There Is a Light That Never Goes Out

Aaaaah why does everyone always make everything to do with the Smiths about sexuality? As someone has quoted Morrissey said we are all just sexual, the prefix is irrelevant. Can't be bothered to go on arguing about that though. Additionally it is plausible the narrator is female.

Enolf's post above I think makes a good point. Sometimes its nice to just go for a drive to clear your head or whatever. Has noone else had an argument with parents or whatever and just gone out and tried to escape life for a bit? Hence "Take me out, tonight." I think the song is about him feeling safe in the car, whilst not wanting to face his demons at home. The line "it's their home and I'm welcome no more" seems to disprove it's a metaphor for the home being life. Perhaps he could have been chucked out for being gay, but the reason is irrelevant really.

It's also pretty obvious he has a burning desire for the other person. He yearns for them to take him out, and that they do perhaps feeds his desire for the other person to feel something for him also. The fantastic line "And in a darkened underpass I thought oh god my chance has come at last, but then a strange fear gripped me and I just couldn't ask" I can just associate with so much. Young male, fancies girl like hell. You want to ask them out so badly, an opportunity comes up but you bottle it, paranoid about rejection, and regret it hugely.

The people coming up with suicide being another metaphor I think are overanalysing it. I interpret it as he has this huge love for the other person. They are friends, he obviously wants more but is too afraid to ask. His life is a mess as he can't go home, and feels so much pent up passion for the other person he sees dieing together as a way to spend eternity together and escape his problems. "To die by your side would be such a heavenly way to die" is also sort of building up this other person as someone he almost worships, like just to die next to them would somehow be something to be proud of ("the pleasure, the privilege is mine" also). Additionally that he isn’t welcome at home perhaps intensifies his feelings for the other person and his desire to be with them where nothing else matters.

The song just reminds me so much of the feelings when you want someone really badly and are trying to ask them out; feelings of confusion, pressure, nervousness, marvel at their beauty and a resulting feeling of inadequacy in comparison, fear of rejection, but then a sort of high, head spinning excitement, from the situation. Your feelings for them become hugely intense and seem to consume your thoughts. To be in a car with someone you felt like that for would be the sort of moment you’d think I could just die now (so is it literally meaning to die would be heavenly, as in the above paragraph, or just symbolic? I think it‘s both). You can imagine the nerves as you go to ask them out but can’t do it.

To me this song is just so emotive and meaningful. It has a sort of sorrow but also love, beauty, morbid ness and dark humour. What I think is so ingenious about the song is that the situation gives such a great context for the emotions it described and evoked. As with most of The Smith’s music it’s deliberately quite vague so you can interpret it how you like. Thinking what Morrissey actually wrote the lyrics about is very interesting.