How does Moz write a song?

[Brutalful]

I was thinking in the car yesterday,How exactly does Morrissey formulate his songs? Deos he just wake up one day and think, "Id like to write about a fat girl" And then wallah! You're the one for me fatty.

What comes first, the title? The subject? the theme? the emotion?

Has anyone seen or read an interview where he is asked this?

Or when he writes songs like "This night has opened my eyes". Does he first decided "I would like to take lines from A TASTE OF HONEY and put them into a song about the same subject." Or, does he have the subject in his mind and decide to then steal the lines form the book? And why was this topic important to him at all? and what part of the topic was more important? The stealing from the book to get more attention to the book, or the idea to use lines from the book in the first place?

 

[drunken demands]

> I was thinking in the car yesterday,How exactly does Morrissey formulate
> his songs? Deos he just wake up one day and think, "Id like to write
> about a fat girl" And then wallah! You're the one for me fatty.

> What comes first, the title? The subject? the theme? the emotion?

The only time I have heard him talk about how he wrote was when he was in The Smiths. One of the things he said was that he had a notebook in which he had a lot of stray lyrics/ideas just waiting to be used. Of course I'm sure this notebook also included bits of dialogue from movies and books that he found interesting.

Anyway, Johnny would give him a tape of the music he had written, Morrissey
would live with it for a bit, and then he would whittle away putting lyrics to it. From what I would surmise he would add bits and pieces of lyrics he already had in his mind, ideas/phrases already in "his notebook" and of course ones that brought everything together on the spot.

I don't know if it's a matter of which came first. I would guess it probably varied depending on which part of his idea was more complete.

 

[carlos]

the price i would pay for said notebooks!

-c

----------
> The only time I have heard him talk about how he wrote was when he was in
> The Smiths. One of the things he said was that he had a notebook in which
> he had a lot of stray lyrics/ideas just waiting to be used. Of course I'm
> sure this notebook also included bits of dialogue from movies and books
> that he found interesting.

> Anyway, Johnny would give him a tape of the music he had written,
> Morrissey
> would live with it for a bit, and then he would whittle away putting
> lyrics to it. From what I would surmise he would add bits and pieces of
> lyrics he already had in his mind, ideas/phrases already in "his
> notebook" and of course ones that brought everything together on the
> spot.


02/14/02 nyc

 

[23]

what I know

The beautiful "in the days when you were hopelessly poor/ I just liked you more" lines ( in "Half A Person") were something Moz actually heard from a former female admirer.
Now as for the songwriting, I'd say lyrics usually come first, but not always.
ps: Morrissey doesn't steal; he does vocal sampling.

 

[Pinelope Pimple Puss]

With a pen.