Thoughts on The Smiths Lyrics
The Smiths are possibly the most culturally significant band of the last 100 years, and it’s criminal that they haven’t been given the kind of reading a work in the canon of great western works deserves. Instead of a nuanced view, most readings of The Smiths’ discography are that their music is all about being gay or that it’s all about being an incel. What you need to internalize before you can start to understand their music is that it’s about both. Not about being a gay incel, but about the shared space between being gay and being an incel. It’s about intense longings for objects of desire that are an unintegrated self, and the beauty that’s to be found in that obsession itself. It’s also about being edgy as shit, and being simultaneously tongue-in-cheek and self-righteous about that edginess. Yeah, a lot of what was edgy in their music seems more tame to modern audiences, but just look at how they started their discography.
Reel Around The Fountain
Reel Around The Fountain is absolutely about a homosexual relationship between two men with a large age gap between them which had physically abusive aspects to it, and which the younger man looks back at fondly. If you deny this, you should probably try listening to the song.
It’s time the tale were told
Of how you took a child
And you made him old
…
Reel around the fountain
Slap me on the patio
I’ll take it now
Oh
Fifteen minutes with you
Well, I wouldn’t say no
Oh, people said that you were virtually dead
And they were so wrong
…
Fifteen minutes with you
Oh, I wouldn’t say no
Oh, people see no worth in you
Oh, but I do.
Of course there’s more going on than only that, but that’s what needs to be understood about the song first, as it is not the subtext, but the text of the song which usually goes either ignored or intentionally misunderstood. The deeper content of the song that we’re meant to engage with is whether or not we should see a relationship like this in the same light Morrissey sees this relationship. The only imagery he gives us of this relationship is how sweet and beautiful it was, and the extremely bright slow burn of the instrumentals reinforces this feeling. He builds on this idea later on in the album though by giving us a sort of opposite way of looking at a relationship: one which the listener would presumably have more positive thoughts about going into but which the text only describes in a negative way.
This Charming Man
Rest assured, this song is also pretty gay, but it gives us a defense against its gayness. Reel Around The Fountain is a “gayer” song in that the abuse situation of it only makes sense if the object of affection in the song is an older man but is never explicitly stated to be so. This Charming Man instead tells you explicitly that the song is about a man, but quotes a movie with a straight relationship featuring a “charming man”. The relationship in the source it’s quoting however, the 1972 film Sleuth, isn’t a traditional straight relationship, but a sort of cuckold situation. In the film it’s the “jumped up pantry boy” who’s fucking the wife, but in the song said pantry boy begins his description of the events with
Punctured bicycle on a hillside desolate
Will nature make a man of me yet?
So I guess they both get a turn at being the cuck. In seriousness though, it’s certainly interesting that in the transition from source to adaptation Morrissey thought it was important to turn himself into the object of attraction rather than the subject of attraction. As a matter of fact, who is the charming man that the song is about?
When in this charming car
This charming man
Why pamper life’s complexity
When the leather runs smooth on the passenger seat?
I would go out tonight but I haven’t got a stitch to wear
This man said, “It’s gruesome that someone so handsome should care”
If you were paying attention it should be both clear and hilarious that the charming man the song is about is not the love interest, it’s Morrissey. The charming man and his characteristics are an outward celebration of someone like Morrissey, but the character Morrissey frames as being the love interest has the values he’d expect of a man he finds attractive in spite of his own wealth. Read again:
I would go out tonight but I haven’t got a stitch to wear
This man said, “It’s gruesome that someone so handsome should care”
The figure Morrissey is so enraptured by is one who has wealth and doesn’t want it, but the one he wants the audience to be enraptured by is one who doesn’t have wealth but does want it.
I guess I should take a second to explain the “text” text of this song, because it is a little bit much. A closeted gay lower class man begins an affair with a wealthy gay man who convinces him to end an engagement with his female fiance. Not long after doing so, the relationship between those two also breaks off. The Smiths’ lyrics tend to have a very pessimistic view of how things will turn out for Morrissey and for people like him. This is a theme that becomes more clear as their discography goes on. It might resonate initially because the listener can relate to Morrissey, but it’s so much more powerful than other pop music because it goes on to tell you that you shouldn’t be like that.
You’ve Got Everything Now
You’ve Got Everything Now is a subversion of the classic idea that jocks get everything handed to them in high school and nerds end up ruling the world. “That’s not what it’s about, because actually Morrissey was a jock in school, you don’t even know anything about his life!”. The fact that you pulled real details from his life that would not have been known by listeners when the song came out aside, you forgot to listen to the song.
As merry as the days were long
I was right and you were wrong
Back at the old grey school
I would win and you would lose
…
No, I’ve never had a job
Because I’m too shy
Sounds like a real chad. Anyways, the first layer of what’s going on in this song is already pretty cool. The idea that after high school the people who were popular and successful will suddenly stop being popular and successful is pretty bizarre and it’s cool to see someone subvert it and say the opposite. The other thing that makes this song so cool though is what an unsettling sort of love song it is.
You are your mother’s only son
And you’re a desperate one
Oh…
But I don’t want a lover
I just want to be seen… oh…
In the back of your car
A friendship sadly lost? Well this is true, and yet, it’s false, oh
But did I ever tell you, by the way?
I never did like your face, oh
But you’ve got everything now
…
But I don’t want a lover
I just want to be tied
To the back of your car
Not only is it a love song about a loser incel falling in love with a chad, it’s also a love song in which the narrator both acknowledges that he just wants a figure like that to love him so he feels acknowledged by society, and then in the second chorus when his fantasy collapses into the reality of the situation (see also the switch from “I’ve never had a job because I’ve never wanted one” to “I’ve never had a job because I’m too shy”) suggests that his interest gives him a fag drag instead so that he at least gets some attention from him. This song is insightful, hilarious, and completely underappreciated.
A few things we’ve already seen come up a few times in The Smiths’ lyrics: First, that Morrissey seems to be interested in saying weird and edgy shit primarily to get a rise out of people. Second, that Morrissey is interested in figures of masculine (cultural) authority because he sees himself as standing in contrast to that, and because he can’t have them. No, not in spite of his inability to have them, because he can’t have them. Let’s see what Morrissey has to say about the subject.
I Want The One I Can’t Have
This song’s title would be more accurate as “I Want The One (Because) I Can’t Have”. In the entire 3 minutes of the song we’re given very little description of the subject of his interest. The most we get are the refrain
On the day that you mentality
Catches up with your biology
And the second verse.
A tough kid who sometimes swallows nails
Raised on Prisoner’s Aid
He killed a policeman when he was thirteen
And somehow that really impressed me
Or in short, the only descriptive factors we get are ones that make this person unattainable to Morrissey. Note well that the second example also makes this figure one of masculine cultural authority once more. The first example is more difficult to parse the specific meaning of. What could it mean to have your biology catch up with your mentality? Many have suggested this is Morrissey’s way of saying that he wishes his mentality would catch up with his biology (i.e, that he would become straight), but this is almost certainly not true. The first time this line appears in whole it’s
On the day that your mentality
Catches up with your biology
Come round
He’s not saying he wants his sexuality to change, he’s saying he wants the man he’s attracted to to realize that he must be gay. Once again, fucking hilarious, but also not out of line with Morrissey’s views on sexuality throughout his body of work.
Still Ill
This one has kind of a lot going on, honestly, so here’s the lyrics in full.
I decree today that life is simply taking and not giving
England is mine. It owes me a living
But ask me why and I’ll spit in your eye
Oh, ask me why and I’ll spit in your eye
But we cannot cling to the old dreams anymore
No, we cannot cling to those dreams
Does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body?
I don’t know
Under the iron bridge we kissed
And although I ended up with sore lips
It just wasn’t like the old days anymore
No it wasn’t like those days
Am I still ill?
Oh, am I still ill?
Does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body?
I don’t know
Ask me why and I’ll die
Oh, ask me why and I’ll die
And if you must go to work tomorrow
Well, if I were you I wouldn’t bother
For there are brighter sides to life and I should know because I’ve seen them
But not very often
Under the iron bridge we kissed
And although I ended up with sore lips
It just wasn’t like the old days anymore
No it wasn’t like those days
Am I still ill?
Oh, am I still ill?
First question, what’s the illness the song is about? This is a Smiths song, so the answer is easy enough: homosexuality. Oh, that’s pretty uncomfortable, actually. More difficult question, what are the old dreams being clinged to? It seems plausible that it’s a past relationship with a woman rather than a man, and he might mean that in further verses, but I doubt that’s the primary intended meaning. He says that phrase for the first time in the first verse before he brings up his illness, so it must be something else. Specifically, he says it just after the bit about how England owes him a living. It’s unclear to me whether or not he’s joking about England owing him a living, but either way the old dreams are the economic situation that would make that possible, and the old dreams are also the thing that makes his relationship with the (most likely female) figure in the rest of the song seem unreal.
At this point I hope it’s clicking. He’s analogizing the social and economic situations that lead to loneliness with the variances in sexuality and personality that lead to loneliness. This is kind of the main thrust of The Smiths’ lyrics — that all of these things that cause loneliness are one in the same — Morrissey just happens to focus on same sex attraction because it’s the most relevant to him. Another good example:
How Soon is Now?
This song is pretty straightforward for the most part (which isn’t meant to take away from how beautiful it is), but there are a few things which require closer examination. Firstly, that while this entire song is about loneliness, Morrissey doesn’t question even once in the song what thing it is he might need to change to not be lonely. This isn’t an accident, it’s the point of the chorus.
You shut your mouth.
How can you say
I go about things the wrong way?
I am human and I need to be loved
Just like everybody else does
It doesn’t matter what he’s tried, and it doesn’t matter why he’s lonely, no one should have to feel that way. A bit naive, but also emotionally powerful. He will mature from this position later on in his discography, more on that in just a minute. The other thing that must be noted about this song is the not-quite name drop.
There’s a club if you’d like to go
You could meet somebody who really loves you
So you go and you stand on your own
And you leave on your own
And you go home
And you cry and you want to die
When you say “it’s gonna happen now”
Well, when exactly do you mean?
See, I’ve already waited too long
And all my hope is gone
Even in this line he acknowledges the naivety of his viewpoint presented elsewhere in this song: waiting for love to find him isn’t going to work. There’s also a bit of meta-text going on here. The bridge is presented three minutes and thirty seconds into a seven minute song. The remainder of the song introduces no new ideas musically or lyrically. The listener is told that you can’t just wait for things to happen, and then presumably spend the next three minutes waiting for something to happen, only to have the exact denial of anything Morissey predicted guaranteed to them. Listening to How Soon is Now? is the same kind of obsessive act that the song is about. This isn’t something to be ashamed of and there’s nothing wrong with liking the song because of that, that naive obsession is what makes the song beautiful. More on that later, too. For now, let’s get back to how Morrissey changed his mind about waiting for love to reach you.
Ask
If I had to choose one song that embodies the artistic point The Smiths are making, my second choice would be Ask. My first choice is the next song I’m going to talk about, there needs to be some tension first.
Ask is a pretty straightforward song. Morrissey tells the listener what he’s saying in How Soon is Now? in a more blunt way. You need to take action on doing things to make your life better, especially WRT fixing your loneliness, and the alternative is a life of self-destruction. I copied the lyrics of Still Ill in full because it needs a lot of reading, but this song should be read in full for the exact opposite reason: it’s direct enough that it doesn’t need explaining.
Shyness is nice and shyness can stop you
From doing all the things in life you’d like to
Shyness is nice and shyness can stop you
From doing all the things in life you’d like to
So, if there’s something you’d like to try
If there’s something you’d like to try
Ask me, I won’t say “no”
How could I?
Coyness is nice and coyness can stop you
From saying all the things in life you’d like to
So, if there’s something you’d like to try
If there’s something you’d like to try
Ask me, I won’t say “no”
How could I?
Spending warm summer days indoors
Writing frightening verse
To a buck-toothed girl in Luxembourg
Ask me, ask me, ask me
Ask me, ask me, ask me
Because if it’s not love
Then it’s the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb that will bring us together
Nature is a language — can’t you read?
Nature is a language — can’t you read?
So ask me, ask me, ask me
Ask me, ask me, ask me
Because if it’s not love
Then it’s the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb that will bring us together
If it’s not love
Then it’s the bomb
Then it’s the bomb that will bring us together
So ask me, ask me, ask me
Ask me, ask me, ask me
Maybe the only thing in here that needs to be taken special note of are the first three words of the song. “Shyness is nice”. That’s weird, isn’t the rest of the song a condemnation of shyness? Sort of. The rest of the song is an imperative to act in spite of shyness. Morrissey endorses a desire to not act, and even further endorses taking actions in spite of your desires. That’s the point he’s making. Not that you should become a person who desires to act, but that you should become a person who can act against your desires, and that’s a beautiful thing.
There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
In my view, this is the definitive thesis statement of The Smiths, and also might very well be the greatest song ever made. If you read the lyrics of the song, you might be surprised by just how few words are said in the song. He talks about going out to meet people, which is pretty clear. Then he talks about not having a home to go back to, which is just another way of describing the various kinds of alienation that lead to loneliness that all of their songs are about. The chorus is about taking pleasure and finding beauty in dying with a loved one you were unable to display your love towards. Finally, the song ends by repeating
There is a light and it never goes out
This song is about 35 years old, is one of the most popular and critically acclaimed songs ever made, and this line is in direct reference to the title of the song, and yet people don’t seem to agree on what the light that never goes out is. Some have suggested that the light that never goes out is love, but it doesn’t really seem like that’s it. The way Morrissey talks about love tends to be far too cynical for that. Others have suggested the love interest is the light that never goes out, but other songs (Suffer Little Children, The Night Has Opened My Eyes) seem to indicate Morrissey doesn’t view death like that. The most preposterous reading is that the light that never goes out is the light in the room of a loner who doesn’t go outside. The rest of this song is definitely about the loner protagonist going out, so that’s definitely not plausible and I don’t know how this interpretation became so popular.
Here’s a reading that gets extra credit for falling in line with The Smiths’ other songs and gets regular credit for being consistent with that song. The light that never goes out is obsession. After all, the only thing we’re told about the light is that it never goes out. We also know that it’s placed after a story in which a character has… love? It doesn’t seem like it. Previous songs we’ve looked at tell us very little about the object of affection, this song tells us literally nothing about them. That cues us off that this isn’t a love song about an individual, it’s a love song about love (and obsessions’ other forms).
That is what is to be taken away from The Smiths’ works. Obsession is a beautiful thing. It will make people act in crazy ways, make people act in ways that are against their typical character, make people act when it’s scary to act, but most important to take away is that obsession is beautiful because it makes people act, and not a lot of things can do that.
