558. The Smiths - Meat Is Murder (1985)
















Track Listing

1. Headmaster Ritual
2. Rusholme Ruffians
3. I Want The One I Can't Have
4. What She Said
5. That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore
6. How Soon Is Now
7. Nowhere Fast
8. Well I Wonder
9. Barbarism Begins At Home
10. Meat Is Murder

Review

I hate The Smiths, actually to be more specific I hate Morrisey. I quite like the rest of the band, I like the music they make, I profoundly hate their lyrics and all they stand for, and that is Morrisey's responsibility.

The Smiths have always lived of pseudo-sensibility which is actually a pretty virulent form of passive-aggression, you just have to listen to the title track to get how passive-aggressive this is, it sounds like a particularly agitpropy PETA pamphlet, and fuck you Morrissey Meat is fucking Tasty, when I have an album out I'll probably call it Meat is Tasty, or maybe Murder is Yummy.

Then you have the whining, crap tracks for self-mutilating pubescents like How Soon Is Now, which has all the maturity of an anorexic, self-mutilating, Emo 14 year old with severe learning disabilities. Or Rusholme Ruffians ( I lived in Rusholme a year myself) with the lovely lyric "Scratch my name on your arm with a fountain pen", really Morrissey? Really? Add to this his winning personality and he is my pet hatred in the music world.

But then I am afraid to say the music itself is quite good, it marks a welcome return to guitar based music, it is extremely influential for good reason and Mr. Marr who is responsible for the music deserves my respect and admiration... now it only someone had made sausages out of Morrissey...

Track Highlights

1. The Headmaster Ritual
2. Barbarism Begins At Home
3. I Want The One I Can't Have
4. What she Said

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:



* The Chord sequence in "Rusholme Ruffians" is identical to the Elvis classic '(Marie's The Name) of His Latest Flame'. Occasionally when playing live the band would incorporate both into a medley.

* "Rusholme Ruffians" was inspired by an early comic song by Victoria Wood called "Fourteen Again" and has some lyrics in common (including "She is famous, she is funny"), giving the viewpoint of the boys in the Wood song.

* "The Headmaster Ritual" was covered by Radiohead in a 2007 webcast.

* When Morrissey was in the market town of Ormskirk, he saw a piece of grafiti saying "Meat Is Murder" this gave him the idea for the album


Look at the little shit lipsynching and dancing like the quiffed twat that he is: