'I Want the One I Can't Have'

The Smiths recorded this song in October 1984 at Amazon Studios in Liverpool. Johnny Marr primarily produced the song (with assistance from his bandmates), and Stephen Street acted as recording engineer. The song was mixed that November at Ridge Farm Studios in Surrey. Final mixing was performed on the song in December at Island Record's Fallout Shelter in Hammersmith, London.

'I Want the One I Can't Have' was the third track on the Meat Is Murder studio album (released February 11, 1985), sandwiched between the rockabilly ‘Rusholme Ruffians’ and frenetic ‘What She Said’. Listen to the track here:

A live version of the song performed by Morrissey and his band at the Royal Albert Hall in London¹ on the World Tour 2002 appears on the B-side of his ‘I Just Want To See The Boy Happy’ single (released on December 4, 2006). This live version of the song features an apparently jovial Morrissey emitting trilling sounds at certain points in his performance.

Limited edition picture disc format of the ‘I Just Want To See The Boy Happy’ single

Listen to the live version of the song from the 'I Just Want To See The Boy Happy' single here:

Steeped in working-class ethos, 'I Want the One I Can't Have' describes a spartan existence where the bar is set decidedly low:

A double-bed
and a stalwart lover, for sure
these are the riches of the poor

Morrissey expands upon this theme, now setting his sights on a young tough who was “raised on Prisoners Aid”² and committed a murder (of a policeman no less) at the tender age of 13. Morrissey is taken by the subject, impressed by the boy’s apparent bravado and, presumably, his tenacity (“A tough kid who sometimes swallows nails”).

One imagines that the subject’s youth is - at least for the moment - an obstacle insofar as furthering the relationship between the two (hence the song’s title). Morrissey coyly hints at a clandestine meeting, but only when the young tough is of age and desirous of “self-validation”:

On the day that your mentality
catches up with your biology And if you ever need self-validation
just meet me in the alley by the
railway-station

On the whole, 'I Want the One I Can't Have' appears, prima facie, a near overt reference to homesexual desire, dampened only by the subject’s apparent youth and