12/01/2008

Music Monday: The Smiths

What? No furious emails demanding the return of Music Monday after a week's absence? No petitions passed around the blogosphere, a nifty badge for each participant's sidebar to commemorate the movement? You heartless music-hating bastards.

To appease the masses, or rather just Helen and A, this is Smiths week. I did a Morrissey/Smiths Music Monday back in March, but as it was so very long ago, here we are again.

Well I Wonder



Still Ill




Jeane




The Queen is Dead




Pretty Girls Make Graves




Back to the Old House




Unloveable




Frankly Mr Shankly




Sweet and Tender Hooligan (apologies for the Charlie from "Lost" themed video)






Any Smiths favourites I've forgotten?

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am having the most extraordinary flash-backs to my student days. I can smell margarine on toast and Horlicks. Gosh.

Poor Morrissey. It'd slay him to know he forever smells of Horlicks to me.

Incidentally, your word verification for the day is 'catturd'. Charming.

Anonymous said...

Heaven knows I'm miserable now.

I am actually, I cordially dislike the Smiths!

CATTURD?! Mwa ha ha!

elizasmom said...

Ohhhhh — Sweet and Tender Hooligan!!! I forgot how much the Smiths could ROCK.
They are unfortunately forever associated in my head with this venal boy in my high school who was really into them, but they were lovely. Adored JOhnny Marr, and didn't realize until realize that Morissey is not the insufferable mope I thought he was — boyfriend is FUNNY when he wants to be.

elizasmom said...

Uh, realize until RECENTLY. Sorry 'bout that.

Helen said...

This was excellent.

And if you'd included "Boy With the Thorn In His Side" I'd have gone gay for you, but I guess it wasn't meant to be.

Anonymous said...

oooh. I THOUGHT there was something out of sorts about my Mondays...
confession- I only just "discovered" The Smiths like 2 years ago. I had a dorm mate in college that was obsessed and I hated her so I had (no choice here) to hate her music.
But I will say that listening to this music totally makes me want to buy parliaments and a zima...
xo

kate said...

Oh, man. This is a perfect Music Monday. Damn, I love the Smiths.

I think you managed to hit all of my favorites, except one that is my personal favorite for purely sentimental reasons, which is 'William, It Was Really Nothing'- I only adore this song because the first-year-college love of my life/affair was a major punk rock dude who loved to share music with me because he only listened to punk and really dug getting to know music outside that genre with me... or else he really just loved the opportunity to share his LSD with me and that always entailed music for me. Whatever it was, after I moved back to Texas (while he stayed in CA), I insisted on sending him mix tapes on a regular basis, and I almost put that song in there because I love the first line, but the truth is that he had chosen to stay there with his fat girlfriend who insisted on getting engaged, and had, as a matter of fact, demanded that she get a giant ring as well. So I didn't think he'd really appreciate it as much as I did.

The only other songs that I miss when I hear these are, in fact, not Smiths songs, but rather Morrissey songs, so they wouldn't belong anyway.

Awesome selections. What a great way to start off my Tuesday.

kate said...

Oh, and because I haven't hijacked the blog for long enough, I just have to say that 'Back To The Old House' reminds me of being at Misty Moya's birthday party with Ginger and Heather and watching while Ginger cried walking around the duplex she and her mom had moved out of a week earlier (which was next to the pool where Misty was having her party). Ginger kept singing that song, which I only later found ironic because she was singing the lines about never going back while we were standing on the doorstop of the actual house that she supposedly couldn't go back to.

And 'Unloveable' reminds me of getting high in Heather's bedroom while she cried (black is how I feel on the inside...). She tried to kill herself two weeks later. That song always reminds me of the slap in the face of calling your best friend and having her father tell you that she's in the hospital, and just casually drop that it's actually a psych hospital and that she took a bunch of sleeping pills and she'll be there for a month.

Of course, the line about wearing black on the outside has become a joke amongst my friends now when we're mocking ourselves for being all morose. So now it reminds me of that, too, which is a much more fun memory than the first.

Er, I guess what this comment and the last mean is that the Smiths were the soundtrack of my youth, more than any other band. Sigh.

Gwen said...

I love "Girlfriend in a Coma" because it speaks to the sick twisted part of me that finds shit like that funny. Also, my husband has one really awful ex-gf and I always think of her fondly when I hear that song.

Kristi said...

Love The Smiths. "There is a Light That Never Goes Out" is on my favorites list, as is "How Soon is Now." The Smiths take me right back to HS and college, where I listened to them pretty much non-stop while wearing lots and lots of black.