I trust I can still evoke Loverboy in the future.

Len, you’re a thorough man! Your comment was much longer than the post that inspired it, and the post itself was admittedly longer than it needed to be. I had forgotten that Morrissey’s fans are a dedicated lot. Now, let’s never quote Duran Duran on this site again.

Moreover, and particularly when he was getting good material from his co-writer(s), the guy was a real guerrilla for song arrangement: he pooh-poohed more rules of songwriting than any other non-musician of his time. I don’t know how many songs you’ve written – lord knows I’ve tried to set words to music and arrangements hundreds of times, and usually ineffectively – but his gift for booby-trapping songs (bridges in place of a proper chorus; nothing in place of a chorus; verse melodies trading places with bridge melodies within the same song; he wrote more pre-choruses than anyone I have ever listened to) puts him on a different plane than most of his copyists.

In 1983, some of your alternative options included Simon LeBon:

“Telegram force and ready,
I knew this was a big mistake
There’s a fine line drawing my senses together
And I think it’s about to break.

If I listen close I can hear them singers
Voices in your body coming through on the radio
The Union of the Snake is on the climb
Moving up it’s gonna race it’s gonna break
Through the borderline.”

and the leather-trousered Mike Reno:

“She’s turnin’ on the heat
She’s got the magic touch
She’s turnin’ on the heat
And it’s a little too much
She’s turnin’ on the heat
And it’s a hundred above yeah
Hot girls in love
I’m in love.”

The first example makes no sense. The second makes too much sense. Pop radio was stuffed with melodically superb songs in those days, but words were so much flotsam and jetsam.

I agree that Morrissey’s a meat-free penis, but I like the guy for essentially doing what Ricky Gervais later did for low-level white-collar office workers: identifying a host of shitty, true-to-life circumstances for people who’ll never be cast on ‘The Bachelor,’ and giving ‘em something to rally around.

You are BOTH lyrical gangsters.

(Morrissey 4ever!!!!!!!)

By the way, I’m sorry I had to miss your first anniversary show! How did it go?