MORRISSEY WATCH: ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT
Uncle Moz has gone all Robert Cohn on us again.
Last Friday on Letterman, he performed his new song "That's How People Grow Up," an intended number for his upcoming 800th Greatest Hits package. Naturally, this puts a lot of pressure on the poor little pop jangle, as it has to stand on its own two legs next to the tried and true singles that were just written to be songs in the catalogue, not for something grander than that.
I hate to point out that "People Grow Up" has ankles the size of toothpicks and they threaten to snap.
Have you watched/listened? It's not a bad song by any means. A tad musically flaccid, and the yowling Kristeen Young trying to be Morrissey's new Ludus while pretending she's Björk really needs to go. But it's all right.
The problem is it sounds like a song left on the floor when they were done cutting Ringleader of the Tormentors. Its lyrics evoke new love coming late in life, death, being tired, etc. It's the themes he was working on that most excellent album, and there is a feeling of been there, done that hanging around "That's How People Grow Up." The needle has gotten stuck in the groove yet again.
Not that we haven't seen this before. Even back in the Smiths, Morrissey's inbetweener stuff often felt like self-cannibalizing. We also could have probably predicted that the car was stalling when the final singles off of Ringleader showed up with so many live tracks as B-sides. That happened once before, for the second single of Southpaw Grammar
Current Soundtrack: various Colourfield tracks ("Windmills of Your Mind," "Sorry," "Yours Sincerely," "Hammond Song," "Take")
Current Mood: suspicious 
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All text (c) 2007 Jamie S. Rich
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