It's hard for me to write about Meat is Murder. There is some music in life that holds such a personal grip on you that it's just hard to look at it objectively. There are many songs like that for me and very few albums, this is one such album. I think the thing that first struck me about this album was the sound. It has such a hollow and dirty sound to it. There isn't much pretty about this album, and that fits in perfectly with the first song and the first lyrics.
Belligerent ghouls
Run manchester schools
Spineless swines
Cemented minds
Sir leads the troops
Jealous of youth
Same old suit since 1962
He does the military two-step
Down the nape of my neck
From that opening salvo I was pretty much hooked and really the album never lets up. It has a few moments that don't fit the album, "How Soon is Now" and "Meat is Murder," but otherwise it is all just youthful frustration and anger a wonderful thing to listen to when you are an angry youthful 18 year old. I could go and on about the lyrics to this album. This is Morrissey at his blunt brilliance.
On the day that your mentality
Decides to try to catch up with your biology
Come round ...
-from I Want the One I Can't Have
What she said :
"How come someone hasn't noticed
That I'm dead
And decided to bury me ?
God knows, I'm ready !"
-from What She Said
I'd like to drop my trousers to the world
I am a man of means of slender means
-from Nowhere Fast
The album is just bliss if you're an angry, frustrated 18 year old. Listening to the album now some 23 years later it can instantly take me back to how I felt the first time I heard this record. Like I said it's hard to look at this album objectively, but it is almost pure brilliance.
The Queen is Dead is no doubt their masterpiece. How they blended the rawness and anger of the second album with the smoothness and wit of their first album shows impressive growth. If you are ever going to listen to one Smiths album this should be it. They really brought out the rhythm section which gives the album a much denser sound and smooths out Morrissey's singing and allows the lyrics a different stage where they really stand out. Morrissey is still blunt but in a more poetic way and is much more reflective in his thoughts than simply angry. This new layered sound also allows them to create songs like "I Know It's Over." The song has a tenderness to it that could never have been achieved on their second album and a realness of emotion that could have never been achieved on their first album. Where Meat is Murder is youthful and angry, this album is that same person but a few years removed, now more reflective on his own anger and all the frustrations brought on by his life and the world around.
Meat is Murder
1. The Headmaster Ritual
2. Rusholme Ruffians
3. I Want the One I Can't Have
4. What She Said
5. That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore
6. How Soon Is Now?
7. Nowhere Fast
8. Well I Wonder
9. Barbarism Begins at Home
10. Meat is Murder
The Queen is Dead
1. The Queen is Dead
2. Frankly, Mr. Shankly
3. I Know It's Over
4. Never Had No One Ever
5. Cemetry Gates
6. Bigmouth Strikes Again
7. The Boy With the Thorn in His Side
8. Vicar In a Tutu
9. There is a Light That Never Goes Out
10. Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others
