Southpaw/I'm Not Sorry

If you say you're thinking of having a kid together on the Isle of Lewis & my Great Aunts hear about it AT ANY POINT - you are most definitely married. 😁
Yeah, but he said that at least ten years after it happened.
 
That would make no difference to them. All attempts to correct them would fail.
Sounds like trying to have a reasonable discussion on here...
 
In old Scots common law you'd be married if you were a known couple - I've picked up the idea from my more old-fashioned island relatives. Some of my co-habiting friends get irate about it. 🙃

So hardly relevant in Morrissey's, or Tina's case then, given neither are of Scottish descent.
 
So hardly relevant in Morrissey's, or Tina's case then, given neither are of Scottish descent.

I was meaning that's why I didn't care that Silent had said married instead of planning a kid with. It makes no real difference to me.
 
Which is?
Well, I'm probably going to regret posting this. This interpretation is exclusively based on my associations and nothing else, but I can't read it in any other way.

To me the lyrics are basically him speaking either to himself or a man close to him, or both, it doesn't matter who exactly the addressee is.
The childhood imagery evokes memories of a happier, simpler time but what really stuck out to me is the "a sick boy must be treated" line. Boyhood for him was also a time when homosexuality was still often seen as a sickness. Could also refer to something else, he certainly felt "sick" for just being "different" in general, but since homosexuality is often an underlying theme in his work, it was the first thing that came to my mind regarding that line.
So his pals abandon him eventually because of that "sickness"/being different and the only safe harbour is at home with Ma, which leads to a life of isolation.

I think the girl of his dreams is more a figure of speech. A metaphor for an ideal that every man is supposed to strive for but that girl could be anything or anyone. He just has to realise that. "There is something that you should know"... that "thing" you've been looking for is here right before you but you can't see it.
I think considering the timeframe and the context of other songs on Southpaw Grammar and, of course the title, it also works as a kind of pre-/mid-break up song. Very fitting that he described it as a song
that belonged "only to that moment in 1995, and none other".

It's one of my favourite songs (of Morrissey or any other band or artist). It just contains so much weight and emotion and the lyrics manage to convey this with very little effort. The picture it paints in my head is so vivid and clear, but it's sort of hard to describe.
That's one of Morrissey's biggest strengths in my opinion - to tell a whole life with just a bare minimum of words.

What really kills it for me is the "Help me" towards the end.
 
Well, I'm probably going to regret posting this. This interpretation is exclusively based on my associations and nothing else, but I can't read it in any other way.

To me the lyrics are basically him speaking either to himself or a man close to him, or both, it doesn't matter who exactly the addressee is.
The childhood imagery evokes memories of a happier, simpler time but what really stuck out to me is the "a sick boy must be treated" line. Boyhood for him was also a time when homosexuality was still often seen as a sickness. Could also refer to something else, he certainly felt "sick" for just being "different" in general, but since homosexuality is often an underlying theme in his work, it was the first thing that came to my mind regarding that line.
So his pals abandon him eventually because of that "sickness"/being different and the only safe harbour is at home with Ma, which leads to a life of isolation.

I think the girl of his dreams is more a figure of speech. A metaphor for an ideal that every man is supposed to strive for but that girl could be anything or anyone. He just has to realise that. "There is something that you should know"... that "thing" you've been looking for is here right before you but you can't see it.
I think considering the timeframe and the context of other songs on Southpaw Grammar and, of course the title, it also works as a kind of pre-/mid-break up song. Very fitting that he described it as a song
that belonged "only to that moment in 1995, and none other".

It's one of my favourite songs (of Morrissey or any other band or artist). It just contains so much weight and emotion and the lyrics manage to convey this with very little effort. The picture it paints in my head is so vivid and clear, but it's sort of hard to describe.
That's one of Morrissey's biggest strengths in my opinion - to tell a whole life with just a bare minimum of words.

What really kills it for me is the "Help me" towards the end.

I think that sounds plausible.

It wouldn't mean that the pick up in I'm not sorry wasn't connected though. He could be admitting the 'ideal' wasn't for him.
 
I think that sounds plausible.

It wouldn't mean that the pick up in I'm not sorry wasn't connected though. He could be admitting the 'ideal' wasn't for him.
Sure.
But I don't believe they are connected. I think the line in I'm Not Sorry is supposed to be read literally.

He doesn't dream about anyone except himself.
 
Well, I'm probably going to regret posting this. This interpretation is exclusively based on my associations and nothing else, but I can't read it in any other way.

To me the lyrics are basically him speaking either to himself or a man close to him, or both, it doesn't matter who exactly the addressee is.
The childhood imagery evokes memories of a happier, simpler time but what really stuck out to me is the "a sick boy must be treated" line. Boyhood for him was also a time when homosexuality was still often seen as a sickness. Could also refer to something else, he certainly felt "sick" for just being "different" in general, but since homosexuality is often an underlying theme in his work, it was the first thing that came to my mind regarding that line.
So his pals abandon him eventually because of that "sickness"/being different and the only safe harbour is at home with Ma, which leads to a life of isolation.

I think the girl of his dreams is more a figure of speech. A metaphor for an ideal that every man is supposed to strive for but that girl could be anything or anyone. He just has to realise that. "There is something that you should know"... that "thing" you've been looking for is here right before you but you can't see it.
I think considering the timeframe and the context of other songs on Southpaw Grammar and, of course the title, it also works as a kind of pre-/mid-break up song. Very fitting that he described it as a song
that belonged "only to that moment in 1995, and none other".

It's one of my favourite songs (of Morrissey or any other band or artist). It just contains so much weight and emotion and the lyrics manage to convey this with very little effort. The picture it paints in my head is so vivid and clear, but it's sort of hard to describe.
That's one of Morrissey's biggest strengths in my opinion - to tell a whole life with just a bare minimum of words.

What really kills it for me is the "Help me" towards the end.
This is a pretty good interpretation, IMHO, being that 'Southpaw' is slang for being left handed, which is slang for being gay. Up until this point in his career Morissey had sung mostly about heterosexual disappointment and homosexual longing.

This period of time when we include Boxers especially songs like 'Swallow On My Neck' the shift lyrically seemed to be more about the homosexual experience and hasn't really changed since.
 
This is a pretty good interpretation, IMHO, being that 'Southpaw' is slang for being left handed, which is slang for being gay. Up until this point in his career Morissey had sung mostly about heterosexual disappointment and homosexual longing.

This period of time when we include Boxers especially songs like 'Swallow On My Neck' the shift lyrically seemed to be more about the homosexual experience and hasn't really changed since.

There's the bit in his autobiography (I think) when he's 14 & his best friend of 10 years dumps him forever for 'liking queer things' - but I wonder if he really dumped him for being queer.

Which would be brutal.

@GirlAfraidWillNeverLearn ???
 
This is a pretty good interpretation, IMHO, being that 'Southpaw' is slang for being left handed, which is slang for being gay. Up until this point in his career Morissey had sung mostly about heterosexual disappointment and homosexual longing.

This period of time when we include Boxers especially songs like 'Swallow On My Neck' the shift lyrically seemed to be more about the homosexual experience and hasn't really changed since.
Only if you choose to interpret things that way, Morrissey sings in a way that can be interpreted several different ways, all of them are plausible, it depends what you deep down want to hear.
 
Only if you choose to interpret things that way, Morrissey sings in a way that can be interpreted several different ways, all of them are plausible, it depends what you deep down want to hear.

Yeah. He would agree that your own interpretation matters the most. (There's a quote but I can't find it!)

It's just fun speculating about what he might have been thinking about.
 
Only if you choose to interpret things that way, Morrissey sings in a way that can be interpreted several different ways, all of them are plausible, it depends what you deep down want to hear.
Yes correct and that is my interpretation. Better now?
 
This is a pretty good interpretation, IMHO, being that 'Southpaw' is slang for being left handed, which is slang for being gay.
Yes, I should have made it clearer, but that's what I meant by mentioning the title as well. Another take on the "girl" is that it's common among gay guys to call each other nicknames that are traditionally used for females. So the girl of his dreams that's here sad and all alone might as well be a guy.

Up until this point in his career Morissey had sung mostly about heterosexual disappointment and homosexual longing.

This period of time when we include Boxers especially songs like 'Swallow On My Neck' the shift lyrically seemed to be more about the homosexual experience and hasn't really changed since.
I agree.

It's really interesting how from the mid 90s on, and especially on Southpaw Grammar, the focus shifted from romanticising, almost idealising homosexual relationships/experiences to writing about everyday experiences like breakfast in bed and fights about the music volume. Seems almost like a kind of disillusionment after decades of longing and yearning.
 
Last edited:
There's the bit in his autobiography (I think) when he's 14 & his best friend of 10 years dumps him forever for 'liking queer things' - but I wonder if he really dumped him for being queer.

Which would be brutal.

@GirlAfraidWillNeverLearn ???
Yes. Anthony Morris, who also "told me the reason why girls fluttered around me at St Wilfrid’s, and what it was that they wanted. He told me this because I didn’t know, and even when I knew, I was less interested than when I didn’t know. I had no idea that it was anything other than a mere spout."

The way I understood it they weren't best friends anymore when Anthony told him "You like all those queers, don’t you?", but I think that's exactly what he meant. Morrissey says he thought it was about the bands he liked, but for many people liking queer things and being queer is the same thing (which is often true of course).

When I first read that part I made a connection to You've Got Everything Now and I wonder if it was inspired by that failed friendship.

"A friendship sadly lost?
well, this is true
and yet, it's false"

The song seems to be about that awkward experience of meeting someone you knew at school and that inevitable measuring contest where they talk about their achievements and their beautiful spouse and kids and the fancy car they just bought. Morrissey of course can't see the sense of any of that except the car and questions whether losing that friend was really a bad thing, seeing how they've turned out.
 
Back
Top Bottom