Record Collecting for Girls: Unleashing Your Inner Music Nerd, One Album at a Time

by Courtney E. Smith

  Before I delve further into how I think the music of the Smiths has been ruining the minds of men, please allow me to point out that this is a conversation specifically about men who like the Smiths too much. I don't mean the casual fan or person in the throes of heartbreak, but your everyday Smiths-loving enthusiast.

  The Smiths were a group of working-class boys (singer Stephen Patrick Morrissey and guitarist Johnny Marr, along with drummer Mike Joyce and bassist Andy Rourke) who grew up in Northern England and formed their band in 1982, at the height of Thatcher's Conservative rule over the country and during a period of widespread unemployment. While there was a general sense of discontent among the youth of the country, Morrissey suffered his own particular kind of anguish. As an intellectual, a vegetarian, and a man questioning his sexuality, he was an outsider in Manchester. I find that people who actually share his background take a different view of Morrissey's lyrics, so my theories generally only apply to American Smiths fans. (The British fanatics are still a bit pathetic, but at least many have a firsthand understanding of the malaise surrounding Morrissey in his youth.)

  Men who are afflicted by the Smiths Syndrome tend to embody his angst in an unfortunate way, which is made all the worse if they also decide to rock his '80s haircut (always dire). The cursory Smiths listener who owns some albums and enjoys the band is a dude I keep one eye on if we date, but I won't write him off immediately. The overzealous Smiths fan, however, will never ever be my boyfriend. He is the sort who travels long distances to see Morrissey in concert, knowing that he's as likely to cancel as he is to play the show. This ultra-fan has probably taken a trip to Manchester specifically to visit the band's childhood homes and pubs they may have played in and will show you pictures. He embodies the particular brand of emotional wreck that I can't deal with.

  You might feel the same about another, equally troublesome, band. My friend Sara's deal-breaker band is the Jesus Lizard. Sara loves the Jesus Lizard, but has said that after years of dating guys who liked the band as much as she does, she realized they were all the same type of guy: druggies who wanted to be the guys in the Jesus Lizard but lacked the ambition to start their own band.

  I have more of a love/hate relationship with the Smiths. Sometimes their songs are just perfect for a foul mood or a clever moment. Sometimes they exasperate me to the point where I consider poking out my own eardrums with a Q-Tip. If you think on it long enough, you'll probably find that you have your own points of contention with guys who like Pulp or Leonard Cohen or Nick Cave. It doesn't mean you don't like those artists. It just means those guys are in your emotional no-fly zone.

  THE HORRIFYING POETRY OF LYRICS

  If you ask a man who his favorite musicians are and he starts naming people you don't know well, the first thing to do is check out their songs, right? I urge you to listen to the lyrics closely; they can be telling. Most guys I know claim to listen more for the music than the words, but if they really love an artist, you can bet they'll know the lyrics sheets up, down, backwards, and inside out. So, if you listen to someone's favorite music and hear references to gruesome murders, painful breakups, and intense feelings of isolation, then you would presume this man is a bit of a sad bastard, would you not?

  Every obsessive Smiths fan I've ever met was also obsessed with serial killers. Usually there is a specific serial-killer story that captures his attention above and beyond the others, but he inevitably knows the histories of all the major players. From "Suffer Little Children" and "Cemetry Gates" to the references in "Reel Around the Fountain," the Smiths don't shy away from writing songs about murder and other grisly deeds. This gruesome interest springs from Morrissey's own fascination with the Moors murders, in which two sociopaths abducted and killed kids from his childhood neighborhood in Manchester. It is the creepiest preoccupation a Smiths fan can have and is oddly universal among them. I'd rather not date someone who's going to make me watch Son of Sam documentaries. If you disagree with my disdain of this particular quirk because you also have an appetite for the morbid, we can chalk it up to a difference in taste.*

  Some of the Smiths' songs might give you pause about the sexual orientation of a dude—as they should. When it comes to carnal proclivities, the Smiths are a haven in the storm for the undecided. The often gender-neutral and almost always snide lyrics in Smiths songs give those with questions about their sexuality room to breathe by taking the spotlight off their bi-curious nature and putting it instead on your closed-minded notions of acceptable behavior. They make listeners feel that someone empathizes with their fickleness. I think it's fair to want to know whether your boyfriend likes boys before you jump in the relationship pool with him.

  If ever sexual ambiguity in music took a true form (since we all know David Bowie was faking it for the press), it was in Steven Patrick Morrissey. He was never much of a social butterfly, but upon his entry into the public arena, UK music magazine NME began quizzing him about his sexual preferences. And with good reason: for someone who wrote so many songs about being brokenhearted, he wasn't known to go out on many dates. He famously declared his asexuality in the '80s and presented himself to his fans as an untouchable pop star who was (like Jesus) above sexual idolization. Although it's now well accepted that he's gay, he continues to evade the question. And all along he has taunted the world by playing the pronoun game with his song lyrics (inserting a he where you expect a she, and vice versa).

  I'm equally disinterested in the guys who have realized that Morrissey's public discussion of his celibacy made the world infatuated with him as a potential conquest. There will always be people who are drawn to what they can't have. I know I was when I was in my twenties. But as I get older and wiser, the idea of chasing the ungettable-get loses its charm. The split second when straight guys realize that feigning disinterest in sex makes them more attractive to women and thus begin using it as a way to get laid is the exact instant they turn into douche bags on par with that moron who invented The Game.

  Equally problematic in my mind: guys who subscribe to the idea that they are too delicate for a relationship. Much of the Smiths' catalog gives lonely boys without much experience in love a license to tell themselves that they choose to be alone, and they wear their solitude as a badge of sensitivity; they are just too special for the trials and tribulations of a real romance. In actuality, they should get out and date so they're not spending the best years of their lives as emotional illiterates.

  Case in point: A close friend of mine is a recovering Smiths devotee. He was more introverted when we were in college and had a big crush on the girlfriend of one of his housemates. She idolized the Cure, so you know already the crush was doomed to fail—that much gloom in one relationship simply creates a black hole. His housemate and the girlfriend had a tumultuous relationship and tended to break up and get back together often. My Smiths-loving friend moped around for a solid year, complaining widely that he was sure this girl would be happier with him if she would just give him a chance. We had endless discussions about whether he should confess his love to her. The result was heartbreaking but expected: he didn't do anything and dropped her as friend because it hurt too much. I still think this stupidity is a direct result of the brainwashing that comes with excessively listening to "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" and "Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want." The protagonist almost never gets the girl in Smiths songs (though he does sometimes get the boy). Half the time he realizes he doesn't even want the girl (see "Pretty Girls Make Graves" or "Girlfriend in a Coma"). My Smiths-loving friend never actually made a move, but he was still utterly heartbroken because rejection was the only imaginable outcome in his mind.

  Given the circumstances, the alternative was for him to declare his unbidden love to her. We know how that story goes: Shy guy suddenly opens up and is stunned when the girl, having been given no prior indication that he liked her in that way, doesn't quite know how to react and is flustered (and maybe a little freaked out) by his expectation th
at they'll suddenly be recreating the movie-script ending to a Woody Allen comedy. The third option, that she might actually reciprocate his feelings, was way too far-fetched for him to consider. It didn't seem a remote possibility to him, so he chose to get a step ahead of the rejection his unhappy mind anticipated. The moral of the story: Smiths fans are self-defeating. You could spend your whole life trying to convince one that you like them and they may never believe you. Not the greatest use of your time.

  In the land of Morrissey, women exist to torment the modern man. Think of Summer from the film (500) Days of Summer. She is roundly regarded as a bitch simply because she doesn't fall madly in love with the movie's protagonist, Tom (who most certainly suffers from Smiths Syndrome). We are all constantly getting our heart broken and getting over it. That's life. If we didn't feel the intense pain that comes with a broken heart, we could never feel the euphoric happiness of falling in love. But if you find yourself dumping a Smiths fan, you can rest assured he'll never get over it and will hate you forever. He may even twist the knife with some brutal mix tapes about what a jerk you are. If you're wondering how to avoid this, here's a piece of advice: Don't date guys who like the Smiths too much.

  SMITHS NATION

  Most bands have their place in pop culture, but bands with deeply devoted fans develop a culture of their own. Think of the Grateful Dead or Justin Bieber (whichever you are more familiar with will do). Their fans share a common slang, tribal customs, and even a communal life philosophy. The thing they have in common is the music they all love. If you're not down with the traveling, dirty, hippie lifestyle, then you don't date Deadheads (or whatever people who like Phish call themselves). If you're not down with adamant, screaming teenage girls, then you don't involve yourself in Bieberworld. If you don't want to date a guy who thinks he's better than you and has a venomous disdain for mainstream culture, then you don't date Smiths fans. People whose love lives are soundtracked by John Mayer or Van Morrison will never understand the exclusive nature of loving a band like the Smiths any more than people who love the Smiths could ever understand buying a John Mayer record. I love guys who love underground music. I can't say, however, that I love the ideology adopted by Smiths fans.

  The Smiths fan's embrace of the counterculture is meant to hint at a worldliness he might not possess. Morrissey himself came to his values without actually leaving Northern England, just as a lot of boys I knew came to the realization they loved Morrissey (or were Anglophiles) without ever actually leaving the various small towns in America they hailed from. As a younger woman I found this unbearably sexy, because it reflected my own outwardly worldly but realistically inexperienced tastes and opinions. All the knowledge Smiths fans pick up about 1980s political and social culture in the UK makes them seem very clever indeed. But then you realize they know little about any other historical period and their interest in current politics is nil. They've been so busy immersing themselves in that era to better understand the Smiths that they don't get around much else.

  A true Smiths fan will dive deeply into Morrissey's inspirations to understand what makes the man tick. (It is always Moz he adores and never Marr, because Marr was too into '60s and '70s hippie/funk music, which is anathema for anyone who wears head-to-toe black on the outside to express how black he feels on the inside.) He studies the range of Morrissey's idols from whom he cribbed his schtick, including James Dean, Oscar Wilde, and the New York Dolls. From there the fan will likely follow Moz's footsteps and give himself a James Dean pompadour until someone explains that he looks ridiculous (or a rockabilly band member offers a compliment—always the kiss of death); attempt to read Oscar Wilde but find it a little too boring for his tastes; and buy some New York Dolls vinyl only to eventually discover (usually when he gets older and falls out of the Smiths' thrall) that the '60s girl groups the Dolls were emulating have much, much better songs than the Dolls.

  Moz and Marr both considered the Smiths a singles band, in the style of '60s British musicians they idolized, but unlike their contemporaries in the Cure, Depeche Mode, or R.E.M., the Smiths never had that one hit single that broke them through to the mainstream. "How Soon Is Now?" is as close as they came, but the buildup to making that a highly recognizable song spans more than a decade—it was not an instant smash on the singles charts.

  They were signed to one of the most staunchly independent record labels in the UK, Rough Trade Records, which meant they operated on a limited marketing budget. They had to be cajoled into making videos in an era when MTV was making British bands famous to American audiences, and they rarely toured outside their home country (which is the surest way to keep your band obscure). To cap it all off, after five years they broke up at the height of their popularity, before anyone in the band had even turned thirty.

  The Smiths epitomized indie culture, and they designed the template for all the great bands who followed them, like Pavement and Radiohead, for attaining success while maintaining credibility. Or at least that's the perception. Dig a little deeper and you'll find that just before the band broke up, they were planning to leave Rough Trade and Sire Records and make a move to EMI Records, home of another famous British band called the Beatles. Their credibility was saved by an early breakup, compared to their contemporaries who went on to mainstream success tinged with underground disappointment. These facts will be conveniently forgotten by elitist Smiths fans, who prefer to remember them as kings of the underground.

  If pop music is for the lowest common denominator, indie music speaks to those who consider themselves intellectually superior and appreciators of art. To understand the mind-set you're dealing with when it comes to male Smiths fans, you have to get the importance of social standing and hierarchy to boys. Dr. Louann Brizendine, author of The Male Brain, has some useful info for us. (It's not your usual light bedtime fare, I know, but at one point I intended to study cognitive science; while that plan was blown to hell, my fascination with neuroscience remains). Boys start mentally ranking each other based on traits such as who is toughest, strongest, or most dominating—Planet of the Apes–style—when they're as young as kindergarten age. If that's the case, what's left for those less-than-alpha five-year-old boys? If they can't dominate through brute strength, they must find another realm where they can rule. As they get older, record collecting and music fandom come into play. Those guys who will argue with you about B-sides or take the time to memorize what year every record was released and on which label. They're the alpha dogs of their world, and their giant record collection of import-only singles is all the brute strength they need.

  The sort of dudes who dig on the Smiths are the sort who have created their own little pop-culture universe, filled with eccentric interests from highbrow to obscure. You'll have to prove your cultural bona fides to even start a conversation with these guys, but if you're deemed worthy (or hot), they are masters of interesting discussion. For all the things Smiths fans may be, they are certainly never the dumbest kids in class. This sort of mind-set leads to a fetishizing of rare singles, and live and demo recordings. The Smiths, as a cult band with a limited catalog of releases, provide a music-culture refuge where these dudes can be insiders.

  Ultimately, this is what music snobbery is about: someone arguing that their taste is better than yours and that they have more stuff than you do. If you date a Smiths fan, it's unlikely you'll ever win a debate about whose record collection is better. A lot of girls are cool with that and let their boyfriends shape their taste in music. For me, it's a deal breaker. The only thing less appealing is a guy with mommy issues.

  Back when American women got married for social standing and because it wasn't just our job but our duty to have babies, there was a much stronger economic incentive to partner off with someone, as a business venture of sorts. Of course, it wasn't ideal if your husband was emotionally distant or if you found yourself saddled with a hellish mother-in-law, but it was by no means going to stop to you from marrying him. These days women are economically
liberated; most of us now have the luxury of choosing to marry for love. In fact, we don't have to get married at all if we don't want to, because we can support ourselves. We're also not necessarily expected to have kids (except by nosy parents who want grandkids) and we can have careers instead—or in addition, if that suits us.

  By their twenties, most men have finished their struggle to separate from their mother. This process is so important, because it will impact a man's ability to commit to a mate. If he doesn't develop his own sense of self, he's just not going to let you in. As should be clear by now, the guy who identifies with Moz past adolescence will be a huge pain in your ass. And if he has an uncomfortably close relationship with his doting mother, you can bet she will be a pain in your ass too.

  Because little Stephen Morrissey was passionate about books, like his librarian mother, he got perhaps more than his fair share of her attention as a child. He was quiet and shy and not known to spend a lot of time playing with other kids, let alone chasing teen romances. Morrissey's parents got divorced when he was seventeen. In the wake of the dissolution of her marriage, his mother devoted all her attention to her son and daughter. Moz lived at home well into his midtwenties, developing a codependent relationship with his mother, as he drifted from one menial job to another and mostly lived on the dole, while he waited for his destiny as a pop star to come find him. Most mothers would have put their foot down and kicked their loafing children out, but not Mozzer's mom. She felt Stephen needed to be coddled and taken care of, and who better than she to do it. To say that she encouraged his separation issues would be an understatement. Quite frankly, it sounds like we ladies are lucky Morrissey is asexual/gay, because his mother would probably be the archetypical nightmare mother-in-law.