Sarah McLachlan released her third album Fumbling Towards Ecstasy in 1993 and it was an immediate success in her native Canada where she was already a star. The lead single and biggest hit was the song “Possession”, a song from the point-of-view of a man obsessed with a woman and inspired by disturbing letters McLachlan had received from several different obsessed fans who were stalking her and believed they were in a relationship with her. The most concerning of these was a man named Uwe Vandrei who sued McLachlan, claiming that she had used the wording of his letters in the lyrics to “Possession” and that he should get co-writing credits. The upcoming trial became a focal point for the Canadian media and an issue for the Canadian justice system since Vandrei openly admitted that part of the reason he had sued was to get close to McLachlan. Indeed, there was genuine concern for McLachlan’s safety. However, the issue never had to be addressed in court as Vandrei committed suicide before the trial began. “Possession” was a legitimate Canadian hit, peaking at #26, while also earning McLachlan real airplay in the US as well, where the song peaked at #4 on the US alt charts and went to #73 on the pop charts, the first time McLachlan had scored an American Top 100 hit. While Fumbling Towards Ecstasy was an immediate Canadian hit the album slowly gained momentum over the course of the next two years in the USA and in some other countries, becoming a slow burning moderate hit that had successful singles with “Possession”, “Hold On”, and “Good Enough”. The song “Ice Cream” also earned some attention as it was used in the Christian Slater and Mary Stuart Masterson film Bed of Roses.Fumbling Towards Ecstasy proved to be a hit and set the stage for McLachlan to become a superstar.
Born in the eastern Canadian province of Nova Scotia, Sarah McLachlan was something of a musical prodigy as a child and studied music throughout her childhood. By the time McLachlan was in high school she was fronting a rock band named The October Game. However, after an early October Game show McLachlan was offered a solo recording contract with the Vancouver, Canada based record label Nettwerk. McLachlan was interested and excited but her parents insisted she finish high school and one year of college before she could move west to Vancouver and work as a recording artist. Two years later though McLachlan signed with Nettwerk and moved to Vancouver. When McLachlan signed her recording contract she had never written a song but she still wrote or co-wrote the entirety of her first album Touch and even scored a minor Canadian hit with the song “Vox”. She also gained increased exposure in Canada by serving as the opening act for Canadian alt rockers The Grapes Of Wrath. McLachlan released her second album Solace in 1991 and it became her Canadian breakthrough, spinning off a series of Canadian hits and starting her career-long partnership with producer Pierre Marchand, who would become her primary collaborator. Solace earned McLachlan Canadian hits with “The Path Of Thorns (Terms)”, “Drawn To The Rhythm”, and “Into The Fire”, the last one being the biggest hit and earning McLachlan her first American success when the song went to #4 on the US alternative rock charts. The moderate success of “Into The Fire” also helped to build some momentum for McLachlan outside of Canada and built up some expectations for her next record; expectations that she would capitalize on.
Due to some unforeseen circumstances and some technical issues with the other places I post these, I am taking a week off to see if I can get things resolved. I am sorry as I know there have been a fair number of interruptions of late. Please stay with me.
After the twin heights of Your Arsenal and Vauxhall & I Morrissey decided to challenge his audience with 1995’s Southpaw Grammar. While rooted in a similar sound as his two previous albums Southpaw Grammar was harder and harsher and featured two songs in excess of ten minutes long. Southpaw Grammar is actually a fairly strong record but it takes some to unveil its pleasures and those pleasures may not always speak to fans waiting for the next “Everyday Is Like Sunday”. Indeed, Southpaw Grammar, released right when all of Morrissey’s spiritual progeny in the Britpop scene were ascendent, seemed to refudiate that legacy to some degree and Morrissey fell out of favor. His next album, 1997’s Maladjusted,did nothing to bring Morrissey back into favor and he went on an extended hiatus and moved from Britain to Los Angeles. Morrissey released several compilations over the next few years but his next new studio album would not be released until 2004. By 2004 Morrissey’s reputation had recovered some as his music and persona was an obvious influence on both the emo and pop-punk genres that were popular at the time and he was regularly namechecked by many of those bands as an influence. While Morrissey’s new album, 2004’s You Are The Quarry (which featured an incredible cover featuring a James Bond-ish looking Moz carrying a tommy gun) doesn’t stray too far from the sound or style of Morrissey’s 90’s records it is produced by Jerry Finn, who helped to shape the sound of many of the then-current emo and pop-punk sound, and gives Morrissey a slightly modern update that makes the album feel contemporary without losing the essence of Morrissey’s sound. You Are The Quarry was well reviewed by critics and hailed as a comeback. It even was a moderate commercial success in the US and scored two UK top ten singles with “Irish Blood, English Heart” and “First Of The Gang To Die”. The second of these songs, the poppy rocker “First Of The Gang To Die”, being seen as a tribute of sorts to Morrissey’s large number of Mexican-American and Latin fans. Morrissey followed up You Are The Quarry with another strong record in 2006’s Ringleader Of The Tormentors (which has both an awesome title and album cover). Ringleader Of The Tormentors scored Morrissey more UK chart success and continued his run of alt rock success in America. Ringleader Of The Tormentors also found Morrissey working with songwriting partners other than Alain Whyte and Boz Boorer as former Red Hot Chili Pepper guitarist Jesse Tobias joined his band and co-wrote five of the songs, including the album’s most successful single “You Have Killed Me”. 2009 saw the release of Years Of Refusal, another album that was well received by critics. It also was a turning point for Morrissey as Jesse Tobias replaced Alain Whyte as Morrissey’s lead guitarist and primary songwriting partner (although Whyte does still have five co-writing credits on Years Of Refusal). The years since the release of Years Of Refusal saw Morrissey write his autobiography and a novel. Morrissey also has spent much of this time battling with his various record labels, the media, and many of his fans over cancelled shows and unpopular political views. Still, in spite of these setbacks to his reputation and issues with labels Morrissey has released four more albums – World Peace Is None Of Your Business, Low In High School, California Son, and I Am Not A Dog On A Chain – three of which consisted of new original material and one being a covers album. Morrissey also has recorded a fifth record during these years, 2022’s Bonfire Of Teenagers, which in spite of being completed and having a lead single released (the Smiths sounding “Rebels Without Applause”), has been shelved by his former record label due to a dispute with Morrissey that saw him leave the label. A new album titled Without Music The World Dies has been announced but currently has not been released either.
6. “The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get” – Morrissey
(From the album Vauxhall & I)
1994
With 1994’s Vauxhall & I Morrissey continued the excellence he and his new backing band had begun on 1992’s Your Arsenal. Whereas Your Arsenal found Morrissey working with guitarist Alain Whyte as his primary songwriting partner, on Vauxhall & I Morissey splits writing credits with Whyte and his other guitarist Boz Boorer and Boorer proves himself to be just as talented and fitting a writing partner. In fact, Vauxhall & I rivals, or maybe even surpasses, the excellence of Your Arsenal, while serving as a somewhat more reflective companion piece. Indeed, the album’s lead single, the Morrissey and Boorer penned “The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get”, became Morrissey’s biggest hit ever in the US and his only UK top ten of the 90’s. Always a strong and witty lyricist, the song features some of Morrissey’s best; clever, humorous, and perhaps a little subversive. These lyrics are backed by music that recalls the sound of The Smiths without actually using the jangly guitar rush made famous by Johnny Marr. Instead, Boorer creates a melodic, repetitive riff that carries the song and gets lodged in your head. “The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get” is the obvious single from the record, but Vauxhall & I has many other excellent songs including Morrissey and Boorer’s “Spring-Heeled Jim” and “Speedway” and Morrissey and Whyte’s “Hold On To Your Friends” (a criminally failed single) and “Why Don’t You Find Out For Yourself”, among other highlights.
While Morrissey’s early solo career had been successful and he had shown he could thrive outside of his partnership with Johnny Marr, his more recent solo career was causing doubt he could maintain that success. After ending his writing partnership with Stephen Street Morrissey had struggled to find a new partnership that worked for him. Morrissey had struggled to work with Langer and Winstanley and his work with Mark E. Nevin had largely been lackluster. So Morrissey had moved in a new direction, hiring real rockabilly musicians as his new backing band and beginning a songwriting partnership with guitarist Alain Whyte (and later with his other new guitarist Boz Boorer as well) that resulted in the excellent album Your Arsenal. Produced by David Bowie’s former guitarist Mick Ronson Your Arsenal is the perfect blend of rockabilly, glam, and Morrissey’s own jangly pop past. It was a tougher, harder sound for a new decade, yet one that perfectly suited Morrissey’s voice and lyrics, while also not rejecting his past work. The music Alain Whyte creates for Morrissey on Your Arsenal perfectly uses the past to reframe the present, a perfect sound for Morrissey who has always loved to draw on the imagery and iconography of the past as a way to frame his music. Your Arsenal is full of excellent songs. The album opens with the hard rocking “You’re Gonna Need Someone On Your Side” (one of two songs written with old writing partner Mark E. Nevin but given a toughness and rawness by Morrissey’s new band and Ronson’s production that was desperately missing on Kill Uncle) which is the heaviest song Morrissey had ever released to this point. Your Arsenal also features the glam/rockabilly stomp of “Glamorous Glue” and the snappy rockabilly of “Certain People I Know”, the humorous rush of “We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful”, the jangly pop of “You’re The One For Me, Fatty”, and the prog-rock meets Sinatra balladry of “I Know It’s Gonna Happen Someday” (famously covered by Bowie). Indeed, there isn’t a weak track on Your Arsenal. However, all of these ideas and sounds and styles are brought together on the album’s final track and superb third single “Tomorrow”. “Tomorrow” feels like it draws on all of these disparate influences and styles and Morrissey makes them all work together and makes them his own. “Tomorrow” is the summation of Your Arsenal and this phase of Morrissey’s solo career, finding the partnership between him and Whyte and Ronson working together to make one of the finest pieces of music that Morrissey ever would release.
While Morrissey had found that writing with the production team of Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley had not been a good match (only the Langer co-write “Novemner Spawned A Monster” had been released) he did decide to still work with them as producers for his next album Kill Uncle. However, Kill Uncle found Morrissey in a transition period of sorts as he left behind his early writing partnership with Stephen Street but hadn’t yet found his long-term writing partners Alain Whyte and Boz Boorer. So, for Kill Uncle, Morrissey wrote a few more songs with Langer but the bulk of the album’s music was written by Fairground Attraction’s Mark E. Nevin. Whether it is the songs themselves or Langer and Winstanley’s production (or both), much of Kill Uncle feels thin and underdeveloped, especially when compared with Morrissey’s work on Viva Hate, Bona Drag, or The Smiths and Morrissey would never work with Nevin, Langer or Winstanley again. One of the highlights though is the second single “Sing Your Life”, a percussive and rhythmic song that encourages everyone to speak, or sing, their own truth. Upon its release “Sing Your Life” became Morrissey’s least successful single to that point in his native UK peaking at only #33. However, it has become a fan favorite and something of a signature song in the years since. Some of its later popularity is due to a live version of “Sing Your Life” done at L.A.’s famed radio station KROQ near the end of the promotional cycle for Kill Uncle with his new guitarists Alain Whyte and Boz Boorer. This live version of “Sing Your Life” gives the song more of a rockabilly twist. Whyte and Boorer would become Morrissey’s new songwriting partners for his next few albums (and Boorer even longer) and this rockabilly sound would form a core part of Morrissey’s sound moving forward.
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.
Viva Hate went all the way to #1 on the UK charts and, perhaps somewhat surpringly, to #48 in the USA where the album earned support from college radio and, to a lesser degree, from MTV. Morrissey followed up the success of “Suedehead” with the second single “Everyday Is Like Sunday”. “Everyday Is Like Sunday” is a dramatic ballad based on Neville Shute’s novel On The Beach about nuclear holocaust and living in a place so boring and unimportant that nobody even bothered to nuke it. Thus, the song’s protaganist must wait for a natural death rather than a quick one. While the song is quite morbid in its literal interpretation, “Everyday Is Like Sunday” is more a song about loneliness and longing and wanting to be someplace other than where you are. It was another hit for Morrissey and peaked at #9 in the UK. Following the success of Viva Hate Morrissey wrote a handful of other songs with Stephen Street before moving on to begin a writing and working partnership with the production duo of Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley. These various writing sessions (which also saw him working with former Smiths bandmates Andy Rourke, Craig Gannon, and Mike Joyce on some tracks) eventually led to the release of three non-album singles – “The Last Of The Famous International Playboys”, “Interesting Drug”, and “Ouija Board, Ouija Board”. The first two of these, co-written with Street, reached the UK Top 10 while the latter, written with Langer and Winstanley, went Top 20 in the UK. All three songs were also hits on the US alt rock charts. Morrissey then decided to begin work on the follow-up to Viva Hate and entered the studio with Langer and Winstanley on that album. However, that project would end up going in a different direction than expected.
Following the dissolution of The Smiths, Morrissey quickly launched his solo career, forming a songwriting partnership with producer Stephen Street and heading into the studio with Street and guitarist Vini Reilly (of the Durutti Column) and drummer Andrew Paresi to begin work on Morrissey’s solo debut album Viva Hate. While Viva Hate did not exactly sound like the work of The Smiths, most notably because of the use of synthesizers, the sound of Morrissey’s solo debut also did not stray too far afield of the final Smiths’ album Strangeways, Here We Come. This makes sense both from a commercial standpoint (The Smiths were as popular as ever when they broke up) and from a creative one (Stephen Street had produced the Strangeways, Here We Come album). Indeed, the beginning of the songwriting partnership between Morrissey and Street has its origins in Johnny Marr’s decision to leave The Smiths. After Marr left the group Street sent Morrissey some demo tracks he had written as potential B-sides for the Strangeways, Here We Come singles. Morrissey liked them and decided to enlist Street as his new creative partner for his solo debut. The lead single for Viva Hate, released a month ahead of the album and Morrissey’s first solo work, was the song “Suedehead”. Musically “Suedehead” featured a guitar part written by Street and played by Reilly that was reminiscent of Johnny Marr’s style of playing without openly copying it and it gave the song a sound that was both familiar, yet different, for fans of The Smiths to associate with Morrissey as a solo artist. Lyrically, Morrissey delved into the suedehead subculture, a dressier 70’s offshoot of the skinhead movement, and explored the troubled relationship between the song’s protagonist and their suedehead lover. “Suedehead” was an immediate success, peaking at #5 in the UK, which was a higher chart position than any single released by The Smiths. This success meant that any lingering doubts about whether Morrissey could succeed without Marr were put to rest and that the release of Viva Hate was highly anticipated. Morrissey earned attention from other quarters as well (namely the Special Branch counter-terrorism unit of the London Metropolitan Police) due to the album’s closing track “Margaret On The Guillotine”, which spoke of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s death as a “wonderful dream”. Still, with the possible exception of the Special Branch (and likely Margaret Thatcher), Viva Hate was well received and much of that positive reception was built off the success of “Suedehead”.
Alternative Reality: An Alternative Music Blog 