Meat Is Murder

[Hidden by Rags]

Your favourite track: "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore", just ahead of "Well I Wonder" and "Rusholme Ruffians". It's just a stunning, beautiful piece of music, and Morrissey's lyrics are so evocative. Funnily enough, this is the only album without any one particular song that I would class as one of my very favourites, but "That Joke ..." is my favourite on the album.

Your worst track:
Probably "Barbarism Begins At Home" - it just goes on for two minutes longer than it should. I actually quite like "Meat is Murder" - it gets points its boldness, and I like Morrissey's vocals.

Best lyric:
I can't pick just one, so I'll go with:

The last night of the fair
From a seat on a whirling waltzer
Her skirt ascends for a watching eye
It's a hideous trait (on her mother's side)

What she read
All heady books
She'd sit and prophesise
(It took a tattooed boy from
Birkenhead
To really really open her eyes)

I've seen this happen in other people's
Lives
And now it's happening in mine

I'd like to drop my trousers to the Queen
Every sensible child will know what this means
The poor and the needy
Are selfish and greedy on her terms

The last one in particular I like - the silly comedy combined perfectly with the clever, poetic wordplay making a political point. Pure Morrissey.

Song/lyric/line you relate to most/has relevance to you:
If we count "How Soon is Now" as part of Meat is Murder, then possibly that - although I wouldn't even have gone to the club in the first place. Other than that, "Well I Wonder" beautifully describes the feeling of unrequited love - not even realistically hoping for a relationship, just that the person knows you exist - and it brings back memories of my school years.

Overall opinion of album, how it compares to others, etc.: Meat is Murder is one that's really grown on me the more I've heard it. At the start there weren't any particular songs that really stood out to me in the way they did on other albums. But they've definitely grown on me, and as a whole, as an album, it's probably worked its way up to second, behind The Queen is Dead - the songs just fit together perfectly and beautifully. It really needs to be listened to as an album, in that order (minus "How Soon is Now").

[Pashernate_Lover]

Your favourite track:

Nowhere Fast- which is in fact my favorite Smiths song and has been for 2 years now. It reminds me of growing up poor in a farming town where you could almost literally do nothing with your life and make nothing of yourself. Every bit of technology that creeped in was wondered at like a freak show-- we had a late 60s word processor as our only computer until 1997, when we got a beat up handed down Macintosh and were seen as really posh for having that AND a swamp cooler in our window for an air conditioner. We had a train that would roll through town and go somewhere far from the nowhere town we lived in, we would put pennies on the track in hopes that the train would flatten them and then count the cars when they went by. I always said I would get out and make something of myself, go to college and be somebody, and Nowhere Fast reminds me of my childhood in a very true way that speaks to me... not in a bitter way either- in the sweet nostalgic way that people love to think of their childhood with

Your worst track:

Barbarism Begins At Home-- I don't know why I don't like this track, but it doesn't do a single thing for me.

Best lyric:
I'd like to drop my trousers to the Queen
Every sensible child will know what this means
The poor and the needy
Are selfish and greedy on her terms
So true it hurts. I would like to put rich people on the farm I grew up on, have them work day in and out for their meals, lift grain sacks and alfalfa bails all the time, slop the pigs, dig up and fix the broken pipes, live weeks without electricity in the floods of winter, sleep worrying about having enough food to make it through the winter and THEN see if they have anything to say about the less wealthy folks being greedy.


Song/lyric/line you relate to most/has relevance to you:
When you laugh about people who feel so
Very lonely
Their only desire is to die
Well, I'm afraid
It doesn't make me smile

I have this conversation with people all the time- I hate it when people are mean to other people who aren't as fortunate as they are, and I get really mad about it.

Overall opinion of album, how it compares to others, etc.: It is a solid album and I like it a lot, but I'd choose Strangeways over it any day.