Yay, I was hoping this one would be up soon!
Your favourite track: Either Rusholme Ruffians, Well I Wonder or Nowhere Fast. Rusholme Ruffians is one of Andy Rourke's best songs (along with This Charming Man), and it's just so funky! And it really does show how unpredictable The Smiths are - the timing is so different and exciting. Well I Wonder is a beautiful song, it's so sad and gorgeous, and I love the rain soundclip at the end. Nowhere Fast is just an excellent song all round, it has a great melody and I love the lyrics, they're so wry and sharp, like all the best Smiths lyrics <!--emo&:)-->

<!--endemo--> What I also think is great about Nowhere Fast is Mike Joyce's drum bit in the middle, where it pans around the speakers and really sounds like a train. It's such a simple thing, but it's so effective!
Your worst track: Barbarism Begins At Home. It seems to drag on just that little bit too long, and I prefer the live versions (despite the fact that they're always even longer!). I love the way Moz descends into yelps and stuff, and seems to completely give up on singing. I'm also not that keen on the song Meat Is Murder, I think it's very good at its job, and very inventive and ambitious (like with the slaughterhouse sounds at the beginning), but musically, it isn't the best Smiths song by a long shot.
Best lyric: I think "He does the military two-step down the nape of my neck" has a lovely poetic sort of rhythm to it, and all of Well I Wonder is beautiful (despite chunks being stolen from Elizabeth Smart!). For some reason, "The air hangs heavy like a dulling wine" is like one of the most perfect lines ever written. Possibly the lyric that has the most powerful impact in my opinion though is "On cold leather seats, well, it suddenly struck me - I just might die with a smile on my face after all" because it's like no matter how crap everything seems now, you never know it might just get better.
Song/lyric/line you relate to most/has relevance to you: I think the most influential lyrics have got to be the ones for Meat Is Murder itself ("It's sizzling blood and the unholy stench of murder" etc): I'm not saying that I became vegetarian just because of Morrissey, but without him I doubt I would ever have seriously considered it. It sounds so cliched, but that song really did have a huge effect on me.
I think everyone who's ever had some form of unrequited love or been through a break-up can empathise with Well I Wonder, again, it's an example of Morrissey perfectly expressing your own thoughts and feelings in a much better way than you could ever hope to yourself.
How Soon Is Now? also is the sort of quintessential teenage song in a way, to me it's about disatisfaction with the world and adults and just about everything, and waiting for
anything to happen, which I've felt many a time...
Overall opinion of album, how it compares to others, etc.: Hrm. I think it has to be my least favourite of the studio albums, because sometimes the songs feel slightly...indulgent. Barbarism, anyway. That song always seems to be a bit like a glorified jam session, if you know what I mean... One thing I do really like about this album is the way that Morrissey really starts to come into his own, lyrics-wise. It seems a bit like he's realised that songs are a really great way to get your own opinions across so he's decided to launch an attack on just about anything he can think of (meat-eaters, child abuse, education, adolescent violence, royalty...), so it seems more accomplished lyrically. And the music's more diverse too - on the first album the melodies were quite similar sometimes (the beginning of Miserable Lie and The Hand That Rocks The Cradle really are practically the sane), but every song is so distinctive and individual on Meat. It also seems more consistent than some of the others because it keeps the same sort of mood all the way through, there aren't any light-hearted-type songs like in the final two albums (Vicar In A Tutu, Framkly Mr Shankly, Girlfriend In A Coma...).
Nonetheless, I still prefer the others.
Oh, about the first album, I've changed my mind, it's my second favourite Smiths album, not third.
<a href='http://www.livejournal.com/users/fishnet_monkey/' target='_blank'>-click-</a>
I decree today that life is simply taking and not giving
England is mine, it owes me a living
But ask me why and I'll spit in your eye
Oh, ask me why and I'll spit in your eye
But we cannot cling to the old dreams anymore
No, we cannot cling to those dreams
Does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body?
I dunno...
Under the iron bridge we kissed
And although I ended up with sore lips
It just wasn't like the old days anymore
No, it wasn't like those days
Am I still ill...?