How could there be no posts about one of the Smiths' most controversial songs? It's not on any albums, but you can find the BBC version on Kazaa.

The Smiths got into a lot of trouble over this one because of apparent allusions to statutory rape of boys. There are certainly some lines that would prove this to be true:
A boy in the bush
is worth two in the hand
"I think I can help you get through your exams"
"And when we're in your scholarly room
who will swallow whom?"
"There's more to life than books you know
but not much more"
However, I doubt the Smiths would write a song so blatantly about something I doubt they would do in the first place. Your opinions?

Christ that is so total child abuse song. I guess not many people have heard it. It was on Hatful of Hollow compilation album, no? I got it off kazzaa.

One of my favorite Smiths songs. Check it out in Arto Saari's part for Really Sorry if you're into skateboarding.

i don't think it has anything to do with child abuse. sex definitely...

but the "boy in the bush" part to me implies a mature woman to me.

"through your exams" could be a college student, or even a teacher.

"let me get your head on the conjugal bed" didn't so much imply the head of a penis as it did a maidenhead.

personally, i think it's just another song about a guy trying to steal someone's virginity. ^_^

why would a boy imply a mature woman ?

one of my favorite smiths song too, i agree with magicfuzzball i dont see what it has to do with child abuse

figure, after puberty women grow pubic hair. if you had a mrs. robinson sort of deal, intercourse would give you 'a boy in the bush,' to make an euphemism for sex.

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what are mammary glands?

I always read it as an older woman too.

mammary glands are the organs posessed by the females of the several species of mammals which secrete a nourishing substance (occasionally referred to as "milk") by which infants feed...conjugal means virginal...

i think this song is so confusing because he switches voices between the boy and the girl/woman...

it's either about a boy and a girl who have been fooling around and want to start fucking...(they know wat hands are for, time to try out those other toys given to them by Creation)

first verse: girl/woman is explaining that she knows this boy just wants to fuck, and she's willing to fuck him

second verse: boy explains he wants to play w/ her boobies...then he'd like to fuck her in his "conjugal bed" (a bed that no one has had sex on yet)

the "boy in the bush" and "scholarly room" verses could be about a boy and girl on a "study" date...or it could be about a woman teacher "tutoring" a male student...the "boy in the bush is worth two in the hand" line sounds like a girl sick of giving hand jobs and is really eager to start fucking..."who will swallow whom" really makes the two fuckers sound like equals...two virgins who want to fuck...

it's the "crack the whip" verse and the last verse that make the song seem like it could be about a grown woman to me...these verses make it sound as though the female participant in the sexual escapade dominates the boy...BUT i think in the context of the rest of the song these verses are showing that the boy thinks he is achieving his first sexual conquest over the girl, but, as made obvious by the girl's perspective, she's the one conquesting the boy...the girl has just scored an easy lay!!! totally took advantage of her horny peer...she has the whip! also, i think that last verse is just kinda saying all we do in life is work and fuck so we can hav kids who work and fuck so they can hav kids who work and fuck...(etc, etc, ad infinitum)

sex corrupting innocence...a great image of innocence is a school child. the priests and altar boys theory is really plausible but i don't know why there would be mammary glands. what he means by mammary glands is just breasts, it's funny that he should refer to them that way, maybe it goes along with the idea of scholars/sex, or maybe it's a shot at how cold and scientific sex can sometimes be.

so i'm really not sure...

i honestly think he just mammary glands sounded funny so he used it...in fact, as someone who writes songs as a hobby, i know i might get some kind of silly line in my head that sounds good and i'll use it someday...i bet he just thought up "let me get my hands on your mammary glands" ..hey! that's pretty funny/clever...i'll just have to use that someday ...so he did

this was not the smiths most controversial song, that would be "Suffer Little Children" (if your english and northern u might understand). indeed it was controversial, but to think it is about child abuse is frankly ludicrous.

but then if it is strictly male femal how do you interpret the when we're in your scholarly room who will swallow whom?? how on earth a child abuse furor built up about this I'll never undertand??? the sun needed sonething outrageous to whinge about no doubt!!!

I think people are waaaaay reading into this, the child abuse thing I mean. Absolute nonsense! but if you read Morrissey's interviews, and are a true Smiths/Morrissey fan, you'll get it. He did in fact, have an encounter with a man, in the 1980's. He said so himself in an interview. So, the ovbious thing would be a male college student. Also, he's always suffered from loneliness and depression, and always felt like he wasn't loved. Was never good enough, but he tends to contradict himself on that score. In other words, he never felt like he could have sex with any one, but he sings about sex a lot, and he has had sex. So, just something else to gnaw on.
MaggieMichelle

Conjugal doesn't mean virginity, it means marriage. So the conjugal bed would be a husband and wife's bed.

it is true i'm just gonna stick with the older male who is married seduces a little boy and is gonna have sex with him in his and his wifes bed.
and dont say that i aint a smiths fan cause ive read nearly every interview there is i even read morrisseys fashion tips. hehe

I'm not sure how you could think this is about sex with a male of any sort, since it clearly says "let me get my hands on your mammary glands". How could a song that talks about grabbing a woman's breasts be about having sex with boys?

i think the clue to this song's meaning is right at the very start where the singer is so sexually frustrated he is willing to interperet someone asking him the time as a sexual overture. i think these sexual images are just his hormone charged fantasies, some of them hetero, some not. i don't think this song is directed at one person but just at random passers-by. the last couple of lines seem to imply that he has read about all this depravity and is now waiting for it to happen to him.

why don't you child-molesting-theory-addicts bugger off and look for elvis or something!

Incidently, any room crammed with books could be considered a scholarly room!

Holy crap...
On my way to the airport last night, my friend and I were having a conversation about the most controversial songs...and of course, this one was mentioned, so I decided to look it up on here...holy crap, this really IS controversial...

Well I have a completely different take:

As for the whole "boy in bush" thing- It's actually a twist on a proverb: "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," which means that it is better to be satisfied with something you have than to risk losing it by trying to get something better you may not succeed in getting.

When he sings the song I always hear this kind of snotty undertone, where he is bashing the whole race of "sex crazed men" who think are obsessed with fucking and dominating. He's referring to them as these naive boys who think they know it all, but secretly, he knows what they're up to. The guy is trying to hit on him, but he kinda sneers and says "oh- just you wait"

So he reverses roles. The guy who thought he'd be the sly little fucker is now pinned under the character singing, being treated like the victim, being whipped and groped, and "he deserves it"

Guys also have mammary glands as well- just not functioning (though some men do) I think he takes that one "feminine" part in men and exploits it, showing the new role the man now has.

"The scholarly room" teaching them a lesson. "Who will swallow who?" I have this perfect image of him ready to pounce on someone, licking his licks and asking "Who do you think is going to dominate who this time? Do you know?" Kinda like a teasing little voice, when all the while you know who will be in control.

As for the proverb- the song to me, as I said before, is kinda (can't find the right word) not pompous or bombastic- but you know what I mean- and I think as you listen to this song there becomes this sensory overload of so many elements- and the proverb is like the obsession the main character has with justice, that he's grabbing out for these men to punish, but he has to control himself.

and the end (my favorite part) It's the end, he's done and used his victim, taught them their lesson about fucking around with people without emotion and now he's walking right out the room laughing, giving him this clever little line about what the once sex crazed boy has just experienced "There's more to life that books you know" He had to demonstrated "But not much more" And the task was as easy as letting the boy know what it's like to be the person being used on his "conjugal bed" (first time experience being dominated)

I dunno... I like it. Morrissey is my hero, so when I hear it I just think "teach those perverts a lesson!" ha. That's just me though

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"A Boy In The Bush" is a novel by D. H. Lawrence.


"There's more to life than what you read in books."

-"Slaughterhouse Five", written by Kurt Vonnegut

LOL Again so many different views about a Smiths song. First of all, I don't know how anyone can be so blind to the fact that this song is totally full of sexual images from start to finish.

Second, I can't believe anyone thinks it's about molestation of boys by men?! Hello?! "Let me get my hands on your mammary glands" - simply put, let me grab your breasts! ;) And "a boy in the bush is worth two in the hand" is the most hilarious and also the most heteroerotic (so to speak) line ever! LOL There's a reference to D.H.Lawrence (who wrote a lot about sex himself, BTW), and to the proverb "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush". If you can't spot the 'dirst' joke, here, well... I guess you are really innocent. LOL "Bush' - vagina, of course. Putting the "boy" in the "bush" is much better than having it in your hand... I'm sure it is LOL Simply put, enough masturbation, let's have real sex! Someone is definitely female there, but whether a female is speaking to a male or whether a male is speaking to a female (they might also be talkign to each other) is not clear. Especially since even the title "handsome devil" does NOT have to refer to a male. A woman can be called "handsome" as well. And Morrissey once said that he knew many men who could be called "pretty" and many women who could be called "handsome".
Then there's also the "who will swallow whom" line which could imply two men...
And with whip,. you get a bit of S&M as well LOL

Simply put, this is a very playful and hilarious song which combines all sorts of blatant sexual images, and includes gender switching, and some ambivalence.. which is all perfectly in tune with Morrissey's views on sexualit, which he has professed many times: gender barriers should be broken, people should not be cathegorized by gender, or by words such as "heterossexual", "homosexual", "bisexual", everyone has the same sexual needs, therefore you can only be "sexual".

And no, I don't think anyone in the song is a child. I don't think the song is about any kind of abuse or that it should be controversial at all. In Morrissey's words: " And the message of the song is to forget the cultivation of the brain and to concentrate on the cultivation of the body. A boy in the bush... is addressed to a scholar. There's more to life than books you know, but not much more - that is the essence of the song..." The song really celebrates sexuality.

As for Morrissey's past sexual experiences that someone mentioned... yep, he said ina 1992 Observer interview "'One of my physical encounters was with a man. That was 10 years ago. It was just a very brief, absurd and amusing moment.'It wasn't love. I have never experienced that.' Then he was asked if he had slept with women, and said "Yes". He mentioned in another interview that he lost his virginity at 12 or 13, and a few times in other interviews he mentioned that at the time before he formed The Smiths he had "some not very good sex" but never an actual "relationship", whatever that means. He said once that he never "spent the night in a loving way with someon". "A series of very blunt, thankfully brief and horrendous experiences made me decide upon abstraining." (Uncut, 1984)

There's no way, though, that a college student, male or female, would be an 'obvious' explanation, for the simple reason that Morrissey never went to college. He left secondary school at the age of 16, and went on to have some lousy jobs which he all quit, then he went on a dole, hang out with people with the Manchester punk rock scene, and sang with a few punk rock bands, never achieving any success, until 1982. He was considered an eccentric, "Steve the Nutter", and wasn't very sociable. All in all, he wasn't likely to meet college students.

I think you can jsut forget about any autobiographical interpretations here. And they're not needed for this one.

...the message of the song is to forget the cultivation of the brain and to conentrate on the cultivation of the body.'A boy in the bush...' is addressed to the scholar. There's more to life than books you know but not much more - that is the essence of the song. So you can take it and stick it in an article about child-molesting and it will make absolutely perfect sense. But you can do that with anyboy. You can do that with Abba."
-Morrissey