NME: Eight actually uplifting Morrissey songs

All of The Smiths/Moz songs are uplifting, even Asleep. Although I did find Sweetie Pie hard to listen to.
 
Yes, I was going to say there are actually more than eight uplifting Morrissey songs. The journalist also comes up with an amusing misreading of Sheila Take A Bow...
 
Morrissey, Oasis, Kanye West and Alex Turner. That's basically what NME is all about. So boring
 
I agree with some of these but not others. So let's do our own.

I wouldn't call There Is A Light uplifting in the slightest, not in tune or in theme or in lyrical content. To me it sounds straightforwardly a lot more like someone who has been ejected from the rest of life, wounded by it, but who has found a kindred spirit and is clinging to them so fiercely that he fatalistically says that it's them against the world until death and everyone else can go to hell as long as they're together. There's an urgency to that, but not an uplifting one in my view. Certainly not as you listen to the song. The author seems to have gotten there through analysis more than feeling. What I get from the song as I listen is a combination of wistfulness, pining, hurt, passion, circling the wagons, desperation, last stand, Thelma and Louise over the cliff, etc.

It's interesting because most of his songs that are upbeat or uplifting musically have lyrics and themes that are contrastingly tragic or sad or exasperated or other.

Take Interesting Drug for example. Your parents were poor, you're poor, you'll never escape that, now you're in debt too, the rats in government want to ruin your life and destroy your dream to pay for elevating their own, the state of the nation around you is a vulgar and absurd trap, your only release from that dead end scenario is to take drugs, and really who can blame you? Not exactly an uplifting message. But wow that song makes me feel great anyway. Such a fun beat, such great guitars, such lovely harmonies, such a happy tune. Flying high.

Same with I Don't Mind If You Forget Me. A song about pretending not to care that you've been gradually, passively, inexplicably snubbed by someone who isn't even that great to start with - and what does that say about you? But how infectious it is. That guitar is crazy. Maybe the tone of the message combined with the music leans a bit more toward passion and urgency than happy uplift, but it still stands me right up. If he were to ever play this in concert (not happening), the people around me would have skull bruises from my flurry of wild airborne elbows as I flipped out tornado style. Apologies in advance.

Same idea for We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful if less frenzied. What a happy and uplifting vehicle for the sentiment of how your friends turn on you and cut you down out of jealousy when you succeed.

I don't know if Mute Witness qualifies as uplifting so much as passionate but it's in my "up" category. What an interesting little mystery the story of the song is, but what a wonderful and charged musical vehicle it rides in.

Same for Hairdresser on Fire. I think I read somewhere that his inspiration for it was really pretty mundane, just trying to get a haircut appointment, not a big deal. Not sure if that's true, but either way I prefer to imagine he fancied the hairdresser, but the hairdresser wouldn't make time for him, and he got jealous and imagined setting fire to the hairdresser in jilted revenge. "Not so busy now are you! I hate you! I love you!"

I don't think he's got anything happier or more uplifting than Ask. Good call by the author there. It sparkles, and there's no ironically tragic content paired with it. Just fun and light.

The opening bright notes of This Charming Man lift me right up instantly every time. It's a happy bouncer with that great bass line. The theme and content are interesting, but I'm just in love with the musical mood of it.

You're the One For Me Fatty is close behind. The intro segment is like the curtains opening at the start of a show to reveal the first sight of a jubilant crowd. Of course... that's probably because I heard the live version, the first track on Beethoven Was Deaf, before I ever heard the studio version. But even so. Even including the people despairing in Battersea over unknown matters in this song, this surprisingly limited and mismatched lyrical content comes across in such a delightful and fun way. It's just fun to say fatty too. The whole idea of the title is one of those things only Morrissey would say and is just wonderful for that reason.

Is It Really So Strange is such a fun, happy, uplifting one for me. I love the contrast between the happy jaunt of the tune as he describes his journeys and the ostensibly sunny outlook in the face of things like getting confused and killing a horse/man, and inviting someone to break your spine and your face. Only Morrissey. Wonderful. Makes me want to do a fun, arm pumping march sort of like the haters-gonna-hate walk.

National Front Disco lifts me right up. Such a thorny topic, and which generated such controversy, yet presented in such a triumphal and upbeat package musically. Intro is upbeat, then it hunkers down to build, builds, builds, and wheee, opens up into a big smile (of, well, problematic nationalism, but you know). What a winner.

I agree with the author on Cemetry Gates, though it's happy in a more laid back way than purely uplifting. For me it is easy dappled sunshine springtime driving music. It was fun over the years to develop a second layer of appreciation for this song as I learned just how much he borrowed and referenced from other artists of various kinds. It's always fun to say big nose and dizzy whore!

Its inseparable fraternal twin for me has always been its album mate, The Boy With The Thorn In His Side. Its content is so tragic and rebuked and lost but the tune makes it such a pepper upper for me, with a smear of wistful dreaminess. You know you fire up your falsetto and wail out "ohh whoa ooh whoa ooh whoa ooh whoaaa" in the car when it gets to that part. Unless you're at a stoplight.

I agree with Sing Your Life if in a more easygoing way. You have a lovely singing voice. Aww, thanks, Morrissey! :)

The hilarious scene painted in Our Frank always makes me laugh and perk up.

Satan Rejected My Soul is a really upbeat one. Again, it's paired with tragic lyrical themes, but the delivery is still so fun.

Certain People I Know is an easygoing but peppy one that gives me a smile right away every time. I don't even care what the content is, it's just impossible to feel bad during this song.

It would be hard to call the content of First of the Gang to Die anything but tragic at its core, but what a sunny and wonderful and charming singalong experience overall.

I think Staircase at the University certainly has an upbeat and smiley musical vibe overall despite a touch of, you know, suicide and whatnot.
 
I agree with some of these but not others. So let's do our own.

I wouldn't call There Is A Light uplifting in the slightest, not in tune or in theme or in lyrical content. To me it sounds straightforwardly a lot more like someone who has been ejected from the rest of life, wounded by it, but who has found a kindred spirit and is clinging to them so fiercely that he fatalistically says that it's them against the world until death and everyone else can go to hell as long as they're together. There's an urgency to that, but not an uplifting one in my view. Certainly not as you listen to the song. The author seems to have gotten there through analysis more than feeling. What I get from the song as I listen is a combination of wistfulness, pining, hurt, passion, circling the wagons, desperation, last stand, Thelma and Louise over the cliff, etc.

It's interesting because most of his songs that are upbeat or uplifting musically have lyrics and themes that are contrastingly tragic or sad or exasperated or other.

Take Interesting Drug for example. Your parents were poor, you're poor, you'll never escape that, now you're in debt too, the rats in government want to ruin your life and destroy your dream to pay for elevating their own, the state of the nation around you is a vulgar and absurd trap, your only release from that dead end scenario is to take drugs, and really who can blame you? Not exactly an uplifting message. But wow that song makes me feel great anyway. Such a fun beat, such great guitars, such lovely harmonies, such a happy tune. Flying high.

Same with I Don't Mind If You Forget Me. A song about pretending not to care that you've been gradually, passively, inexplicably snubbed by someone who isn't even that great to start with - and what does that say about you? But how infectious it is. That guitar is crazy. Maybe the tone of the message combined with the music leans a bit more toward passion and urgency than happy uplift, but it still stands me right up. If he were to ever play this in concert (not happening), the people around me would have skull bruises from my flurry of wild airborne elbows as I flipped out tornado style. Apologies in advance.

Same idea for We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful if less frenzied. What a happy and uplifting vehicle for the sentiment of how your friends turn on you and cut you down out of jealousy when you succeed.

I don't know if Mute Witness qualifies as uplifting so much as passionate but it's in my "up" category. What an interesting little mystery the story of the song is, but what a wonderful and charged musical vehicle it rides in.

Same for Hairdresser on Fire. I think I read somewhere that his inspiration for it was really pretty mundane, just trying to get a haircut appointment, not a big deal. Not sure if that's true, but either way I prefer to imagine he fancied the hairdresser, but the hairdresser wouldn't make time for him, and he got jealous and imagined setting fire to the hairdresser in jilted revenge. "Not so busy now are you! I hate you! I love you!"

I don't think he's got anything happier or more uplifting than Ask. Good call by the author there. It sparkles, and there's no ironically tragic content paired with it. Just fun and light.

The opening bright notes of This Charming Man lift me right up instantly every time. It's a happy bouncer with that great bass line. The theme and content are interesting, but I'm just in love with the musical mood of it.

You're the One For Me Fatty is close behind. The intro segment is like the curtains opening at the start of a show to reveal the first sight of a jubilant crowd. Of course... that's probably because I heard the live version, the first track on Beethoven Was Deaf, before I ever heard the studio version. But even so. Even including the people despairing in Battersea over unknown matters in this song, this surprisingly limited and mismatched lyrical content comes across in such a delightful and fun way. It's just fun to say fatty too. The whole idea of the title is one of those things only Morrissey would say and is just wonderful for that reason.

Is It Really So Strange is such a fun, happy, uplifting one for me. I love the contrast between the happy jaunt of the tune as he describes his journeys and the ostensibly sunny outlook in the face of things like getting confused and killing a horse/man, and inviting someone to break your spine and your face. Only Morrissey. Wonderful. Makes me want to do a fun, arm pumping march sort of like the haters-gonna-hate walk.

National Front Disco lifts me right up. Such a thorny topic, and which generated such controversy, yet presented in such a triumphal and upbeat package musically. Intro is upbeat, then it hunkers down to build, builds, builds, and wheee, opens up into a big smile (of, well, problematic nationalism, but you know). What a winner.

I agree with the author on Cemetry Gates, though it's happy in a more laid back way than purely uplifting. For me it is easy dappled sunshine springtime driving music. It was fun over the years to develop a second layer of appreciation for this song as I learned just how much he borrowed and referenced from other artists of various kinds. It's always fun to say big nose and dizzy whore!

Its inseparable fraternal twin for me has always been its album mate, The Boy With The Thorn In His Side. Its content is so tragic and rebuked and lost but the tune makes it such a pepper upper for me, with a smear of wistful dreaminess. You know you fire up your falsetto and wail out "ohh whoa ooh whoa ooh whoa ooh whoaaa" in the car when it gets to that part. Unless you're at a stoplight.

I agree with Sing Your Life if in a more easygoing way. You have a lovely singing voice. Aww, thanks, Morrissey! :)

The hilarious scene painted in Our Frank always makes me laugh and perk up.

Satan Rejected My Soul is a really upbeat one. Again, it's paired with tragic lyrical themes, but the delivery is still so fun.

Certain People I Know is an easygoing but peppy one that gives me a smile right away every time. I don't even care what the content is, it's just impossible to feel bad during this song.

It would be hard to call the content of First of the Gang to Die anything but tragic at its core, but what a sunny and wonderful and charming singalong experience overall.

I think Staircase at the University certainly has an upbeat and smiley musical vibe overall despite a touch of, you know, suicide and whatnot.

well done. much better.
 
I always thought he killed a nun in Is It Really So Strange? Thus making it even more uplifting.
 
i think most of his music uplifting. hes writing about lifes struggle not his defeat in the face of it and thats uplifting to me
 

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