Morrissey A-Z: "I Bury the Living"

I guess with Morrissey usually not being a "storyteller" like Nick Cave or Bowie or Kate Bush comes a certain expectation, which can be misleading.

Yes.

Also it turns out I wasn't really listening properly because I had 'oh, God he's singing something that's making people mad him, make it stop,' screaming in my head. 😳
 
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Yes.

Also it turns out I wasn't really listening properly because I had 'oh, God he's singing something that's making people mad at him, make it stop,' screaming in my head. 😳

That's what he's supposed to do. 😉

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(Central is such a mess, I wasn't able to take a decent screenshot of the front page 🙄)
 
I appreciate your views, but I already had this exact discussion. I’m all discussed out.

not really.


Feels a bit pointless to repeat everything I just said, that’s all. To summarize: I disagree with everything you just said, and if you want to know the how’s and why’s, see my discussion with Girl Afraid. A very satisfying discussion and experience it was.

So you disagree with my reply that it sometimes takes cruel words to tackle cruel subjects, to cut to the chase, and say what needs to be said ?

And you don’t agree that it’s also a valid view point to have to ‘blame the soldier’ in doing their part to perpetuate wars?
 
Can't say I really consider this one a "song," more of a late-night studio experiment that got stretched 7 minutes past its expiration date. I think it's probably the best guitar tone Jesse's ever found, but the lyrics are obnoxious and condescending and I find Morrissey's delivery sort of half-assed and disingenuous for the majority of the track. The "funny how the war goes on..." bit until the end of the song is vastly superior to the front half, but I've stated here a million times that I find Morrissey doing bombast in his old age to be cringe-inducing.
 
I usually skip this tune. It can be a little cringy to me. Personally I think the second half musically is beautiful. I am just not into the lyrics for most of the second half.
 
not really.




So you disagree with my reply that it sometimes takes cruel words to tackle cruel subjects, to cut to the chase, and say what needs to be said ?

And you don’t agree that it’s also a valid view point to have to ‘blame the soldier’ in doing their part to perpetuate wars?
I don’t know why you keep pestering me just because I don’t agree with you on a pop song. This song and the discussion around it obviously means much more to you than it does to me. I’m sorry about that, but I don’t have the energy nor the interest to drag this any further than what has already been done.
 
I don’t know why you keep pestering me just because I don’t agree with you on a pop song. This song and the discussion around it obviously means much more to you than it does to me. I’m sorry about that, but I don’t have the energy nor the interest to drag this any further than what has already been done.

It’s not pestering. You said you already addressed the topics that I brought up in my first reply to you.

But that’s not actually true, so I simply pointed out what you haven’t commented on yet.

If you don’t want to address said topics, then just say you don’t have the energy to do so, or better, don’t reply at all. But don’t say you’ve already discussed it all, when you have not.
 
Bit of a shame this one. There are some great pieces of music, some good lyrics and the concept of following a soldier's path from joining the army to his eventual death is interesting and novel. But some of the lyrics are so awful that I just can't listen to it.
The good lyrics to me include the soldier not understanding what the war is about (an obvious thing but I'd never considered this before).
I like the fact that Morrissey challenges the cliché of a soldier dying doing the job he loves. Ridiculing the phrase 'peace-making' is also fair enough.
The reflection of his parents (i.e. that their son has died for nothing) at the end is poignant and rather heart-breaking.
But many other lyrics are just dreadful. I disagree that soldiers have a hatred for human life (apart from the very odd exception) and it's clearly not the soldiers' fault that wars take place in the first place.
'Give me an order and I'll blow up your daughter' makes no sense whatsoever. Maybe 'I'll blow up someone's daughter' but not the daughter of the person giving the order. Just idiotic. The 'honour mad cannon fodder' chant is also pretty grating.
The 'funny how' section is indeed great as others have pointed out - I'd suggest maybe the best ever coda in a Morrissey song. Guitar sounds like something off Graceland. But I still can't listen to the song. As with much of Low in High School, it's surprisingly good music marred by surprisingly bad lyrics.
 
'Give me an order and I'll blow up your daughter' makes no sense whatsoever. Maybe 'I'll blow up someone's daughter' but not the daughter of the person giving the order.

There is no logical reason "Give me an order" has to be directed at the person giving the order. The soldier is saying if anyone in charge gives him an order he may end up blowing up your (the listener's) daughter. The grammar is sound. It would be like me saying "give me a pizza and I'll end up eating it"..I could be saying that to a friend or the pizza man, both make sense.
 
Bit of a shame this one. There are some great pieces of music, some good lyrics and the concept of following a soldier's path from joining the army to his eventual death is interesting and novel. But some of the lyrics are so awful that I just can't listen to it.
The good lyrics to me include the soldier not understanding what the war is about (an obvious thing but I'd never considered this before).
I like the fact that Morrissey challenges the cliché of a soldier dying doing the job he loves. Ridiculing the phrase 'peace-making' is also fair enough.
The reflection of his parents (i.e. that their son has died for nothing) at the end is poignant and rather heart-breaking.
But many other lyrics are just dreadful. I disagree that soldiers have a hatred for human life (apart from the very odd exception) and it's clearly not the soldiers' fault that wars take place in the first place.
'Give me an order and I'll blow up your daughter' makes no sense whatsoever. Maybe 'I'll blow up someone's daughter' but not the daughter of the person giving the order. Just idiotic. The 'honour mad cannon fodder' chant is also pretty grating.
The 'funny how' section is indeed great as others have pointed out - I'd suggest maybe the best ever coda in a Morrissey song. Guitar sounds like something off Graceland. But I still can't listen to the song. As with much of Low in High School, it's surprisingly good music marred by surprisingly bad lyrics.

I guess the person the narrator is talking to is ruthless enough to kill his own family members.

As @GirlAfraidWillNeverLearn pointed out - the whole thing is in character - a mini Apocalypse Now.

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i pointed out that title on here a few years ago and wondered if thats where he got the title for the song.

I think he did.

Also the tag line about freezing the blood kind of turns up in Never Again Will I Be A Twin.
 
Come to think of it - I think he even acknowledged the Smiths influence we mentioned earlier.

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There is no logical reason "Give me an order" has to be directed at the person giving the order. The soldier is saying if anyone in charge gives him an order he may end up blowing up your (the listener's) daughter. The grammar is sound. It would be like me saying "give me a pizza and I'll end up eating it"..I could be saying that to a friend or the pizza man, both make sense.

Yeah, that's how I understood it as well. Never thought it could be the daughter of the person giving the order...
It's just a figure of speech to show that the soldier would do anything if given the order.

On a linguistic sidenote, I always found it curious that he doesn't give in to the American way of pronouncing "daughter", which would in fact rhyme with "order" and "border", but sticks to the British variant, although he's fond of American spelling and the occasional AE pronunciation as well.
 
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The “funny how the war goes on” part gets a 10/10 from me. Unfortunately, the rest of the song leading up to this beautiful ending only gets about a 4/10. I often skip straight to the 5:10 point of this song, and just listen from there on out.
 
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