M*rrissey 'Everyday Is Like Sunday'

Chart Peak: 9

YouTube

Two Now appearances from as many solo singles for the Mozzer there, and that's already more than the Smiths managed in their entire career. For good measure, this charted higher than any Smiths single had at the time, although a re-release of 'The Charming Man' finally peaked at 8 in 1992.

There are some songs I don't look forward to writing about because I don't want to to make myself listen to them. There are others I don't look forward to writing about because I doubt my ability to add anything to the sum of human knowledge about them, and this falls firmly into the latter category. What I can tell you is that I was obviously not particularly interested in this song when I was ten years old, but I do clearly remember my Dad taping the video from the telly (presumably the Chart Show) and seeing it quite a few times. In fact, the video probably made more impression on me at the time than the song, because it looks so different from just about any other pop video you would see back then: in 1988, even The Wedding Present were making videos that looked like this. It was probably one of the first times I saw a depiction of vegetarianism too, although I didn't take it up myself for another twenty years. Had I but realised, my younger self would probably have been quite impressed by all the people who are buying the single itself in the video.

Curiously, the disc label attributes the writing credit to M*rrissey; the music was of course written by Stephen Street, who also produces and plays bass. It's not entirely surprising that the relationship between M*rrissey and Street ended acrimoniously (and remains so: only a couple of weeks ago lawyers were called in to stop Street playing a demo track in a radio documentary. With this and the singles either side of it, though, it's a pity Street doesn't seem to have pursued his songwriting career any further. The other players on this single are Vini Reilly of the Durrutti Column on those fascinating ringing guitars, and drummer Andrew Paresi, who also used to do those Splicer's Disease sketches on Loose Ends. Between them they conjure exactly the gloomy atmosphere required by the lyric, and yet there's a certain beauty that stops this being purely depressing. Perhaps there's a tinge of affection in there too, and not only because a man who's made a career of being miserable can't afford to live in a world without misery.

Also appearing on: Now 11, 14
Available on: the internet, probably.