Are you serious? Try telling that to Morrissey, who's been following the verse, bridge, chorus regime for a very long time now (with very few exceptions). Of course this isn't really the point is it, because this is just a poor song regardless, with people over eager to praise it vehemently in an attempt to overcompensate for that fact. Boz does a good job with the music (as good as he did on "Grow Up", but with the added addition of an expert change of pace) and then Morrissey fluffs the lyrics.
I said it before and I'll say it again: when you take the sentiments of both "Grow Up" and "Paris", and look at the meaning behind the lyrics, you have some very interesting ideas, but Morrissey is being incredibly lazy with his writing. ROTT brought emotional closure to the troubled artist, and now he's gone back to being troubled, doesn't work does it? Hence, the dissapointing new material.
Look, I love Morrissey. But if this is a sign of how the new album is going to sound, than I don't think we're in for anything too great.
I somewhat agree with this. While I like all three of the new songs, only "Grow Up" stands out for me as a performance, and I generally tend to agree with the man's own assessment that he's not sure they're songs so much as "showers of panic."
Moz has done a couple of emotional-closure albums (I think
Vauxhall could also lay a claim) and bounced back troubled again - so I don't agree that there's no real room for angst after ROTT, but it's true that the verse-chorus-verse is quite ironclad and that these songs are mostly elaborations on things he's done better already (Dear God Please Help Me, You Knew I Couldn't Last, The Never Played Symphonies).
Which is nice, in its way; I appreciate the diary-like honesty of continuing to write on these themes after they've been artistically "done." And they're not
hideously done: "All You Need Is Me" at least has a different take from previous songs about fans vs. "real" relationships, and "Paris" expresses a sentiment that he's spoken about many times but never written about explicitly - hence it probably plays/will play better to non-fans.
Perhaps I'll come down harder on these songs if the next album comes out and they're featured very prominently, and talked up as Moz' new favorite examples of the songwriter's art. Right now, I'm okay with them, but not overjoyed. I think they feel very much as though they were written on the road and on the fly, and that whether they work an album will depend heavily on track listing, production and qualities of the other songs.
Oh, and a digression on "All You Need Is Me," while I'm talking about that song and fan relationships - I think it's possible that the title is quoted/lifted from Kristeen Young's "No Other God." It'd be an interesting sample if this is true - "No Other God" applies the First Commandment to a romantic relationship, in a tongue-in-cheek way that doesn't completely come through from reading the lyric, and in a way that also echoes Moz' relationship with many of his fans - the narrator encourages and assists the subject, and is plainly somewhat good for him, but she's quite intense about it and demands things very much on her terms.
To quote the bridge, final verse and chorus:
All you need (all you need, all you need) is me
Lucky you (lucky you, lucky you), you found me
What'd you do, what'd you say, what'd you feel, before me?
And my love is so, oh, oh...you'll wanna kill your friends.
I've seen you labour for your dreams.
Then, comatose when they're unseen.
And sometimes God is silent, too,
but God can't fill you like I do.
He better cut it out
You better cut Him out
You better cut Him off
You'll have no other God before me.
Anyway, if Moz made that steal (and I'm sorry to point out Kristeen all the time, but if he's really that into her, I think an assumption of Moz steals is fair game), it'd add a layer to the song - the hero as difficult muse to the fan, and a second underlining to the idea of fan and hero actually having a mutual and emotionally complex relationship. The reference is obscure, though (I'm not sure how many people own
X who aren't fairly die-hard Kristeen fans; it's only available on import) so I doubt it's a thing he meant people to read in semi-subconsciously, like "loves and hates and passions just like mine."