Israel

Before You Stood Upright You Fell

‘Israel’ is the final track on Morrissey’s eleventh studio album, Low In High School, which was released in November 2017. This album was produced by Joe Chiccarelli and recorded (initially) at Forum Music Village in Rome before the sessions were moved to La Fabrique Studios at St-Remy in France in the summer of 2017. Morrissey’s musicians on the song were Boz Boorer, Jesse Tobias (guitars),  Mando Lopez (bass),  Matthew Ira Walker (drums), Gustavo Manzur ( Keyboards and co-writer), and Erma Castriota¹ (credited on the album as ‘H.E.R.’) on violin.

The song’s title is utilized as an allegorical device - “Israel” can be you or I - to speak to the disconnect between religious dogma and the spectrum of human sexuality. Morrissey’s focus is presumably centered upon Christianity, as both Jesus, priests, and the Catholic concept of Original Sin are specifically mentioned.

The lyrics shine a light upon the alienating nature of religious dogma upon the individual, exploring how the strictures of Christianity are effectively in a state of war with the innate nature of man. While this is not a new theme for Morrissey - whose prior foray into religion and human sexuality produced ‘I Have Forgiven Jesus’ (among other songs) - it lays bare the near impossible challenge of squaring the inescapable realities of human existence with one’s faith.

Morrissey was raised in the Catholic faith, but has said that he disliked his upbringing, having described himself in 1989 as "…a seriously lapsed Catholic. It was the usual time, 10, 11, 12, after being forced to go to church and never understanding why and never enjoying it, seeing so many negative things, and realizing it somehow wasn’t for me. I can only have faith in things I see.”² But as his various lyrics over the years have shown, his Catholic upbringing has not left him. Indeed, Morrissey wrote in Autobiography that “Catholicism has you tracked and trailed for life with an overwhelming sense of self-doubt…”. ‘Israel’ is yet another instance of this lapsed Catholic exploring the quandary that Christianity forces upon the faithful.

Morrissey sets the tone at the outset of the song, asking the listener “You realize if you're happy Jesus send you straight to hell?”, then informing them that “…should you dare enjoy your body here tolls Hades welcome bell”.
These lines speak clearly for themselves, without convoluted interpretation, as they shed abundant light upon the paradox of religion.

This author is himself a lapsed Catholic. Like Morrissey and so many others, church attendance (as well as Catholic school from kindergarten to high school) was mandatory. Like Morrissey, I found church attendance a drudgery to endure, and by my mid-teens was old enough to declare my refusal to go anymore, explaining that it was a tedious and unfulfilling exercise.

From my own perspective, the issue was manifold insofar as both human biology and consciousness, each the creation of God rather than man, were inherently in conflict with the tenets of Catholicism. I would dare say that there is a certain truth in nature in all of its forms - it can only be what it is, as it was made by the Creator. This circle cannot be squared under the rubric of organized religion.

In ‘Israel’, Morrissey illuminates the inherent fallacy at play - one can choose to simply live and strive for a measure of happiness and fulfillment - or choose to deny who they are, which is at odds with existence itself. As Morrissey points out, a life lived under the panoply of religion is akin to a sort of tortured confinement:

Earth is just one big asylum
an explosive prison cell
see us squirm
in our own
damaged spell

Fortunately, ‘Israel’ points the way to breaking this eschatological Gordian Knot, explaining to the listener that which is manifest and consequently simple:

Nature gave you every impulse
who are virgin priests to tell
you, how to love
how to live, Israel?

While pre-dating ‘Israel’ by 20 years, a line in 1997s ‘Alma Matters’ seemingly speaks