why do you come here?
and why-y-y-y do you hang around?
I'm so sorry, ah-h-h-h...
I'm so sorry
why do you come here,
when you know it makes things hard for me?
when you know, oh...
why do you come?
why do you telephone? (mmmhmmm...)
and why-y-y-y...send me silly notes?
I'm so sorry, ah-h-h-h...
I'm so sorry
why do you come here,
when you know it makes things hard for me?
when you know, oh...
why do you come?
you had to sneak into my room,
just to read my diary...
it was just to see, just to see,
all the things you knew I'd written about you...
oh so many illustrations...
oh but...
I'm so very sickened
oh...I am so sickened now
oh, it was a good lay, good lay
it was a good lay, good lay
it was a good lay, good lay
oh oh...
it was a good lay, good lay
it was a good lay, good lay
oh, it was a good lay, good lay
oh oh...
oh, it was a good lay
it was a good lay
oh...a good lay
oh, it was a good lay
good lay, good lay
oh oh...
it was a good lay
it was a good lay
Most psychologists agree that there are four stages of grief when you experience loss. They are denial, depression, anger, and acceptance, and it isn't until one has reached the stage of acceptance that one can truly say, "yes, I am over my grief." One can only surmise that the Morrissey masterpiece of "Suedehead" was based on these stages, but it certainly seems possible to me. The first half of the song could arguable represent denial, or more so, the this stage of depression. Clearly, the protagonist is distressed that his person, most probably a love interest but most definitely a person the singer has invested his emotions in, keeps coming back into his life to see him. But...he sings "I'm so sorry" at the end of his thoughts, in an almost painful, mournful way that indicates the hurt, the disappointment that he feels about the situation. Maybe it's Morrissey's way of conveying, "I regret that it had ot come this; how I wish things were different. I really do." The person continues to telephone and send "silly notes" (presumably love letters?) and yet he still feels regret of the loss of something once dear to him (the failing relationship). The problem here I see is that he is reminded constantly of the former love of his life and he wish the person would just go away, stop hanging around, stop coming around, and stop opening up those wounds.
Later he comments on how the person has broken into his place in order to read his innermost thoughts, to read "oh so many illustrations" he has written, and we have to wonder if these are illustrations on life, on this person's personality and the way he has be treated, or are they simply caricature drawings of a love that was once so important to him? Are these "illustrations" heartful or are borne from the hurting man's hand? Maybe the latter, because he is "so sickened now" - either by the breach of privacy, or by everything that has happened, or both?
After a lovely instrumental bridge, Morrissey comes back with the repeated singing of "it was a good lay." This has been pointed out by some fans as being naughty with its sexual connotation, but if that were the case, does that produce a complete counterpoint to the song's overall meaning - an ode to a fallen relationship? It may have been a cheeky attempt to try and "pop"ify the song; maybe Morrissey wanted to put something cute in at the end to make an otherwise heavy song a little easier to digest. And considering what kind of celibate saint Morrissey paints himself to be, it seems even more unlikey that he really meant it as something serious to the song. Maybe he just put it in as a sarcastic comment. The ongoing end part of the song turns a potentially strange song with a very real subject - the loss of love - into a cutesy "eh, it was no big deal" at its end.
After seeing the video, I was further confounded at the song's potential meaning. While lots of artists like to make music videos that have absolutely no connection with the song's actual meaning (which is usually the case with live videos), this being one of Morrissey's first songs - and videos - after the demise of the Smiths. The video starts with a shot of #32 in "the Royal Borough of Chelsea" (also known as Nick Rhodes and Mick Jagger's neighborhood) and Morrissey, wearing a green shirt and his quiff suitably propped up in Elvis style, stands on the stoop while a little kid dressed in winter clothes delivers to him a brown paper-wrapped package. He shows up next in a bathtub, undressed waist up, with a table arranged across the tub, with a typewriter and a newspaper with a front page article of James Dean's death. There is also a blue rug on the floor next to the bathtub with yellow letters reading, "THERE IS A LIGHT THAT NEVER GOES OUT" (obviously a nod to the Smiths).
The next scenes are (supposedly) in Fairmont, Indiana, where he opens the package and inside is a softcover copy of the French book The Little Prince. The rest of the video is of Morrissey, dressed in a dark long coat and black hat, walking around the windy, frozen wasteland that is Fairmont. He goes into a diner and reads newspapers about James Dean, the diner has a plaque on the wall with James Dean's likeness, then suddenly we see Indian Motorcycles, and Morrissey is sitting on one of their motorcycles, giving us this cheesy, nerdy grin that I can't be the only to have caught. He also visits the dilapidated high school, writing his name and the date on the wall, and "you can never go home again" on a blackboard. Also, he rides a tractor (looking like he has trouble getting it into gear), carries a dog in his arms from what seems to be a church (?), and then plays the conga drum for cattle while they are having lunch. If anyone has some sort of explanation for about the last 40-50 seconds of this video, please enlighten me!
He ends up at his idol's grave, and James Dean's likeness is superimposed on the screen, while we see Moz sitting in the snow, next to James Dean's grave, which is decorated with flowers. All throughout the video, photos of the town are displayed, presumably taken on Morrissey's antiquated camera. Seeing that James Dean was such a big influence of Morrissey's and he wrote the book James Dean is Not Dead, I took a step back and thought, "what if the song is really about James Dean?" Morrissey claimed that he saw a ghost in his earlier days - could it be James Dean that keeps coming back to him? Maybe this song is about supernatural powers that keep bothering him. This would explain the ghostly superimposed image of James Dean in this video.
Who knows. Maybe he just put James Dean and filmed it in Fairmont to confuse the heck out of people like me :)