3. “Piccadilly Palare” – Morrissey
(From the compilation album Bona Drag)
1990
After following up the success of his debut album Viva Hate with a series of non-album singles, Morrissey had begun work on his second solo album with the famed production team of Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley. However, the writing sessions didn’t go as well as planned and it quickly became apparent that no new album would quickly be forthcoming. Wanting to capitalize on the success of Viva Hate quickly and knowing that outside of the UK the recently released non-album singles were basically unknown Morrissey decided to shift gears and release the Bona Drag compilation album as the follow-up to Viva Hate. Bona Drag compiled Morrissey’s singles up to that point, all but two of which were not on any album and therefore largely unknown outside of the UK, and added several of the B-sides to those songs (many of which were of high quality) and a handful of new songs that were originally intended to be on the abandoned second album. The second single, “Picadilly Palare”, a co-write between Morrissey and studio guitarist Kevin Armstrong, was released the same day as Bona Drag with both the single and the album using Polari slang terms often used by the gay subculture in the UK (Bona Drag, for example, means “nice outfit”) as a way of communicating with each other in a time when homosexual acts were still criminalized in Britain. Like many Morrissey songs “Piccadilly Palare”, which addresses the topic of rent boys, or male prostitutes, in the Piccadilly section of London, deals with unusual subject matter for a pop song and is something of an outsider anthem. While Morrissey himself wasn’t overly fond of the song, it has a sound that was still somewhat reminiscent of his former band The Smiths (Smiths bassist Andy Rourke even plays on the song, the last time one of his former bandmates would do so) and became a solid hit, going to #13 in the UK and to #2 on the US alternative charts. This was Morrissey’s best showing yet in the United States and marked something of a turning point in Morrissey’s career where he would begin to be less popular in Britain and more popular in the USA. While Bona Drag was a compilation, outside of the UK none of the songs were known except “Suedehead” and “Everyday Is Like Sunday” and so in America, and most of the world, Bona Drag played as Morrissey’s second album and “Piccadilly Palare” was its most successful song.
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