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070506
The date was last Friday and, seeing as I don't work on Fridays and was a bit hung over after a friend's birthday party and thus didn't feel up to writing, I decided to do a little surfing of the internet, most of which involved tinkering with my myspace profile and reading from a cornucopia of blogs written by those whom I a) used to know but have lost touch with in some way, or; b) have never met yet may or may not be dating and/or divorced from certain specific gentlemen that I have perhaps dated and/or had crushes on at certain points in my life. My desire to usurp the relationship between private and public information is strong and, in the age of high speed DSL, completely achievable.
Anyway.
My friend Katie has the following lyric posted as the headline on her myspace profile: "Sweetness I was only joking . . ." and without fail, every time I visit her page I leave with the song "Bigmouth Strikes Again" by the Smiths roiling around inside my head. For example, later on this particular Friday I found myself humming the melody of Morrissey's cheeky lyrics whilst waiting for the light to change on Eastern Parkway. The light was taking a really long time to change, though, so I tried singing the "Bigmouth lalalalaha ha ha" part only to discover that it's quite difficult to sing Smiths songs sans accompaniment. Nor can one easily whistle the tune. This I found discouraging.
Then I started thinking about the nature of pop music in general. My favorite pop songs, the ones, like birthmarks, that predate my earliest memories, have always been fairly easy to sing. Hitting the high notes might be a little challenging but, ultimately, most people can sing "Love is a Battlefield" or anything by the Eurythmics. Journey is pretty easy, even when done badly. Pretty much any singer mentioned (however symbolically) in Don McLean's "American Pie"-in fact, even the song "American Pie" itself-is a sure shot for karaoke lovers everywhere. Based on this line of thinking, I began to ask myself what the point of the Smiths as a band even was, given that most of their songs are, at best, unsingable.
This is probably the moment wherein I should reveal my status as a reluctant Smiths fan. When, in seventh grade, my friend Susan Barry started swooning over Morrissey and Marr (I can still hear her now, chirping "Morrissey! Morrissey!" over and over again like some kind of demented mynah), I failed to see the attraction. I didn't like the way Morrissey's voice warbled, gelatinous, over the guitar. I thought all the "I-hate-myself-I-don't-love-myself-I-wish-somebody-loved-me" sentiment was kind of ill-conceived for someone old enough to have an actual recording career. As I grew older, this distaste persisted. Even after I'd taken to wearing black velvet and tights to Friday night all-ages dance parties, I still felt that there was something profoundly false about this whole scene I'd fallen into, especially the seemingly patron saints of all 80s Nite DJs everywhere, the Smiths. New Order and the Cure I could understand-most likely because these bands had an insistent beat that laid all questions of their authenticity to rest almost immediately-but I consistently found the Smiths barely danceable and ultimately, pretty whiny.
My decision to ignore the affront of Morrissey & Co. and continue dancing, however, was the first of many ill-conceived compromises that have landed me in this limbo of sort-of fandom. It's an awkward situation. The Smiths (or perhaps, more pointedly, the Smiths' fans) seem to demand devotion, much like the Pixies, say, or Pavement. But such a commitment also demands an adherence to the ethos of fandom (or, more simply said, an adherence to broad generalization based on musical taste) that I find myself unwilling to embrace. Most simply, if being a real fan of the Smiths requires my mindlessly singing the unsingable, or even having to listen to another fan attempt the same, I'm content to remain on the sidelines.
There is a more personal reason for this brouhaha beyond mere aural respect, however. Deep down, I am a musical racist. I refuse to out-and-out like the Smiths-in fact, refuse to the extent that I over-intellectualize and subject you, my dear reader, to my varied musically racist ponderings on the subject-because I refuse to include myself in the stew of gross generalizations I hold about Smiths fans:
1. They are hopelessly self-obsessed.
2. They are usually gay, or extremely feminine, men.
3. They are often irritating.
4. A lot of them used to be fat in high school.
(A mere eight paragraphs later, and the truth comes out.)
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