The Queen Is Dead, But There Is a Light

I've been wanting to write about music and death for days. Beyond the requiems themselves, of course. But no, I'm today interested in analyzing the relationship between pop music and the end of life this week.

At first, I thought about reflecting on a song by the Mancunian band Joy Division. That English postpunk group sounds like threshold, transit, and in between two worlds. But I can't make up my mind. Maybe I'll do it later.

There Is a Light That Never Goes Out

On the contrary, a song by another band from Manchester, UK, The Smiths, has managed to motivate these few and rowdy lines. It is There Is A Light That Never Goes Out (if you follow the link, you can watch a YouTube video with Spanish subtitles).

Originally included on the band's second to last studio LP, "The Queen Is Dead" (1986), it did not appear as a single until 1992 when the group had already disbanded definitively.

Stunning Record Covers

What a fantastic cover, isn’t it?

This is the one from the single. The one above is the LP.

The song is composed by Morrissey and Marr, vocals and guitar, respectively. The verses relate to a heartbreaking adolescent lament. In the first person, a companion, who has not yet found his place or home, asks his/her desired driver to take him/her wherever there is music, light, youth, and life. But as a fleeting and sinister revelation, she/he thinks that dying at that precise moment, in a traffic accident, next to her/his lover would be a more than desirable end, a privilege.

100,000 Fans Can't Be Wrong

This "explicit glamorization of suicide," as some media described the single, was a brake on the promotion of it, although fans made it reach number 1 on the list of the program of John Peel, the broadcaster of BBC One, and that it has become, over the years, one of the favorite songs of the band, by almost everyone.

The lyricism of this funeral theme, which, according to the Smithicist Goddard, recalls a scene from James Dean's "Rebel Without a Cause," is amplified, in addition to Morrissey's vocal strength, by the inclusion of stringed instruments, uncommon in other songs of the band.  These instrumentalists, in the credits of the album, are named as the Hated Salford Ensemble, although, in reality, they are nothing more than the result of the emulation by a synthesizer that Marr programmed due to lack of time and budget, excess of zeal in collaborating with other musicians, and also because of Morrissey's hatred for all digital instruments.

Esta Luz Nunca Se Apagará

Mikel Erentxun, confessed admirer of The Smiths and Morrissey, made a more than worthy version in Spanish titled "This light will never go out", in which the mortuary element is made even more explicit.

The “There is a light” Urn

Finally, this evocative theme has served as inspiration for a funeral urn in our Etternal catalog. When we commissioned roc 'n' rob to create a funeral urn with light (Led), little could we imagine that they would baptize it as "There is a light" (follow the link, if you want to know more about it).

 

See you later.

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