Paint a Vulgar Picture

Musley66

Member
Just played Strangeways for the first time in three years and was struck by the fact that Paint a Vulgar Picture always moves me to tears.
Anyone else feel like this?
 
Just played Strangeways for the first time in three years and was struck by the fact that Paint a Vulgar Picture always moves me to tears.
Anyone else feel like this?

Divine, could you expand on this a little? why does this song, in particular, move you emotinally? Is it the lyrics, the music or the combination of both?

i love the music but find the lyrics sometimes now make me focus on Morrissey's re-packaging of his own solo albums, with varying degrees of success, IM-not-so-HO

regards
 
Just played Strangeways for the first time in three years and was struck by the fact that Paint a Vulgar Picture always moves me to tears.
Anyone else feel like this?

Not really, but I think it's my favourite track on Strangeways - I find it funny rather than sad though.
 
I find myself moved to tears by Steven's repackaging and reissuing of his own back catalogue. Ever wonder why he and his performing monkeys no longer include Paint a Vulgar Picture in their live set list? Wonder no more.
 
Divine, could you expand on this a little? why does this song, in particular, move you emotinally? Is it the lyrics, the music or the combination of both?

i love the music but find the lyrics sometimes now make me focus on Morrissey's re-packaging of his own solo albums, with varying degrees of success, IM-not-so-HO

regards

Mmm true, but surely that comes down to the record companies too, they like to milk their artists to the very limit, as in the song.
I find the song musically and lyrically very sad. I think this was Marr's best period of songwriting and lyrically very true is many ways, especially for Morrissey's fans who, to say the least, can be obsessive. I can relate to someone having a sad life and thinking that being with their hero could be the answer to their problems, but obviously that's not reality. I am now a lot older and a lot less influenced by others.
 
It's amusing that Morrissey is often heavily criticised for having the unusual prescience to predict what would eventually come to pass. Basically, he was right.
 
I find myself moved to tears by Steven's repackaging and reissuing of his own back catalogue. Ever wonder why he and his performing monkeys no longer include Paint a Vulgar Picture in their live set list? Wonder no more.

I think lots of people make the mistake that this song is about artists re-packaging their own work, when actually it is about how the record companies use the deaths of their artists to maximise profits and put out cheap compilations boasting unreleased material that is patchy at best, but it doesn't matter, because the masses swallow it up because the singer is now dead and when a singer dies they all of a sudden become so relevant and important to the music industry. There's loads of examples, like Amy Winehouse and Micheal Jackson. Barely anyone I knew liked or really listened to Winehouse save for her singles and then when she died, everyone was making out that she was such an inspiration and the labels released a compilation album which was swallowed up by the public. Then with Jackson, most people hated him because of the accusations that he was a child molester, then when he died everyone suddenly overlooked that and again he became this iconic figure far greater than I think his talents deserved.
 
Love it. The adoring fan is touchingly dead-on (could equally be a young Morrissey or one of his fans), that diatribe against the industry is morbidly funny and the "this was your life" "you could have said no if you wanted to" thing is revelatory and perhaps self-referential.

They do reissue and they do repackage. I don't really care and don't consider it hypocritical; if he had penned the song now, in full retrospect of his many reissues and compilations, I would.
 
I'd like to have Paint A Vulgar Picture expunged from historical record. It's a decent enough song but if it never existed, people would have to think for themselves a little bit more instead of resorting to quoting the lyrics like literary sheep.

By the by, anyone who finds the Morrissey compilation catalogue excessive, you should see how many the Style Council have. And they only made five albums.
 
I think lots of people make the mistake that this song is about artists re-packaging their own work, when actually it is about how the record companies use the deaths of their artists to maximise profits and put out cheap compilations boasting unreleased material that is patchy at best, but it doesn't matter, because the masses swallow it up because the singer is now dead and when a singer dies they all of a sudden become so relevant and important to the music industry.

So, let me see... when a record company reissues records in order to squeeze some more profit out of them after the death of the pop star, it's bad, but when the record company does precisely the same thing, with the still-living pop star's blessing, it's good?
 
I find myself moved to tears by Steven's repackaging and reissuing of his own back catalogue. Ever wonder why he and his performing monkeys no longer include Paint a Vulgar Picture in their live set list? Wonder no more.

Yes, I can just picture Moz saying "best leave that song out tonight lads. I've just put another best of out and I'm scared some Internet geeks will start using the lyrics against me and I'd feel silly."

I don't get the problem people have with all the best of albums. Don't like the idea, don't buy them. Simple no? Quoting 'Paint a Vulgar Picture" every single time doesn't prove anything. Remember that song was written over twenty years ago. I used to say I wanted to be Batman as a kid. Times change.
 
Yes, I can just picture Moz saying "best leave that song out tonight lads. I've just put another best of out and I'm scared some Internet geeks will start using the lyrics against me and I'd feel silly."

I don't get the problem people have with all the best of albums. Don't like the idea, don't buy them. Simple no? Quoting 'Paint a Vulgar Picture" every single time doesn't prove anything. Remember that song was written over twenty years ago. I used to say I wanted to be Batman as a kid. Times change.

He wasn't a "kid" when he wrote or recorded the lyric to "Paint a Vulgar Picture". The "problem people have with all the best of albums" is that they make him a corporate whore, just like other pop stars. It isn't complicated.
 
Mmm true, but surely that comes down to the record companies too, they like to milk their artists to the very limit, as in the song.
I find the song musically and lyrically very sad. I think this was Marr's best period of songwriting and lyrically very true is many ways, especially for Morrissey's fans who, to say the least, can be obsessive. I can relate to someone having a sad life and thinking that being with their hero could be the answer to their problems, but obviously that's not reality. I am now a lot older and a lot less influenced by others.

Morrissey is a lot older but still seems to think telling his fans 'i love you' will be the answer to his problems. unlikely.....

regards
 
It's amusing that Morrissey is often heavily criticised for having the unusual prescience to predict what would eventually come to pass. Basically, he was right.

The only thing Morrissey had, "the unusual prescience to predict," was the fact that he would go on to sacrifice his principles for money.

I'd like to have Paint A Vulgar Picture expunged from historical record.

Morrissey would like that too.
 
He wasn't a "kid" when he wrote or recorded the lyric to "Paint a Vulgar Picture". The "problem people have with all the best of albums" is that they make him a corporate whore, just like other pop stars. It isn't complicated.

No but he was younger, no? We all say and do things we maybe go back on later in life. Anyway, my original point is still valid I feel. Why the hell do so many people care? I couldn't care less if Morrissey made another ten best of albums and became the world's biggest ''corporate whore'', I really couldn't. Nobody is forcing me to buy it, the only way I have to know the album is there is to go and look for it so who cares? I don't put a Morrissey record on and think ''urgh I wish this didn't earn him so much money'' I play it for the music. End of.
 
No but he was younger, no? We all say and do things we maybe go back on later in life.

He was almost thirty years old and had certainly reached intellectual maturity (and he was still performing it live at least ten years later).

Anyway, my original point is still valid I feel. Why the hell do so many people care? I couldn't care less if Morrissey made another ten best of albums and became the world's biggest ''corporate whore'', I really couldn't. Nobody is forcing me to buy it, the only way I have to know the album is there is to go and look for it so who cares? I don't put a Morrissey record on and think ''urgh I wish this didn't earn him so much money'' I play it for the music. End of.

It sounds as though you don't put on a Morrissey record and think about anything. People care because he railed against the music industry before going on to demonstrate that he was an integral part of it. He was, and still is, a hypocrite.
 
He was almost thirty years old and had certainly reached intellectual maturity (and he was still performing it live at least ten years later).



It sounds as though you don't put on a Morrissey record and think about anything. People care because he railed against the music industry before going on to demonstrate that he was an integral part of it. He was, and still is, a hypocrite.

None of what you said makes me care anymore. It doesn't matter if he thirty or fifty when he wrote that song, attitudes change all the time.

In answer to your rather ill founded point, I put on a Morrissey record for several reasons. One being the music and another being the lyrics. Same as anyone, no? That's what I think about as a music fan. I'm not a business fan. I could not care less if Morrissey makes millions. I really don't. So long as I have the songs I couldn't care less about him "selling out" or whatever. It's his career, so long as there's still live shows to go to and I still have all his albums then nothing else concerns me.

So he might have gone back on what he wrote or said once upon a time but I have better things to worry about than "best of" albums and if he's making a few extra quid. It's really easy, don't like it, don't buy it. Problem solved.
 
Difficult to call Morrissey a sell-out when he refuses to compromise himself to secure a lucrative record deal and continues to spit at the idea of a Smiths reunion, no? Whatever filthy lucre he's accumulated through the exploitative re-releasing of old material is a molehill next to the mountain of cash he might be making if he was, in fact, a money-grubbing hypocrite. Don't miss the forest for the trees.
 
Difficult to call Morrissey a sell-out when he refuses to compromise himself to secure a lucrative record deal and continues to spit at the idea of a Smiths reunion, no?

No. Just because he hasn't compromised himself in respect of all of his professed principles doesn't mean he hasn't compromised himself in respect of some. He isn't refusing to get involved in a reunion because of some noble belief in the integrity of "The Smiths". He refuses because it would suggest that he needed the other three (or even just Marr) and because, in his view, it would give them something they don't deserve and that he'd rather withhold from them.
 
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