Morrissey A-Z: "Kick the Bride Down the Aisle"

Kack de braide doon tha eisle m8
 
Kick the bride down aisle five (and then ask your sister to clean up).
 
Not sure if "hard to please" is the right way to put it. More like if you are comparing this song to a 10/10 (say, "Now My Heart is Full") or an 8/10 (say, "You Have Killed Me") or a 6/10 (say "Darling, I Hug a Pillow") or even a 3/10 (say, "Don't Make Fun of Daddy's Voice"), it would be really hard for a rationale person who doesn't live in a padded room to give this song anything but a 1.

That's not objective or subjective .... just a bunch of words. There is no difference between Now My Heart is Full and Kick the Bride, the way there's no difference between N*Sync and the Backstreet Boys.
 
That's not objective or subjective .... just a bunch of words. There is no difference between Now My Heart is Full and Kick the Bride, the way there's no difference between N*Sync and the Backstreet Boys.
This is just a bunch of words.
 



Our song today is this Morrissey/Tobias composition from the WPINOYB album.

What do we think of this one?

Well, when Morrissey and Russell were to be officially wed up in a church no less, this little diddy of a tune was played at Russell's bridal shower. The bitch flipped a fit, bit Morrissey and the entire affair was called of. The song is yet another episode of the mind of Morrissey.
 
Lastly, if we recall correctly, Morrissey was biden by a dog, or so he said. Actually, it was Russell who rendered the well deserved bite. Morrissey would be both physically and verbally abusive to Russell with a chair and a whip in seedy down trodden east London hotels. Late night S & M street.
 
That's not objective or subjective .... just a bunch of words. There is no difference between Now My Heart is Full and Kick the Bride, the way there's no difference between N*Sync and the Backstreet Boys.
Yup, just a bunch of wacked out commie fruits leaping around stage with their panty hose on.
 
Lastly, if we recall correctly, Morrissey was biden by a dog, or so he said. Actually, it was Russell who rendered the well deserved bite. Morrissey would be both physically and verbally abusive to Russell with a chair and a whip in seedy down trodden east London hotels. Late night S & M street.
Morrissey was biden by a dog? How does that work?
 
A bit warmer on this than most people here. I don't think it's a coincidence his 'anti-men' song and 'anti-women' song are in the same album. Though there is a lot more to digest and talk about with 'I'm not a man'. Each song might bother me a little if it wasn't for the others inclusion.

I do think there is some interesting lyrics in this song.

Kick the bride down the aisle
Look at that cow in the field

For the second line, it sounds like he is describing the bride as a cow. - wait a minute I thought Morrissey loved animals? - This is then subverted in the next line:

It knows more than your bride knows now

Oh, so he isn't calling the bride a cow, he is saying the cow is better. Admittedly, this is a little shaky, but works much better with the lyric variation sometime heard live:

Kick the bride down the aisle
Just look at that cow
In the field it knows more than your bride knows now.

It's always strange to me that in some lyrics Morrissey uses animal descriptions pejoratively. (In Estonia they say..) So I like this little twist.
 
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It feels very neo-realist. I'm sure there will be a film somewhere with a spurned lover telling their ex to just marry that young cow then.
Morrissey's voice sounds pretty youthful in this song, so the idea of a spurned lover seems natural, I agree, but nevertheless, I cannot help but imagine the bride's father giving the younger man some good advice before getting married to this cow of a daughter who, unfortunately, takes after her mother in the most unfortunate way.

What do you make of the line "You are the stretch of the beach, the tide cannot reach"?
 
Morrissey's voice sounds pretty youthful in this song, so the idea of a spurned lover seems natural, I agree, but nevertheless, I cannot help but imagine the bride's father giving the younger man some good advice before getting married to this cow of a daughter who, unfortunately, takes after her mother in the most unfortunate way.

What do you make of the line "You are the stretch of the beach, the tide cannot reach"?

That's possible!

I thought the beach line was implying he'll be alone if he doesn't marry her because no one else will want him OR that no one else can reach him because he doesn't notice them. Or both.

There's an old hit called The Lonely Season from 69/70.





Also a grisly Mills & Boon.

My Mum was a Mills & Boon reader as a teenager & kept them. I tried to read a couple, but they're dire. I like the covers.

51gA3Fx0M1L._SX313_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg



& a poem.

November​

by Robert Bridges
The lonely season in lonely lands, when fled
Are half the birds, and mists lie low, and the sun
Is rarely seen, nor strayeth far from his bed;
The short days pass unwelcomed one by one.

— Out by the ricks the mantled engine stands
Crestfallen, deserted, — for now all hands
Are told to the plough, — and ere it is dawn appear
The teams following and crossing far and near,
As hour by hour they broaden the brown bands
Of the striped fields; and behind them firk and prance
The heavy rooks, and daws grey-pated dance:
As awhile, surmounting a crest, in sharp outline
(A miniature of toil, a gem's design,)
They are pictured, horses and men, or now near by
Above the lane they shout lifting the share,
By the trim hedgerow bloom'd with purple air;
Where, under the thorns, dead leaves in huddle lie
Packed by the gales of Autumn, and in and out
The small wrens glide
With a happy note of cheer,
And yellow amorets flutter above and about,
Gay, familiar in fear.

— And now, if the night shall be cold, across the sky
Linnets and twites, in small flocks helter-skelter,
All the afternoon to the gardens fly,
From thistle-pastures hurrying to gain the shelter
Of American rhododendron or cherry-laurel:
And here and there, near chilly setting of sun,
In an isolated tree a congregation
Of starlings chatter and chide,
Thickset as summer leaves, in garrulous quarrel:
Suddenly they hush as one, —
The tree top springs, —
And off, with a whirr of wings,
They fly by the score
To the holly-thicket, and there with myriads more
Dispute for the roosts; and from the unseen nation
A babel of tongues, like running water unceasing,
Makes live the wood, the flocking cries increasing,
Wrangling discordantly, incessantly,
While falls the night on them self-occupied;
The long dark night, that lengthens slow,
Deepening with Winter to starve grass and tree,
And soon to bury in snow
The Earth, that, sleeping 'neath her frozen stole,
Shall dream a dream crept from the sunless pole
Of how her end shall be.
 
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I still have poems I wrote when I was a miserable, lonely, sexually frustrated 16 year old and they are remarkably similar to this kind of crap:

She just wants a slave
To break his back in pursuit of a living wage
So that she can laze and graze
For the rest of her days
Have you ever thought that this sums up the person that this song is about perfectly ?
 
I am surprised by the range of comments on this one, as if we are all listening to a different song!I suppose our differing interpretations of Kick The Bride Down The Aisle highlight Morrissey's honed skill for managing to load a heavy dose of ambiguity into his lyrics.

Given Morrissey's propensity for penning a fair few songs about the Middle East at this stage in his career (something I could, to be honest, largely do without), I always assumed this song was relating to arranged marriages and what we in the West largely consider as outdated gender stereotypes/roles. Lines such as ''It's the best you can do for everyone's sake' and a line (which I assumed to be from the bride's perspective) 'I know so much more than I'm willing to say' seemed to point me in this direction; a poor, bright and capable girl married off to a dull life, while her, husband who is expected to be the sole breadwinner, is now breaking 'his back in pursuit of a living wage.' While the tides of change have washed over most of us, this couple, this society, hasn't changed, they are 'that stretch of the beach that the tide doesn't reach.' Eventually this girl, knowing no better, accepts her station in her life, lazing and grazing for the rest of her days.

I admit that lines such as 'she just wants a slave' weaken the above argument - but I too assumed that this poor girl has been conditioned to think in such a way, through family, custom and tradition; that she was following the herd because she just knew no better and never thought of breaking the chain. 'Look at that cow in the field, It knows more than your bride knows now' I took as a comment relating to how this poor girl, now a mother, has not used her mind in life and has fulfilled all that was expected of her - a few years down the line she is little more than a teat to the next generation of calves...

Perhaps I have overthought this, but this all jumped out to me at first listen, and that seed stuck!
Interesting......................

But the woman that this song is about is a lazy cow !
 
That's possible!

I thought the beach line was implying he'll be alone if he doesn't marry her because no one else will want him OR that no one else can reach him because he doesn't notice them. Or both.
Could also be the bride sort of accusing him of being emotionally distant.
 
Melodically this song leaves the impression of an Irish drinking song. There is something doughy about it, the way it is slowly and swayingly moving forward, especially at the beginning.
What I see in front of my inner eye is a regulars's table in an Irish pub and folks, already slurring and babbling, giving the young man some "good advice" before the marriage day. The "aisle" could therefore also be the Irish "Isle" where alcoholic husbands were said to beat up their wives and kids to pieces. The Irish make shitty husbands. Not sure if this is still the case though, dear Irish folks... :grinning:

The beach line in this context could be sort of his alibi, because nobody will ask any questions about this domestic abuse, plus, the tide being the victims' tears that cannot reach him emotionally, i.e. make him feeling guilty or shameful about his own behaviour.

The last two lines "No meaning, no reason (i.e. for the abuse) / The lonely season" is the way the husband feels after the wife and kids and pets have turned their backs on him in disgust for the rest of his life.
 
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