The song ‘I Know It’s Over’ by The Smiths came up on an automated playlist while I was tidying my room. I had never heard it before. I stopped what I was doing to sit still and listen to it properly. It’s the kind of song that demands attention, like a kid throwing a tantrum or a whimpering animal – you’re irritated, but you care.
The first I ever heard of The Smiths was the movie 500 Days of Summer (2009). I hated that movie. I couldn’t relate to it. Which I know is stupid feedback, but I was a teenager at the time. And you know what – if a movie is going to be that unrelatable, it needs to have something else. A clever script, mesmerising cinematography, great sex scenes, exceptionally weird or shocking moments… even if there is no meaning behind the shock, at least I could passionately complain about how much I hate it (i.e. Saltburn).
If I watched 500 Days of Summer today I’d probably find it interesting; as a study of that particular time period, at the very least. But in the time when the movie was released in theatres, all I wanted from an indie movie about people around my age was to relate. I think the fact so many other people my age seemed to relate to it is another reason I got stuck on the ‘relatability’ factor. When everybody around you talks so much about how much they relate to a particular movie that you did not relate to at all, you feel even more alienated. And being in a space of alienated self-loathing can be fun (more on that later).
The movie is about a guy in LA who spends 500 days getting over a co-worker he dated called Summer, whom he fell head over heels in love with after she sang a bit of ‘There Is a Light that Never Goes Out’ in the elevator. He creates this cool girl persona of her and falls in love with that persona, totally ignoring who she actually is as a person. It’s unclear whether the flat female character is intentionally drawn that way or if the filmmakers just weren’t thinking about her character much. All we really need to know about her is that she’s a hot sad girl who is quirky enough to sing the The Smiths in an elevator. I notice this a lot in American movies from that time: music or another product people consume is a filler for personality or actual character development. (Elif Batuman goes into more detail about this sort of American hyperrealism here.)
Back to The Smiths: A big part of their appeal is how so many people could relate to the loneliness and despondency of their lyrics, which is made less sentimental (AKA cringe) by the dry humour. Pulp, Kate Nash, and a few other mostly British acts do this very well too. In the five years I’ve spent living in this country I can anecdotally say that teetering close to sentimentality but jerking away last minute with a joke, a shrug, or change in subject is very much part of the general national character.
To be fair, Americans do this too. We just dwell in the uncomfortable sentiment a bit longer before saying: wow, that got intense, lol and changing the subject. I’m sure other cultures have their own version of this: when a light-hearted conversation abruptly becomes more intense. I call it emotional flashing. (There is loads of emotional flashing in my forthcoming novel, which you can pre-order here.)
You could emotionally flash (by suddenly revealing sentimentality), or intellectually flash (by suddenly revealing you’ve thought about a particular issue more critically than a superficial conversation allows). Or the vibe of a conversation can be punctured by nobody in particular – just by virtue of a serious topic coming up, like the genocide in Palestine or the climate crisis. It stops being a talking point you have to give lip service to and starts being what it is: the terror of living in a word where this is happening. Terror feels like the right word here: a combination of fear and powerlessness that renders one speechless. It kills the vibe. As it should! This assumption that conversations should be light-hearted all the time is fucking weird, a deeply boring and delusional impulse.
Nothing can puncture the vibe on social media, the way it does in actual face-to-face human conversation. Because social media is a thousand different vibes all at once, a jumble of Real Housewife memes, GoFundMe pleas, garlic-peeling hacks, abhorrent statistics about war, speculations on the whereabouts of Kate Middleton, detailed graphs about income inequality, Italians reacting in horror to someone making ‘English breakfast lasagna’ (with layers of sausages, scrambled eggs, button mushrooms and toast), and people inventing these fry-up lasagnas in the first place, just so they can share it on social media. (Another example below: dried pasta blitzed and used to make… fresh pasta.)
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When serious content shares the same space as all this trivial shit, the effect is numbing. There’s no change in tone or mood because it’s all on this flat screen you can just toss aside and go about your day.
ANYWAY, BACK TO THE SMITHS. I think the reason I was compelled to stop everything I was doing and just listen to ‘I Know It’s Over’ was because of how it masterfully it sews dry humour into melancholy. It starts off a bit like a song by 1950-1960’s girl groups (The Ronettes, The Shangri-Las) – all pleas and longing, slightly theatrical. Or the kind of slow song that’s played at a school dance in a 1980s movie.
Then, some resentment breaks out of the sweetness: ‘Lover, treat her kindly / though she needs you m—o—r—e than she loves you.’ And that resentment turns inward, asking oneself: ‘If you’re so funny / then why are you on your own tonight?’ Then, in answering these rhetorical questions, Morrissey starts to have a bit too much fun with the self-loathing, skewering all the fake self-confidence that was built up when the now-lost love seemed like it could work out. (‘I know… because tonight is just like any other night / That’s why you’re on your own tonight!’)
That’s when the ‘it’s over’ of the temporary love slides into the ‘over and over and over’ of perpetual, predictable loneliness, same word but with opposite meanings (the end, the never-ending). The sentimentality is so dramatic that you have no choice but to laugh because it feels fake now. The song lulls you into a melancholy stupor then snaps you out of it. But rather than brushing the sentimentality aside to save face, the song becomes just the right level of sincere: ‘It’s so easy to laugh, it’s so easy to hate / It takes strength to be gentle and kind / Over and over and over…’
To which I can only respond: 🥹.
Also: the second time that verse is repeated he uses the word guts, not strength, which is another stroke of genius because turns the seriousness down a notch without dismissing it completely. Also: Jeff Buckley covered the song.
Yes, yes, I know Morrissey is a xenophobe who thinks immigration ruined England, but I think it’s wrong to dismiss this song on those grounds alone. Mostly because it’s not just his song – I Know It’s Over (and any other Smiths song) is equal parts Johnny Marr’s guitar work. There’s nothing I can say about the tension of being an Asian Smiths fan that Sukhdev Sandhu hasn’t already articulated in this excellent article.
Links Links Links
Sophie Davidson’s lovely newsletter Women Cook for Me is back and on Substack, and I wrote something for it (here). I think this may be the most elegant photo of murukku ever taken:
My friend Lucie Elven wrote a piece for the LRB about writer, critic and activist Brigid Brophy.
I love steak frites and am working on a list of the best steak frites in London. Do you have any recommendations? If so reply to this email and let me know!