this is what it says
As the bespectacled singing breadstick Elvis Costello once remarked, "Morrissey sometimes brings out records with the greatest titles in the world, which, somewhere along the line, he neglects to write songs for."
Any follower of Morrissey will tell you death is a major preoccupation for the 46-year-old Mancunian. He has, it seems, carried death on his shoulders, or maybe that should be his elbows, since The Smiths.
Striking a familiar note in the NME recently, he pondered the inevitability of death thus: "When you're younger, you feel it's a great leap to take. But it isn't, it's the batting of an eyelid and you're no longer." Upon hearing these doom-soaked thoughts in the past, wags and non-believers may have remarked that all the celibate star needed was a good shag to bring him to his senses.
So the title of Morrissey's new single - You Have Killed Me - is no surprise. But if the lyrics and gossip surrounding it are to be believed, our hero is at last enjoying a rampant sexual awakening in his newly-adopted city of Rome - years of abstinence (in the mind of his listeners at least) shattered with the lines: "I entered nothing and nothing entered me/Until you came with the key." Titter ye not.
Similarly thrilling is his association with one-time David Bowie/ T Rex producer Tony Visconti on the accompanying album, Ringleader of the Tormentors. Morrissey's new sound has depth and majesty. And whereas his previous set - You Are The Quarry - grunted and strained to be noticed, here he swoons and intoxicates in glamorous, heroic, stoic glum. My God, Morrissey's happy!
