I created this mashup of Smiths lyrics, from the emotionally gutting “I Know It’s Over” of the band’s The Queen Is Dead Album,” and cheesy ’80s comic “Love Is.”
If you’ve never seen the latter, Homer explains the bizarre premise in an episode of “The Simpsons.” He says, “It’s about two naked children who are in love.” I think they’re really supposed to be a couple of full-grown smitten kittens–rendered Precious Moments cute, but they are head over heels.
I know it’s over is dark and morbid, but that was just the soundtrack I needed as a teen to match my angst. I love the song this day, which displays some of the best of the Smiths strengths. We have Morrissey’s emotive voice–one of those instruments that you either love or hate. I’m in the latter category.
You also have the combined talent of lead guitarist Johnny Marr and vocalist Moz for inserting disparate passages into songs that could just be one-note weep fests. Our protagonist is indeed sad, suffering from clinical depression and hopelessness, so much that he feels death approaching far more viscerally than the inevitable approach of spring.
And yet, he still finds time in this near suicide note of a song to implore all of us to open our hearts and to treat ourselves and others with gentleness. He starts with the general: “Sad veiled bride, please be happy. Handsome groom, give her room. Loud loutish lover treat her kindly, though she needs you more than she loves you.”
Morrissey then transcends the specific to the universal, encouraging others to tread a path that has taken its toll on him but is necessary for a better world.
“It’s so easy to laugh, it’s so easy to hate. It takes strength to be gentle and kind.” And later, he repeats the line, but raises the stakes a tick. “It’s so easy to laugh, it’s so easy to hate, it takes guts to be gentle and kind.”
The music is such a complex alt-rock symphony, with musicianship that in my worshipful mind rivals compositions by some of the world’s great classic composers in terms of dynamics, beauty, ambition and spiritual reach.
As for the line I chose to mashup, it was a natural. Every “Love is. . .” comic starts with those eponymous words. I just blended it into Morrissey’s sad pronouncement: “Love is natural and real. But not for you, my love, not tonight, my love.” One truly is the loneliness number.
And now for this masterful song. Trigger warning. It’s gothic in its angst and sense of suicidal ideation. Sometimes, though, two negatives make a positive, just as in math. A sad person can be cheered up by a sad song. I’m living proof.
–Sarah Torribio
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