It's The 28th anniversary of Morrissey’s first solo album VIVA HATE.
Not his best solo record but an excellent start to his career with no bad songs on it. I remember it came
out less than a year after The Smiths last album and break-up and immediately
after that the music magazines were all saying Moz would be nothing without
Johnny Marr who they said had a bright future ahead of him. This was not the last time they would write premature
eulogies for Moz’s career.
I also remember
when this record came out and being happy because it was actually pretty
good. Producer/co-songwriter Stephen
Street was a very good writing partner and sympathetic arranger for Moz framing
his voice in a number of different situations.
Aside from the hits Suedehead and Everyday Is Like Sunday, I especially
like voice and strings Angel, Angel, Down We Go Together, the epic Moz freakout
Late Night, Maudlin Street (which introduced me to poet Elizabeth Smart whose
verse Moz “borrows”), Booming Vini Reilly guitar showcase Alsatian Cousin and
the weird little fragment Little Man, What Now?. I can even ignore the casual racism of
Bengali in Platforms (great tune nonetheless).
However, my favorite tune and one of Moz’s greatest solo songs, for sure
in my top five, is The Ordinary Boys. Beautiful
mournful tune with a brilliant piano part as an inspired Morrissey, his raw
nerve pure expression voice here exactly tuned into what he wants to say,
describes in painstaking detail the high school losers he grew up with.
Ordinary boys,
happy knowing nothing
happy being no one, but themselves
Ordinary girls, supermarket clothes
who think it's very clever to be cruel to you
for you were so different
you stood all alone
and you knew
that it had to be so
avoiding ordinary boys
happy going nowhere, just around here
in their rattling cars
and ordinary girls
never seeing further
than the cold, small streets
that trap them
but you were so different
you had to say no
when those empty fools
tried to change you, and claim you
for the lair of their ordinary world
where they feel so lucky
so lucky, so lucky
with their lives laid out before them
they're so lucky, so lucky
so lucky, so lucky
happy being no one, but themselves
Ordinary girls, supermarket clothes
who think it's very clever to be cruel to you
for you were so different
you stood all alone
and you knew
that it had to be so
avoiding ordinary boys
happy going nowhere, just around here
in their rattling cars
and ordinary girls
never seeing further
than the cold, small streets
that trap them
but you were so different
you had to say no
when those empty fools
tried to change you, and claim you
for the lair of their ordinary world
where they feel so lucky
so lucky, so lucky
with their lives laid out before them
they're so lucky, so lucky
so lucky, so lucky
