The Specials - "Ghost Town"

I was about to put together today's blog post, when I happened to notice the most viewed post today was Morrissey's "Margaret on the Guillotine"... it is, after all, the day of Margaret Thatcher's death. That song was posted on June 16, 2011. I personally don't want to turn this into some sort of anti Margaret Thatcher stand, particularly today. However, there were so many songs in the 80's that were inspired by Margaret Thatcher. To be fair, no Tory leader would ever please the left wing working/middle class. But her iron fist policies and reforms (what was known as Thatcherism), were way out of order for this group of people. It didn't take long before the musicians were expressing their anger through song... and there was no shortage of them throughout her reign. One was "Ghost Town" by The Specials, which was a lot more subtle than most of the others. Now a timeless classic, but it does portray the bleakness of Britain at the time.



Morrissey - "Margaret on the Guillotine"

It may not be the best time to re-post this. But just to verify the antagonism, here is the original blog post from 2011.....


One thing has to be said about great songwriters... and that is their ability to convey messages and subjects in a cryptic, ambiguous and subtle way. Often getting the message through to us eventually, sometimes with the help of a press release, and other times giving everyone a differing opinion. There have been books written about a single Bob Dylan song... let alone, hundreds of books pondering the lyrics provided by him and many other artists. Which proves that we like to have an opinion on, and discuss the meaning of, a lot of the great songs out there. Morrissey is a great example of a lyricist with so much respect... with tons of literary references throughout his songs. However, there is one such Morrissey song that he completely forgot about subtleties and he just went for the jugular. That song is "Margaret on the Guillotine" from his post Smiths debut solo album 'Viva Hate' (the album was originally released as 'Education in Reverse' in New Zealand) released in 1988. It was about the then Prime Minister of the UK, Margaret Thatcher. His tongue may have been in his cheek, but it made me a little uneasy the first time I heard it... partly because this time I didn't have to decipher the lyrics at all... my perspective would've been the same as everyone else's. A grand political protest statement? or just lyrically lazy? Either way, I forgave him.