's any stupidity to Harris' comments; the NF disco "scandal" wasn't the first of so many identity thefts purported during Morrissey's solo career. In point of fact the hearing aide/"November Spawned a Monster" affectations can be seen as the first.

― Chris Ott (Chris Ott), Thursday, 13 November 2003 15:20 (twenty years ago) link

Morrissey writes about victimisation != Morrissey victimises!

― Momus (Momus), Thursday, 13 November 2003 15:23 (twenty years ago) link

"Vicious, you hit me with a flower"

― Dadaismus (Dada), Thursday, 13 November 2003 15:24 (twenty years ago) link

"What's up with this song?"

It ain't got Dizzee Rascal on it, that's what's wrong with the cunt.

― Jus' A Rascal! Dizzee Rascal!!, Thursday, 13 November 2003 15:31 (twenty years ago) link

One thing you could fault Morrissey with -- and here maybe we see a sign that he is conscious of his 'responsibilities' as a pop star -- is editorialising too much. For instance, if I were writing 'We'll Let You Know', I would not put 'You'll never never want to know' at the end, because it gives the game away, shows too much of the author's hand. I would just let people draw their own conclusions. Likewise, I wouldn't say stuff like Asian Rut's 'two against one, how can that be fair', or the last lines about passing through on the way to somewhere civilised. For me, it would be enough to depict a racist incident and just leave it at that. But I have a smaller audience, whose views are probably close to mine. So I don't need to put trainer wheels on the bike.

― Momus (Momus), Thursday, 13 November 2003 15:31 (twenty years ago) link

But he's an autodidact Mo, old bean

― Dadaismus (Dada), Thursday, 13 November 2003 15:33 (twenty years ago) link

Morrissey's decline as a lyricist is marked by increased prosaic editorialising of the type Momus identifies, I think.

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 13 November 2003 15:35 (twenty years ago) link

No editorial intrusions in 'Ambitious Outsiders'! (But it's still a lousy song.)

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Thursday, 13 November 2003 15:37 (twenty years ago) link

I think the key part about the ending of "November Spawned a Monster" - the part which makes it more than just a small victory - is that she is "walking your streets" - this is even more significant than the picking out the clothes part. Because earlier in the song, it's clearly implied that she's in a wheelchair ("a hostage to kindness and the wheels underneath her"). So the implication is that she has regained her ability to walk.

― o. nate (onate), Thursday, 13 November 2003 15:38 (twenty years ago) link

In the old days Morrissey might have written a song about how we hate it when our friends become successful. Then at some point he took to writing songs that were actually called 'we hate it when our friends become successful'. I guess that was supposed to be funny, but sometimes he's not funny. Paul Morley disagrees, I believe.

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 13 November 2003 15:39 (twenty years ago) link

Which leads to 'Sorrow Will Come in the End'

― Eyeball Kicks (Eyeball Kicks), Thursday, 13 November 2003 15:44 (twenty years ago) link

I haven't heard Ambitious Outsiders, but on the basis of the lyric I have to say that

we're taking
Just keeping
The population down
You're giving, giving, giving
Well, it's your own fault
For reproducing
We're just keeping
The population down

sounds like an editorial to me, a claim to gay virtue straight out of some radical crusading gay magazine.

― Momus (Momus), Thursday, 13 November 2003 15:44 (twenty years ago) link

I think you could fault him for being of no fixed or substantive allegiance, especially when you consider the focused lobbying of tracks like "Asian Rut", "Mexico", "NF Disco", etc. etc. In short you can fault him for being a dilettante, which is obviously part of his dare but on a critical level-- and with his literary pretensions he's the *most* deserving of that analysis-- his dalliances dilute his impact and make him seem like a presenter.

― Chris Ott (Chris Ott), Thursday, 13 November 2003 15:46 (twenty years ago) link

Momus, you once said you'd like to see Morrissey and James Anderton locked up in a room together. What prompted that fantasy?

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 13 November 2003 15:46 (twenty years ago) link

Basically that scenario is what I witness daily on ILX, so all my dreams have come true.

― Momus (Momus), Thursday, 13 November 2003 15:48 (twenty years ago) link

(People with different opinions in a small space, sparks fly...)

― Momus (Momus), Thursday, 13 November 2003 15:49 (twenty years ago) link

(I think that 'Ambitious Outsiders' is actually sung from the perspective of child abductors - "And we knows / When the school bus comes and goes". The earlier Morrissey actually editorialised on this subject much more - cf 'Suffer Little Children'.)

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Thursday, 13 November 2003 15:50 (twenty years ago) link

sounds like an editorial to me, a claim to gay virtue straight out of some radical crusading gay magazine.

of course you could say that its a claim to virtue in celibacy

― zappi (joni), Thursday, 13 November 2003 15:52 (twenty years ago) link

I guess Nipper is right re: editorialising in SLC, but the lines concerned are so beautiful that I don't mind at all.

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 13 November 2003 15:57 (twenty years ago) link

momus loves all artists that begin is mo. especially motorhead and monster face jones.

You forgot Mortiis.

I like Suzy's point because I made a similar one in an a.m.a. review of Maladjusted when it came out, ie that somehow the Smiths had both won (the obvious influences and connections via all the bands that Suzy lists) and lost (Moz's beloved pop obsessions of the past had become even MORE of the past, and even more now -- not merely in the passage of time sense, but the new combinations of mainstream pop and presentation since).

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 13 November 2003 16:28 (twenty years ago) link

Is the love for the video serious? I find it one of the most embarassing moments in his career.

― Mary (Mary), Monday, 17 November 2003 20:00 (twenty years ago) link

six years pass...

I love how googling "Stevie Smith" and "Morrissey" together takes me to an OTM Momus post from years ago. Stevie Smith's poetry is very reminiscent of Morrissey's lyrics and themes.

― Cunga, Tuesday, 8 December 2009 20:03 (fourteen years ago) link

I'm still back on "it's an uplifting song because, even though she's so hideous no one will ever love or want her, she can dress herself"

― Huckabee Jesus lifeline (HI DERE), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 20:11 (fourteen years ago) link

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