“Lord knows it would be the first time...”

I don’t like to make bold, absolute statements, especially when it comes to art and music. That doesn’t mean that I don’t do it, mind you, just that I don’t like to do it and I know I shouldn’t. Not because it makes me seem like an arrogant prick, because let’s face it kids, if that was something that really concerned me I would be a very different person. No, the reason why I consciously try not to make statements like that is because there are things I don’t know, and no sooner will I say something like “The Smiths made the saddest music in the history of rock,” than some new information will come along to prove me wrong. That’s how the universe works.

That said, The Smiths made the saddest music in the history of rock, and I will fight anyone who says different.

I came late to The Smiths. They broke up just a few months after my fifth birthday, but that’s sort of beside the point; I always come late to music. I didn’t really start listening to music until I went to college, and even then I made it through three semesters before I ever listened to a Bob Dylan record all the way through. I turned 21 before I heard Rubber Soul for the first time. It is in no way shape or form an exaggeration to say that music has been one of the two or three saving graces in my life. It’s just a saving grace that happened to show up kind of late in the game. Still, no zealot like a convert. These days I spend as much money on music as I do on food.

Most of my favorite bands I found on my own, just by looking around. The Smiths came to me through someone else. Of that, the less said the better, I think, but it was well-timed, at least. During one of the darkest periods in my life, here was a band that made me feel-- in that strange way that only music can-- like I was not alone.

The Smiths were such an odd group. They were witty and literary and of course, deeply British, and like any great band they could be (and have always been to me) quite uplifting. The Queen is Dead is a transcendent experience even today. But behind the irony and the politics and the tongue-in-cheek humor, there was a persistent melancholy that never went away. “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” is actually kind of a funny song, but it’s still called “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”, y’know? You get the feeling listening to their records that whatever else has happened in their lives, here are a group of people that are broken and can never be made whole again. There are bands that make me want to hug myself, but very few that make me want to hug them. If I could step through my stereo into that recording studio and just hold Johnny Marr and Morrissey while they cried it out, I would.

And I know that may sound depressing as hell, but sometimes you need music like that. Sometimes music has to be sad, for the same reason we wear black to a funeral. We could wear bright colors and sing happy songs to make ourselves feel better, but sometimes we’re not supposed to. It’s important for people to express their pain, and if they can make or experience art in the process, mazel tov. Their sadness is not what made The Smiths great, but it is part of what made (and still makes) them so important to so many people.

For me-- and for a lot of fans-- the most perfect of all Smiths song is “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want”. Morrissey himself has said more than once that it’s the finest thing the band ever did. It’s a very short song, only a minute and fifty-one seconds, but a masterpiece all the same. It is at once both heartrending and hopeful, upbeat and yet impossibly sad. Morrissey’s crooning voice bemoans his past and pleads for a brighter future with the same breath.

Good times for a change
See the luck I’ve had
Can make a good man
Turn bad

So please please please
Let me let me let me
Let me get what I want
This time

Haven’t had a dream in a long time
See the life I’ve had
Can make a good man bad

So for once in my life
Let me get what I want
Lord knows it would be the first time
Lord knows it would be the first time

I almost cried the first time I heard that. For me, the sorrow of the song itself was compounded by its bitterly optimistic plea. So for once in my life/Let me get what I want. At the time, I believed that I had gotten what I wanted already, and had had it taken from me. And, as is the nature of heartbreak, I believed that things would never be right again, that I could never again hope for brighter times. Needless to say, I was wrong.

Brighter times are always possible. I believe that. The thing to remember is, we can come back from almost anything if we try hard enough. I had a simple goal, and that was to escape, and I did that. It took me months and years longer than I thought it would, and I was hurt horribly along the way, more than once. By myself as much as anyone. But all that doesn’t matter anymore. This is a new start and we mustn’t worry about such things.

The luck I’ve had, the life I’ve had, I never really wanted. I did the best I could and I made it through, and now, finally, I have started my life over. The past is never dead, but it can’t hurt me anymore if I don’t let it. If I’m bitter, I’m bitterly optimistic, which is not so bad as far as it goes.

Good times, for a change.

Please, please, please. Let me get what I want this time.