Morrissey A-Z: "Disappointed"

Talking about quality control I think when you've gone through the process of penning and recording a song and you've lived with it for a while, your perception of it might not correlate with everyone else's perception. Just because you're a good artist it doesn't necessarily follow that you're a good judge of what your strengths and weaknesses are, and what it is that other people like in you. I'm sure most of us would be surprised to be made aware of what other people find admirable in us when we felt it was the total opposite that they wanted. Having a talent doesn't necessarily make you a better judge of where your best talents lie. The things you love about yourself, very seldom agree with what others love about you.
too true,most actors will never watch their work because they see too many flaws,once a track is finished then thats it,maybe thats when M sees the flaws in the final product.
 
To be fair, a lot of his best material has ended up on b-sides, even quite recently. His criteria for evaluating his own music seem to be different to the rest of us.
With the Smiths, almost everything was brilliant, so the B-sides were bound to be, too.
Post-Smiths (well since Bona Drag) this hasn't been the case.
He's simply made a lot of mistakes in his song selections - the re-issues have shown that he's realised this.
With Maladjusted for example, not only has he realised that Roy's Keen shouldn't have been a single, he's taken it off the re-issued album completely.
So it's not that he's got different criteria - he's just apparently not very good at judging the quality of his songs at the time of their release.
 
With the Smiths, almost everything was brilliant, so the B-sides were bound to be, too.
Post-Smiths (well since Bona Drag) this hasn't been the case.
He's simply made a lot of mistakes in his song selections - the re-issues have shown that he's realised this.
With Maladjusted for example, not only has he realised that Roy's Keen shouldn't have been a single, he's taken it off the re-issued album completely.
So it's not that he's got different criteria - he's just apparently not very good at judging the quality of his songs at the time of their release.
That's sometimes true, but not in this case. He knew how good the sessions were for Sister, I'm a Poet, Disappointed and Will Never Marry and immediately boasted about them to the press. They were simply recorded too late to make the album.

I agree that Roy's Keen was a mistake, but ironically the same thing happened with the b-sides as with Disappointed. A real shame that Lost and The Edges are No Longer Parallel were again recorded too late to make Maladjusted.

Sometimes, of course, he feels that the b-side just doesn't fit the vibe of an album. Other times, as you've said, he simply makes an error of judgement.
 
That's sometimes true, but not in this case. He knew how good the sessions were for Sister, I'm a Poet, Disappointed and Will Never Marry and immediately boasted about them to the press. They were simply recorded too late to make the album.

I agree that Roy's Keen was a mistake, but ironically the same thing happened with the b-sides as with Disappointed. A real shame that Lost and The Edges are No Longer Parallel were again recorded too late to make Maladjusted.

Sometimes, of course, he feels that the b-side just doesn't fit the vibe of an album. Other times, as you've said, he simply makes an error of judgement.
Yep, as I mentioned though, the problem is more of a post-Bona Drag era issue. I rank the Bona Drag/Stephen Street era alongside The Smiths' in that almost all of the songs were brilliant, so B-sides to singles would inevitably be brilliant too (with only a couple of exceptions).
Unlike Marr, Street still speaks positively about Morrissey so maybe a chance they could work together again at some point.
 
The first time I heard this song I was disappointed (no pun intended), exactly because it just sounded like a lazy retread of 'How Soon is Now'. I've grown to appreciate it a lot, but that's almost entirely down to the lyrics/vocal performance. The drum beat is quite groovy, but the basic chords really aren't doing anything special at all here, and those tremolo guitar effects should probably have been left off. Unless invoking the ghost of The Smiths was a deliberate intention by Morrissey, for some reason?
When I first heard "Disappointed," I thought it was absolutely intentional. Who knows. The point of inspiration (to put it generously) is very clearly "How Soon is Now?" and "Shoplifters" but the production is so un-atmospheric that it becomes its own thing. A wonderful song regardless, wish he played this one every single show.
 
He knew how good the sessions were for Sister, I'm a Poet, Disappointed and Will Never Marry and immediately boasted about them to the press. They were simply recorded too late to make the album.
I think it was perfectly reasonable at the time to simply leave them as B-sides. Morrissey, Street and his 'Viva Hate' collaborators already had one surprisingly strong album behind them, and there wasn't any indication they wouldn't move onto an even more second successful album. It's only in retrospect we can see the Good Ship Moz was about to crash into the rocks with numerous line-up and producer changes, where relatively throwaway tracks like these would suddenly be gold dust.
 
It’s a funnier lyric for sure if the music is an intentional nod to the ghost of the smiths
 
Tags
morrissey a-z
Back
Top Bottom