| But having said all
that, I do not hesitate to say that I am a wholehearted convert to
the Way of the English Guy With the Slight Pompadour, albeit a late
one. I bought the first Smiths album in, wait for it, 1995, and I
haven’t looked back since. They are as great as everybody always
said they were. Morrissey’s lyrics, once you’ve learned
to hear his narrative voice, are as good as any rock lyricist’s
ever were, and better than many of the best. By the end of the Smiths’
career he had so completely perfected his act that he could make the
ordering of a cup of coffee sound sadly & bitterly ironic &
ripe with innuendo. His early solo stuff was good, too, as I discovered,
though it got uneven later. But he remained committed, like so many
great English songwriters, to the b-side -- to supplying the listener
willing to shell out some serious coin for a measly 3 songs with at
least one non-album track that was better than half the songs that
actually made the final cut. |