Happy 3rd Birthday World Peace Is None Of Your Business

I've been musing over this piece for the past week or so, and I'm so excited I don't even know where to begin!

How can I possibly open my article (I don't really like the word blog - it's a bit ugly) eloquently enough to do justice to this album?

Me, sitting here at my keyboard, in the humdrum heat of summer, with 8-legged companion Moogly the 2nd (as Moogly numero uno has since moved on) hanging out on my window-sill...

I thought about dragging you all back to 2014 and droning on about how I felt like a misfit at a family wedding: I was half-drowning in a sea of "what are you doing with your life" questions and clutching the edge of the bar as if it were a life preserver. (By the way, weddings at cideries are trouble, in case you were wondering).

Ugh. No one wants to hear that story.

The far more important fact about 2014 is that it was the year World Peace Is None Of Your Business was released. Yes, 31 years after the Smiths released Hand In Glove - I had only just discovered Moz... although back in 1983, I probably wasn't precocious enough - I think I only owned Barbie on vinyl... However, how Moz could have helped Oscar-Wilde-obsessed teenage me in the 90's, or disenchanted-young adult me in the 00's, I'll never know.

So all I can do is return to 2014, and think of how I am seated at this wedding in the middle of a sweltering orchard, corseted into a blue lace dress, silently giggling to myself that Morrissey has written a song called Kick The Bride Down The Aisle. Formal social situations perpetually seem to provoke anxiety, so it's strangely comforting, and feels a bit like Morrissey is whispering an inside joke in my ear, or... almost holding my hand (I wish). But in some sense he's here - and he's helping.
...And in doing so... he helps me feel more comfortable, because I am not alone in my dissatisfaction with certain aspects of existence. What makes his art so real, is that he is a human being with an opinion - and more than that, he isn't afraid to speak his mind, and sing his life.

World Peace Is None Of Your Business was the album we needed in 2014. And now, a few years later, I think we need it even more than ever. 

What does the 21st century look like to you?

What is being made 'great' again?

Was anything ever 'great'?

Are we, collective we, languishing under blundering, bullyish governments most of us never asked for, moving forward, or learning anything about ourselves, each other, our planet?

Or are we simply tacitly paying our taxes, trudging along begrudgingly, shackled to our daily lives of drudgery – because we aren’t sure what else to do?

As we know, Morrissey is anything but a crashing bore - so he - in all his musical and lyrical glory, asks us to confront the uncomfortable.

Morrissey at SXSW in 2006

In a 2006 interview for SXSW, Morrissey said he cannot bear the expression "lowest common denominator" and that it's tremendously unfortunate most modern pop music caters to such a notion; the world could change if we simply assume "everybody's extremely intelligent."

What's disturbing is I don't think it would be incorrect to consider the pop music industry a microcosm for nearly every other aspect of modern life: 

How often are we spoken down to by politicians, bosses, tv commercials, the news, our professors, our families? ... the list goes on...

With World Peace Is None Of Your Business, it's clear that Morrissey is singing to his audience as though we are a highly intelligent group of people. Covering topics ranging from politics, to animal rights, to gender roles, to mortality - his thought provoking, hope-and-despair driven lyrics weave seamlessly with genre-bending instrumental tapestries, and for the 55:00 min run time (longer if you count the bonus track edition, which is a work of art in itself) - there is never a dull moment.

I wanted to focus on my own experience with the album, so to start I simply listened and scribbled down whatever nestled its way into my scattered mind. For this reason, I generally decided to avoid reading the majority of professional magazine or internet reviews, but I did read some 2014 interviews with Morrissey to gain perspective. We approach music with our own ears and experience, and I believe in this sense our relation to art is very personal, so here goes...

World Peace Is None Of Your Business

The title track opens the album with the root shaking rumble of a digeridoo, soon joined by pulsating percussive pounds, together giving birth to an earthy heartbeat. QChord chords descend into Morrissey's smooth vocals: 

World peace is none of your business

You must not tamper with arrangements

Work hard and sweetly pay your taxes

Never asking what for

Oh, you poor little fool, oh, you fool.

He's captured my attention: who is he calling a fool? He's empathetic about our collective situation - but he's also bristled us a bit - are we truly "poor little fools," toiling under boring jobs and badly-coiffed authority, being taxed, yet numbly never questioning the nature of this system? In the first verse on the opening song of his album, Morrissey already has us looking inwards and outwards, questioning the state of ourselves and our world.

What strikes me so about Morrissey's vocals - and it really stood out to me with this song - is that he is able to capture a multidimensional mosaic of emotions extending well beyond primary emotions. His voice is not merely happy, or sad, or angry... rather, he succeeds in conveying a multifaceted blend of pity, teasing, empathy, disappointment, concern - and then towards the climax of the song... his tone shifts to defiance and empowerment, as he switches the line to, "No more, you poor little fool." I think of these as emotional subtones, or shades (a common example of emotional complexity we experience is "bittersweet"); Morrissey phrases and tones his singing to convey affective layers as an artist might combine brush strokes, shadows, and light to create complex mood in a painting.

Next track up is beat-poetry infused Neal Cassady Drops Dead, howling and growling with a conversation between aggressive crunching guitars and echoing drumbeats. Like any good slam poet knows, the rests are nearly as important as the notes, and instrumental rhythms, combined with Morrissey's musings over Allen Ginsberg's response to Cassady's death, throw us into the shock of the moment.

Ginsberg with Cassady, 1955. Photo by Natalie Jackson

While I had heard of Ginsberg, Neal Cassady was new to me, and Cassady had such a fascinating life story it's tempting to get into some detail here. A contemporary and lover of Ginsberg's, Cassady was also a beat poet, and was name-checked in Ginsberg's beat-gen masterpiece, Howl. Cassady's ecstatic, indulgent nights of drug use fuelled inspiration, but did not exactly sync-up well with his family life, wife, and children. Balancing an imbalanced tightrope walk between two lives he had trouble merging, Cassady drank and drugged heavily. The glare of fame also weighed on his frame, and Cassady dropped dead at the age of 41, of somewhat uncertain causes, at the side of a railroad track. 

The song's dramatic tension is traced with well-placed droplets of humour - at least I think so - with the image of tears shampooing Ginsberg's beard time fusing 21st century hipsters with 1950's beats for musical eternity. Neal Cassady then segues into deliciously germ-conscious free-style rhyme, where Moz laments "Everyone has babies, Babies full of rabies..."; the entire segment showcases his linguistic dexterity. Admittedly, due to my current cacophonous renting situation: living below scatterbrained landlords and their 4 screeching rug rats, I delight scrumptiously in the "get that thing away from me" line.

Sorrowful strings and effects evocative of helicopter chops slice into skillful flamenco guitar and the song's closing life-question: "Victim, or life's adventurer, Which of the two are you?"  

I'm Not A Man builds up suspensefully: the long, near-silence of creaking sound effects fold into shimmering chimes (to me they seem lullaby-esque) and Morrissey's voice guides us on a journey through the infectious myths of toxic masculinity. He lists macho male images force-fed and embedded into our consciousnesses since childhood - views perpetuated from fairy tales to cinema to parents - views that suggest gender is shackled to some predetermined binary cemented structure. Morrissey's lyrics, again feats of syllabic gymnastics, draw you into the symbolic pressures of "manliness":

Don Juan, picaresque
Wife-beater vest
Cold hand, ice man
Warring caveman...

Wife-beater vest: Brando as Stanley Kowalski

The idea that males should conform to whatever is deemed 'manly' is devastatingly restrictive and harmful, both to the individual and to the planet. I'm Not A Man made light bulbs and fireworks go off in my brain. Existing in my own female body, I've been so consumed with female cliched pressures that perhaps I wrongfully assumed men have it much easier. "Be-ladylike," pretty-in-pink, pageant queen, virgin-mother-crone, damsel-in-distress labels - or magazines crammed with bikini-ready body image issues galore - had gotten me down. However, crushing stereotypes of 'masculinity' saturate our cultures too: "ways to sit, and of course, ways to stand." How many people feel forced to become what they are not? ... and if you want to be an individual, stay true to yourself, and stand apart, it's not necessarily an easy route. As drums and guitars crescendo, Morrissey triumphantly shows his strength in sticking to his own individuality, singing "I'm not a man... I'm not a man... I'm something much bigger and better than... A man." Again, Mozzer's lyrics are not without touches of humour: "Beefaroni, but lonely."

Istanbul features intricately-woven guitars - a birdsong call and response between glorious grit and eastern flavours. The lyrics tell a short story so vivid, you yourself delve into the atmosphere of Turkish streets. I seem to remember reading somewhere that Jesse Tobias recorded snippets of sound from the streets of Istanbul, and you genuinely feel transported, as Moz describes "prostitutes stylish and glum" and "vicious street gang slang." Check out how beautiful this couplet is:

Moonlight jumping through the trees
Sunken eyes avoiding me.

Spanish guitars and fiery keyboards in Earth Is The Loneliest Planet lend both mournfulness and brightness as Morrissey sings, "You fail as a woman and you lose as a man... Well we do what we can." For me, the admittance existence feels so incomprehensible actually eases loneliness: it is pure catharsis. In catty Kick The Bride Down The Aisle, coupledom simply brings more loneliness for the doomed groom, and some highlights include Mozzer's sarcastic dig at saccharine greeting-card lingo: "treasure the day" and grandiose cathedral organs. Romance is not entirely dead, however, as Kiss Me A Lot features dreamy crooning from Morrissey, a catchy guitar riff, castanets, cascading brass, and Gustavo singing Besame Mucho.  The song always makes me imagine driving down palmy Sunset Blvd. with the top down... if I didn't live in Canada and I owned a convertible, that is.

Still from Kiss Me A Lot video, directed by SER

Staircase At The University glistens with more beautiful Spanish guitar work; musically, it's an upbeat tune complete with a vibrant horn section. The bright tempo and melody juxtapose with darker lyrics about crippling academic pressures leading to suicide (graphic - with a head that splits 3 ways!). Staircase somewhat reminds me of a non-fiction book I read many years ago called Runaway by a young woman, Evelyn, whose family forces unbearable academic stress on her; she becomes suicidal, runs away and eventually turns to drugs and prostitution.  Such pressure is certainly not an uncommon trigger for suicide. You can't help but wonder why we put so much strain on ourselves and one another to achieve some arbitrary definition of 'perfection.'

The Bullfighter Dies is an ode of support to bulls that are still tortured and tormented, so pointlessly, in the name of tradition and 'sport.' This short tune is cheery and punchy, with jubilant accordions and "Hoorays" as the tables turn and the victim - the bull - is empowered by the demise of his abuser, the bullfighter. Sadly, in actual bullfights, the bull is slaughtered no matter what. "Humans are not really very humane." The theme of cruelty, this time human to human, continues in melancholic folk masterpiece Mountjoy, about the horrific prison in Dublin:

What those in power do to you
Reminds us at a glance
How humans hate each others guts
And show it given a chance

Nobody cries: Bullfighter Fandino died last month

Smiler With Knife and the final track on the album, Oboe Concerto, both deal with mortality. Smiler is hauntingly beautiful, with fragile echoing notes, as Morrissey's voice sings poetically in a half-whisper. Life may feel exhausting, depleting, lonely, sad... yet the "why?" of death still rings. A meditation on love and loss, it leaves an ache in your heart.

Oboe Concerto is also reflective, yet less quietly so, with psychedelic bulletting drum beats, a pulsing, smooth bass line, and guitars that are simultaneously sad and lilting. While no oboes are present, Boz's brilliant clarinet solo is a little bit avant-garde, a little bit speakeasy-blues. Aging and loneliness consume the soul as one suffers loss after loss, leading to the eventual realization of the impending loss of oneself. We are often told to keep these darker thoughts private, and nothing really prepares us for the loss of loved ones or the strange feeling of seeing and feeling yourself age. In life, and all its absurdity, we are expected to accept the unacceptable: "round, round, rhythm of life goes round." An added bonus is that Mrs. Shufflewick makes an appearance

In a world of suffocating shoulds and should-nots, where others are continually trying to confine and define us, music holds the power to free us.

...And... if you have actually read this far, I'm honoured - thank you!

Finally, here are three interviews in particular that offered very interesting perspective from Morrissey on World Peace Is None Of Your Business. 

VEGAN LOGIC: "The Last Thing Security Forces Ever Want is Peaceful Protest"
VEGAN LOGIC: "Your Real Home Is Your Body..."
HOT PRESS: A Piece of His Mind

It will be fascinating to see and hear what Morrissey, Boz, Jesse, Gustavo, Matt, and Mando have in store for us on the next album. I CAN'T WAIT!

Via 8stitches9lives on Instagram

I will update this later with poll results on your favourite tracks from the album and bonus album!

Update with Polls:

Poll 1 - Tracks on Disc 1:

Kiss Me A Lot was first place, then Oboe Concerto, followed by World Peace Is None Of Your Business.

There were lots of write-in votes - Staircase was the big favourite with 16 votes:

Staircase At The University - 16 votes
Istanbul - 4 votes
Neal Cassady Drops Dead - 3 votes
Mountjoy - 3 votes
Smiler With Knife- 3 votes
And tied with one vote each:
The Bullfighter Dies
I'm Not A Man
Kick The Bride Down The Aisle
Earth Is The Loneliest Planet


Poll 2 - Tracks on the Bonus Disc:

Art Hounds was first place, then Scandinavia, Then One Of Our Own

Write ins:

Drag The River - 2 votes
Forgive Someone - 2 votes
Julie In The Weeds