"Piccadilly Palare" One of the very best Morrissey singles. The opening seconds are very similar to the opening of "Panic", but from there it goes its own way. The chorus has a glorious soaring tune beautifully enhanced by the subtle harmony vocals. Morrissey's performance throughout is superb, the lyrics are great and the music is irresistible. Best of all is the way the final chorus is different to what has gone before, just like the classic Smiths tracks that have a beginning, middle and end. And you know what? I never even realised that it sounded like Madness until yesterday (even with the presence of Suggs). 5/5.
Piccadilly Palare - Some fantastic and complex melodies here. I love how Morrissey sings this one. It really shows off his voice and style. Really a fun song that delivers pretty much everything I like about Morrissey's solo work but still sounds fresh and unique. 4.5 ranking out of 5.
Piccadilly Palare This has never got old for me, a great single , wonderful lyric and the best of his pop productions .. the original single version is the best , the unedited version on the Bona Drag actually weakens the song. The last great song for a while , the Kill Uncle Years were not easy for Morrissey or his fans ...5/5
Picadilly 4 of 5. Just a great vocal melody all around even with the ‘silly slang’ I’m not a fan of the verse added in for the Bona Drag reissue. That original edit was perfect, removing that section works
Morrissey's disdain for 'Piccadilly Palare' is mystifying — sure, it's a light and frivolous track, but his discography is peppered with those and this one of the very strongest examples. Personally, I'd be focusing all my regret and ire on something like 'You're The One For Me, Fatty', but he's still playing that one live. Anyway, I've always liked 'Piccadilly Palare' a lot and think it's a great opener for Bona Drag. Suggs' contribution seems like a squandered opportunity to me, as he's barely audible. 4/5
5/5 One of the first Morrissey solo songs I heard that really grabbed me, and one of the few I still somewhat regularly listen to. Great tune.
Piccadilly Palare Very infectious tune, straight off ‘The Rise and Fall..’ and great atmospheric samples, throughout, make this one of Morrissey’s finest singles of that era, for me. At the time I was working in a music shop and one of my colleagues would play lots of old BBC tapes ( remember them..?) and Round The Horne was one played most often. I’d never even heard of it, though of course everybody knew Kenneth Williams, but I was amazed at how risqué Julian and Sandy was for the time it was broadcast, and was pleasantly surprised when some of the terms they used were also used in the latest Morrissey single. Still a great pop song, in my book. 4/5
I really much prefer the extended version which echoes not just Madness, but combines an almost Beatle-ish lustre and tricksy key changes with the Kinks-style subject matter of a London rent boy. It works on another level too and can be read as the Piccadilly of Manchester, of course. The "boys in my gang" are the Smiths and this is a coded valediction for the demise of his former band, a paean for the gang mentality they once shared. Johnny Marr, let's not forget, had his flat in Earls Court - and I'm sure in one interview he said it was like the Smiths all spoke their own language which people outside the group found difficult to penetrate. In this sense the theme of male prostitution functions as a brilliant metaphor for the music industry itself: Morrissey is "on the rack" in many senses and I like the self-deprecating dismissal of his output as a "a reasonably good buy." At the end, of course, Morrissey is declaring himself "doomed" if his music career goes on forever. And, in many ways, he may not have been wrong. A deceptively clever lyric and a fine tune. 4/5.
The last great Morrissey single, for me; “First of the Gang” comes close, but the underworld glamorization is starting to feel like a photocopy of a photocopy by then. Such a clever arrangement, with lots of pleasing details: the howling dog, Suggs’s sage advice (and, if I’m not mistaken, backing vocals on the chorus), the squalling guitar...as someone else mentioned, this sounds like Madness with more prominent guitar, and what’s not to like about that? Perhaps unsurprising that Morrissey doesn’t rate it - he’s evidently a terrible judge of his own work, as some of the forthcoming single choices demonstrate. It’s one of Morrissey’s few successful character pieces, even if it the portrait of a novice London rent boy could, indeed, be taken as a metaphor for musical commodification...or, um, general initiation into one of the City’s subcultures; this is probably his most explicitly homoerotic song since “Handsome Devil”. Palare or Polari is an argot favored by gay/theatrical circles, a mixture of Italian, Yiddish and backslang. “Round the Horne” popularized it, and I seem to recall Radio 4 repeating the show in the 80s. Morrissey could have picked it up via that...or in situ in Vauxhall, perhaps... I find the lyrics quite humane and moving, as the protagonist takes pride in his status as outsider - not one of the “good sons” - even as he’s aware that his means of subsistence could go on forever, with presumably decreasing returns as his looks fade. Is that a doubled “going down, going down”, “bona drag, bona drag” as the song fades...?
Today's song is Get Off the Stage: Morrissey has admitted his embarrassment at the mascara/Fender guitar lyrics and this is one of the few songs that he has publicly disowned. As he is still performing at the age of 60, that should perhaps be no surprise. Obviously it is difficult to listen now to Morrissey and Suggs ("Have you seen yourself recently?") complaining about ageing performers, but I guess it was a valid subject at the time. Morrissey admitted to having The Rolling Stones in mind, but a ridiculous number of dinosaur bands had had hits in the late 80s. Most of whom are still touring today... When I first heard this on vinyl I thought it had no redeeming features whatsoever, but subsequent listens do reveal some attention to detail largely hidden in the background. That is clutching at straws though as this track generally reveals Andy's limitations as a composer and is hardly Morrissey at his best. A substandard b-side. 2/5.
"Get Off The Stage" It missed both Bona Drag and My Early Burglary Years, but it ended up on my "mop-up" compilation of all the orphaned tracks (that I knew about) at the end of the 90s, and it found its ideal position in the last-but-one-track "throwaway" slot. It's obviously not great, and it's one to be endured rather than enjoyed, but I do quite enjoy the lyrics, and of course they do have extra frisson these days. It's good for a 2/5 rating.
"Get Off the Stage" The lyrics are a bit misguided and harsh -- but very funny and accurate in places. "But the song that you just sang It sounds exactly like the last one And the next one I bet you it will sound Like this one" Nothing positive to say about the music, though. The circus-like pace is not very melodic and the whole thing sounds like it'd be right at home in the middle of Kill Uncle. 2/5 and the lyrics carry all the weight.
I dismissed this at the time, but have been listening to it again of late due to this thread. And... it’s not as bad as legend might have it. Yes, some of the production choices are pretty cheesy and it’s hardly his greatest piece of art, but it is amusing and the vocal melody is quite catchy. I actually find the Fender guitar line rather funny. Certainly I prefer it to most of side two of Kill Uncle and tracks like Journalists Who Lie or The Kid’s A Looker. I think Morrissey did his very best with an extremely uninspired piece of music. And he almost got away with it. Striptease would have been a better b-side for Piccadilly Palate, but I’ll give it an incredibly generous 3/5.
