"I Won't Share You"
Morrissey’s Enigmatic Declaration
Subdued, spare, and emotionally raw, “I Won’t Share You” stands as a fitting and elegiac coda to the Smiths’ final album, Strangeways, Here We Come. The song was recorded in March–April 1987 at Wool Hall Studios in Bath, England. Stephen Street produced the track, with assistance from Morrissey and Johnny Marr.
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The song’s lyrics center on a complex blend of themes. Morrissey speaks of possessiveness and emotional dependency (“I won't share you, no / I won't share you”), disillusionment (“Has the Perrier gone / Straight to my head / Or is life sick and cruel, instead?”), a yearning to break free of internal struggle (“I want the freedom and I want the guile”), and finality (“Life tends to come and go / As long as you know”; “I'll see you somewhere / I'll see you sometime, darling”). Morrissey’s portrait of someone caught between emotional attachment, resignation, and loss is as touching as it is evocative. While initially latent, a sense of inevitability gradually surfaces and rises to the fore as the song nears its conclusion — it is in this quiet certainty that the lyrics find their emotional resonance.
That it was written near the end of the Strangeways sessions1 is significant, as many listeners and critics have interpreted it as Morrissey’s veiled farewell to Johnny Marr. If this reading holds, then Morrissey’s words seem unusually prescient, given that the band was still officially intact—though by many accounts, creative tensions and personal rifts were already straining its cohesion.
If we are to assume that the song is not a paean to Marr, then it is almost certainly one to the Smiths as an ongoing enterprise, reflecting Morrissey’s growing sense that the band’s unity—or at the very least, his emotional hold on it—was slipping away.
The author draws on the emotional intensity of the lyrics to conclude that Marr is most likely the subject. The words are far too personal—too intimate—to have been plucked from the ether merely to complete an album track.
One detects a deeply personal and conflicted form of love in the lyrics: a love rooted in artistic intimacy. There is also a palpable fear of loss, and a refusal to share emotional space with outside ambitions or influences. Less a statement on romantic love, “I Won’t Share You” is a poetic meditation on attachment—a very real attachment felt by Morrissey toward Marr, whose bond was beginning to loosen and come apart at the time the song was written. In Morrissey’s case, the listener bears witness to a particular type of attachment—one that clings, aches, and (tragically) anticipates the imminent departure of its subject.
The song’s arrangement and overall production are an astonishing feat of understatement, centered almost entirely around a gently fingerpicked instrument of uncertain provenance (more on this in a moment), with a distant hint of intermittent bass. In the song’s brief fade-out, there is a momentary shrill of harmonica—a sort of musical bookend to the short burst of harmonica heard in the intro of the Smiths’ very first single, “Hand in Glove.”
The sparse arrangement of “I Won’t Share You” creates a markedly intimate atmosphere, making Morrissey’s voice sound as though he is speaking directly to the listener rather than to an anonymous audience. Johnny Marr’s playing is delicate and poignantly melodic, imbuing the track with a wistful, almost lullaby-like quality.
While Marr’s work on songs like “How Soon Is Now?” can rightly be described as monumental, “I Won’t Share You” is a testament to his artistry precisely because it is so understated. It stands as one of his most affecting compositions despite—or perhaps because of—its simplicity. Marr reaches emotional depths through uncluttered, unadorned beauty, choosing restraint over complexity. The result is a rare instance in modern music where minimalism enhances emotional resonance, and every note carries quiet, profound weight.
The production, overseen by Stephen Street, has a lo-fi, demo-like quality that reinforces the song’s raw and vulnerable tone, aligning perfectly with its emotional undercurrents.
Listen to the song here:
According to Morrissey, the primary musical instrument used on the track was discovered by chance:
"A window-ledge in a forgotten corner of the Wool Hall Studios showcases a peculiar stringed instrument from 1777, which Johnny instantly grabs—'Oh, let’s see how this sounds'—and, by second run-through, he can play the oddly stringed lyre2 that has no sound hole. The strings are possibly horsehair, and there is a barely usable tuning bar, but the sound Johnny finds is mesmerizing, and the song I Won’t Share You is alive. It is a fascinating moment when Johnny's inner ear leads the way to somewhere unknown—somewhere mistrusted by all until the final depth of thought strikes. The technical term is bling."3
A previously uncirculated music video for “I Won’t Share You”, directed by Derek Jarman4, was leaked online at the end of 2008. While the video is, in fact, a re-edited version of Jarman’s six-minute contribution to the 1987 anthology film Aria—in which he and nine other notable directors created visual interpretations of operatic works—it is widely believed that Jarman repurposed the footage in the early 1990s for a multimedia exhibition organized by Rough Trade. The exhibition was intended to raise funds for the Terrence Higgins Trust, but the liquidation of Rough Trade ultimately led to the project’s cancellation, and Jarman’s music video was apparently shelved as a result. It is thought that Jarman would have incorporated performance footage of the Smiths—much like in his videos for “Ask” and “Panic”—had he completed the final edit.
Though only partially completed, the “I Won’t Share You” video stands as an evocative work of art. It should be remembered that this was assembled during the height of the music video era, when most promotional videos were—and continue to be—largely forgettable. In contrast, Jarman’s singular artistic vision clearly shines through, lending visual depth to the song’s understated emotional power.
Jarman’s original segment from Aria features an elderly opera singer giving her final performance, intercut with 8mm home movies of her youthful love affair—portrayed by Tilda Swinton as the younger version of the singer.
Watch Jarman’s video here:
Never performed by the Smiths, ‘I Won’t Share You’ has only been performed three times by Morrissey (all in 2019 on his North America Tour 2019).
— Please note that I shall be incommunicado for the remainder of the month. Will return in early July.
Cheers!
http://www.passionsjustlikemine.com/songs/songs-iwontshareyou.htm
While Morrissey describes the instrument as a lyre, it could very well have been a vintage zither, a psaltery, or even a lap harp.
Morrissey. Autobiography. Penguin Books, 2013, p. 216.
Michael Derek Elworthy Jarman (1942 – 1994) was an English artist, film maker, costume designer, stage designer, writer, poet, gardener, and gay rights activist.
Beautifullly written Tom,.