Heaven Knows They're Not So Miserable Now

I am a recovering music snob.

That’s right: I used to look down on people with quote-unquote “atrocious” tastes in music, laugh out loud whenever someone plays a song by Scorpions, Creed, Owl City, or Urban Dub, and actively make fun of them just in case my mockery wasn’t clear enough. Worse, I used to despise people who pretend to like music that I also like, convinced that they like it only because it makes them seem cool.

But I generally don’t do any of these things anymore. I’ve pretty much outgrown music snobbery in the same way I’ve outgrown pulling the pigtails of girls that I like. And I no longer accuse people of merely “pretending” to like music that I like earnestly. But I do make one exception, which, honest to God, has absolutely nothing to do with music snobbery. I am 99.9 percent sure that a lot of people pretend to like The Smiths. And this bothers me profoundly.

The Smiths have produced a cult following that survives to this day – more than twenty years after their last record – out of the sheer beauty and clarity with which they have expressed sadness and loneliness. All rock historians point to this fact when explaining the band’s success and timeless popularity. They almost certainly make a great point. The history of popular music is littered with sad songs: artists like ABBA, The Carpenters, Air Supply, Wham!, Madonna, and virtually half of the rock scene today have all recorded at least three sad songs in their careers. But that doesn’t explain why millions of people like (I mean, pretend to like) The Smiths.

There are sad songs, and then there are Smiths songs. “Sad” songs are about how some girl left you and now you don’t know what to do with yourself. Smiths songs are about wishing you had a girl who can actually leave you because all you can think of is what to do with yourself.

In “Unloveable”, Morrissey sings: “I know I’m unloveable, you don’t have to tell me…If I seem a little strange, that’s because I am.” In “Girl Afraid”, rejection is not even dramatic; just a cold statement of facts: “But she doesn’t even like me…and I know because she said so.” And in their mope-tastic tour de force “I Know it’s Over”, Morrissey doesn’t hold anything back:

“I know it’s over
and it never even began
but in my heart, it was so real
and you even spoke to me and said:

‘If you’re so funny, then why are you on your own tonight?
If you’re so clever, then why are you on your own tonight?
I know…cause tonight is like any other night
That’s why you’re on your own tonight’”

Of all the mildly popular bands in the history of pop, only The Smiths have made music out of the most pathetic human circumstances. It genuinely seems like Morrissey knows exactly how I feel. The idea that millions of other people around the world are exactly like me is just completely implausible. And that is why I think at least half of those millions have got to be posers.

There can’t possibly be millions of people who can relate to Smiths songs in a world where you will find a loving couple in literally every square foot of any given street in any random city, where Valentine’s Day is still a big deal and not an embarrassing farce of an event, where a movie like “(500) Days of Summer” gets lauded by everyone for its supposed “realism” when the fucking protagonist meets a girl (whose name is Autumn!) at a job interview right before the movie ends. And that guy can’t possibly relate to The Smiths, no matter how many times he plays “Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want”. If you have slept with Zooey Deschanel, you should just get over yourself and listen to Katy Perry.

The Smiths photo from last.fm