Raphael Lambach
Well-Known Member
Maybe, he meant that Morrissey still sings adolescent pop music.
Marr "I have a problem with a 50 year old singing adolescent pop music"
- Thread starter Maurice E
- Start date
Maybe, he meant that Morrissey still sings adolescent pop music.
in the interview, Marr was specifially talking (yet again!) about the prospect of the Smiths reforming.
so, if he was referring to Moz, it would have been in the context of him singing Smiths songs, not his current stuff.
Anaesthesine
Angel of Distemper
I think what we have here is a good example of misleading/unfortunate editing.
Vauxhall95
I Know It's Over...
Agreed. Most of current era Morrissey lyrics bemoan the plight of the pop star. A position I'm not all too comfortable with because I've never been a pop star and really who has?
Agreed. Most of current era Morrissey lyrics bemoan the plight of the pop star. A position I'm not all too comfortable with because I've never been a pop star and really who has?
What Morrissey lyrics "bemoan the plight of the pop star"?
Vauxhall95
I Know It's Over...
What Morrissey lyrics "bemoan the plight of the pop star"?
Really? Within five seconds of thought: "And the teenagers who love you, they will wake up yawn and kill you..." "I'm not sorry for, yadayada.." ""I've returned to my old city, yadada..." "And the real and the imagined cry the future is passing you by..." Any song mentioning a baliff... Really, we need to have this discussion?!
I've had occurrences where I've certainly felt this way..
None of these songs are about pop music at all.
And as far as bailiffs are concerned, non-popstars encounter bailiffs each and every day
Vauxhall95
I Know It's Over...
I've had occurrences where I've certainly felt this way..
None of these songs are about pop music at all.
And as far as bailiffs are concerned, non-popstars encounter bailiffs each and every day
Mcrickson, you're really making me wish I'd been caught in traffic this morning!
Okay, I give. What do you think "Heir Apparent" is about?I came back to my old city
With fierce determination
And I couldn't find my way
out of the station
It's all changed
You were there
Departing, starting
A trek I had once took
With that "no-one's
gonna stop me when I feel
this way" look
Apparent, apparent
Heir apparent
You think it's so easy, I
tell you - it isn't
But you may change minds
with your winning smile
I fell down in my old city
Such sad degradation
So I tried to make my way
back to the station
You were still there
Gleaming and leaving
Wide-eyed and awestruck
Saying "How can anybody hate me
If I love them first off ?"
Apparent, apparent
Heir apparent
You think it's so easy, I
tell you - it isn't
But you may change minds
with your winning smile
Heir, heir, heir
Heir, heir, heir
Heir, heir, heir
Heir, heir, heir
But you may be OK, I don't know
I'll see you back here
In a few bruised years
Pray
I'll see you here
I'll see you here
I'll see you here
Apparent, apparent
Heir apparent
You say that you want
it, I'm sure that you'll
get it
They'll seduce your heart
and then they'll slap
your arse
Heir, heir, heir
Heir, heir, heir
Heir, heir, heir
Heir, heir, heir
Mcrickson, you're really making me wish I'd been caught in traffic this morning!
It's pretty laid-out, isn't it? I don't know what's happened in Manchester over the years, but I for one detest going back to the city where I came from. In my case, it's not because it's changed so much as much as it is that it has stayed the SAME. But I can understand where he's coming from. To me it's a message not completely unlike "Back to the Old House."
It just seems like you're reading too much into it if you think it's about pop music. But again, am I ALLOWED to interpret something differently from you and still have the same degree of validity in my opinion? Because you do seem rather against that
CrookedLittleVein
Duck. Duck. Duck. Goose.
One of the many strengths of Morrissey's writing is that it speaks directly to us and, consequently, means whatever we think or feel it means.
Heir Apparent was almost certainly intended as a song about the next generation of pop stars, Oasis, possibly. But that doesn't mean we have to accept any single interpretation.
Most people think Papa Jack is about an ageing pop star but, when I first heard it, I just assumed it was about a distant father trying (and failing) to reconnect with his children.
Heir Apparent was almost certainly intended as a song about the next generation of pop stars, Oasis, possibly. But that doesn't mean we have to accept any single interpretation.
Most people think Papa Jack is about an ageing pop star but, when I first heard it, I just assumed it was about a distant father trying (and failing) to reconnect with his children.
Anaesthesine
Angel of Distemper
Agreed. Most of current era Morrissey lyrics bemoan the plight of the pop star. A position I'm not all too comfortable with because I've never been a pop star and really who has?
Are you really going to fault him for singing his life? Seems to me he's being brutally honest about things these days - feelings of inadequacy, fear of being forgotten, that terrible sensation of time slipping irrevocably away.
I find it rather moving, even if I can't relate to much of it.
Orson Swells
Well-Known Member
Agreed. Most of current era Morrissey lyrics bemoan the plight of the pop star. A position I'm not all too comfortable with because I've never been a pop star and really who has?
Well, I don't think most do.
Of course, Morrissey has always written about the music industry: That Joke Isn't Funny, The Boy With The Thorn, Frankly Mr Shankly, Angel Angel, Sing Your Life, Why Don't You Find Out For Yourself, Heir Apparent... all spring to mind.
Yet the writing is so nimbly nuanced that your own interpretations can be slipped in and they become meaningful to whatever the particulars of your own life. I can't see anything on the new album as specifically about the pop star and the pop world as, say, Paint A Vulgar Picture or Panic from back in the (hey)day.
I mean, you could argue I suppose that Mama, All You Need Is Me, and I'm Okay By Myself are (at least) inspired by the strange machinations of the music industry. Maybe even You Were Good In Your Time at a stretch - but again they remain lyrically open to many different readings...
someofusisturningnasty
Expired
I'm Not Sorry?!
I'm about as far from a "popstar" as it is possible to be and I find that song to be one of his most relatable and beautiful songs.
Even if he does write about fame, he is hardly doing so in a good way. He is somewhat adrift from the mainstream...he seems himself as being seperate from the industry. Loneliness can come in many forms.
Orson Swells
Well-Known Member
I do wonder how Johnny feels about a 46 year old man playing in an adolescent band?
justme
Love me outside!
David
Member
I have a real problem with the way Marr reacts to Smiths questions, as if he's surprised that the interviewer will ask him about them. Update: nobody would be interviewing you if you hadn't been in the Smiths. Not that there's anything wrong with that. He's just so contemptuous of questions related to a reunion. And I wouldn't have a problem with it if he weren't so obviously indiscriminate in the interviews he grants. He does a lot of them, especially recently, and with a lot of no-name publications. And surely he knows all of them will ask about the Smiths. Yet he always finds it within himself to hope they won't. Hilarious. Also he should join a good band some time soon. Just a thought.
I agree. Every Smiths article the monthlies run always have his input. Every "Making of the Queen is Dead" or "The end of The Smiths" article that has been run he has been keen to give his version of events (usually blaming Moz for everything that went wrong) yet he doesn't like it at other times.
The reason Morrissey isn't so plagued with such questions is he has made himself interesting enough without them.
The reason Morrissey isn't so plagued with such questions is he has made himself interesting enough without them.
Vauxhall95
I Know It's Over...
Are you really going to fault me for pining for lyrics which are relatable? He can sing his life, but it does get to be a bit much with the lawsuits, baliffs, and woe is me superstar act. This "act" of the post-Rott is growing thin on me.
I've always felt The Guardian's review of YOR and Morrissey's current musical state most captures how I feel (as always feel free to pillory me)
:The last time we encountered Morrissey - on record at least - he was indulging in the most unMorrissey-like of activities: getting his leg over in Rome. Song after song on 2006's Ringleader of the Tormentors detailed his supposedly newfound discovery of the pleasures of the flesh: "I entered nothing and nothing entered me, 'til you came." If it wasn't exactly Eazy-E's Nutz On Ya Chin, it was still remarkably ribald stuff from rock's most celebrated celibate.
Morrissey
Years of Refusal
Polydor
2009
You didn't have to be interested in the state of Morrissey's sex life to feel relieved. Here was progress - something new in an outlook that has remained unchanged over the years, unless you count the mid-90s addition of the entire legal profession to Morrissey's chart of People Who Are Ranged in a Terrible and Sadistic Conspiracy Against Me. It certainly appeared to breathe fresh life into Morrissey's music: his solo career has come up with few moments as transcendentally lovely as the gentle, post-coital coda of Dear God Please Help Me.
But events settled into a well-worn groove following Ringleader of the Tormentors' release: another pointless compilation album, another round of controversy about his views on immigration, another visit to the law courts. And now, there's Years of Refusal, on which normal service is resumed. Love never comes or doesn't exist; depression and suicide get a song each; the legal profession cops it in the neck yet again. Among the album's cast of villains - all of whom, it goes without saying, are ranged in a terrible and sadistic conspiracy against Morrissey - there lurks "a QC full of fake humility".
The deftness and subtlety of its predecessor's sound has been stamped out. Morrissey's backing band, hardly renowned for their lightness of touch at the best of times, seem more stodgy and leaden than ever: the bass is distorted, the drums thud grimly along at mid-tempo, and Ringleader of the Tormentors' beautiful orchestrations have been elbowed out. As with a lot of Morrissey's latter-day solo material, its target market appears to be people who heard the Smiths and thought: if only this stuff was less beautifully nuanced and original, a bit more ungainly and predictable, then we'd really be getting somewhere.
Occasionally, you get the impression they are doing it deliberately. There's an aggressive defiance about the flamenco-ish intro to When I Last Spoke to Carol, which sounds exactly like the intro to Bigmouth Strikes Again played by Manuel from Fawlty Towers. And you surely don't arrive at something as ugly as Sorry Doesn't Help - its lumbering gait embellished with a needling, staccato electric piano line - by mistake.
At least the sound fits the lyrics, which are so horribly sour you could make cottage cheese by leaving a pint of milk next to the speakers while it's playing. Morrissey has been petulant and nasty before, but there was usually a mitigating hint of arched eyebrow, or a flash of wit. Here, there's nothing but vituperative clumsiness: "You lied about the lies you told, which is the full extent of what being you is all about."
Indeed, great lines are surprisingly thin on the ground. It's not so much that you've heard what he has to say on Black Cloud or That's How People Grow Up before; it's more that you've heard him say it better. There's a compelling argument that Morrissey keeps attracting new, young fans because his apparently immutable worldview, in which it's always someone else's fault and everything is so unfair, chimes with their own adolescent experience. But it's difficult to hear him singing, "There's so much destruction all over the world and all you can do is complain about me," without thinking: is this any way for a man who's nearly 50 to be carrying on? Clearly, this thought has crossed Morrissey's mind as well. "I know by now you think I should have straightened myself out," he sings elsewhere. "Thank you. Drop dead."
The latter line comes from Something Is Squeezing My Skull, which is among a handful of moments that makes Years of Refusal more disappointment than disaster. The melody of I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris soars despite the ungainly backing. You Were Good in Your Time is evidence of how tremendous Morrissey can still be: a farewell from fan to dying star that suddenly snaps to a halt, leaving two minutes of chillingly abstract noise in its wake, it's heartbreakingly tender and unpredictable. That you can't apply those adjectives to much else here is Years of Refusal's biggest downfall.
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