Sweetie-Pie
Morrissey's Cloying Gem
Released on 4 December 2006 on CD, I Just Want To See The Boy Happy, Morrissey’s thirty-fifth single, features “Sweetie Pie” as its B-side. The song was also included as an additional A-side track on the UK 12-inch vinyl picture disc edition of the single, issued in the UK on 22 January 2007 as a limited special pressing of 1,000 copies.
“Sweetie Pie” was co-written with Michael Farrell1, who served as Morrissey’s keyboardist and pianist from 2004 to 2007. American singer-songwriter Kristeen Young2 provided backing vocals on the track.
Produced by Tony Visconti, the song was recorded during the sessions for the Ringleader Of The Tormentors album in Rome between September and November 2005. The song features Boz Boorer, Alain Whyte, and Jesse Tobias on guitars Gary Day on bass, Matt Chamberlain on drums, and co-writer Michael Farrell on keyboards.
The song was remixed sometime in 2006 by Visconti, at which time background vocals by Kristeen Young were added to it. This remix fundamentally transformed the track into the version eventually released. The song was included on Morrissey’s compilation album Swords, issued in October 2009.
Listen to the song (taken from Swords) in the following link:
In 2009 co-writer Farrell released a version of the song on a radio program that he produced and mixed himself. As Farrell explained:
“The version that I did was much closer to the demo and much closer to what I thought it should sound like. It’s also what I feel like, if we can call this Morrissey’s later career, suits him. He’s such a profoundly interesting lyricist, and he has such a unique angle.”
Listen to the Farrell version of “Sweetie-Pie” in the following link:
The Visconti remix of the song possesses an otherworldly quality, its instrumentation barely present and often supplanted by slightly discordant ambient textures and subtle reverse-tape effects. At the risk of sounding maudlin, “Sweetie Pie” has a distinctly celestial, almost choral atmosphere. With the addition of Young’s harmonies, it becomes curiously angelic.
As striking as they are in their own right, the lyrics of “Sweetie Pie” echo those of “Life Is a Pigsty” in theme and emotional temperature. The two songs feel less like distant relatives than companion pieces, separated more by tone than by subject.
The narrator declares that he has fallen in love - a presumptively welcome development. Yet this revelation is framed as something fatal rather than redemptive: “I’m ending my life / Because I’ve fallen in love / And enough is enough.” Rather than rescuing him, love intensifies an already fragile emotional state. The recurring image of being guided safely to a “port” suggests a longing for refuge or release - perhaps even death - with the beloved positioned as both witness and escort: “I’m depending on you / To see I get safely to / The port where my heart is too lost to find.”
The emotional dislocation at the heart of the song is distilled in the lines, “How I feel in my mind / And how I live in the world / They are oceans apart.” As in “Life Is a Pigsty,” the interior life and the lived life refuse reconciliation. “Sweetie Pie” thus reaffirms Morrissey’s métier: a singular ability to transmute illness, despair, and romantic extremity into art.
In Autobiography, Morrissey extensively describes his first meeting with Farrell:
”Mikey Farrell is an outstanding addition on keyboards – an infallible guide of new sounds and dry wit, of mid-western hardiness and team squad yardage. Interestingly, a vast knowledge of show tunes and an ability to play almost anything ten seconds after first hearing it. His opening words to me were, ‘I’m a poor man’s Roger Manning,’ in his shaggy-hangdog look that would soon sharpen itself into stylish Pepe le Moko aspect. ‘My wife saw you at the Roxy when the Smiths first played in LA,’ he went on. ‘Oh, that must’ve been an interesting night since we’d never played the Roxy.’ God forbid I just leave things as they are. From Cleveland, Mikey is of Irish grandparents and is stubbornly competitive, which I enjoy since it usually works to my favor. Proof of something is the sun-drenched day when we all play football at Hyde Park in London, and once I’ve scored the first goal I close down the match since ‘it seems obvious where this is going.’ Mikey fumes since his chance to wrestle me into unconsciousness is thwarted.
ME: Do you know what you haven’t got?
MIKEY: A personality?
ME: Well, besides that. You don’t actually have piano fingers.
It is a noisy gathering at Pizza Express on Parkway in Camden.
MIKEY: The Queen is Dead had a big influence on me in high school.
ME: A bad one, I trust?
MIKEY: Of course.
I smell a new world of music with Mikey, but I also realize that he’s the type who would jump ship should the royal wave come from Barbara Strident. If I was anything at all, I was sewage disposal. The mouth speaks first, and then thirty seconds later the brain catches up with whatever it is I’ve just said.”
Kristeen Young is a singer-songwriter and pianist from St. Louis, Missouri. Her collaboration with Morrissey turned out to be short-lived.
“I am passionately in love with Morrissey. I grew up listening to his music, so part of what I am is formed by him. The first time I heard the Smiths I was 14 and my boyfriend played me Hatful Of Hollow. I lived in the Midwest, I had no brothers or sisters, and the radio only played the mainstream. This was something different. I played that album over and over again. How we actually met was very cinematic. The great producer Tony Visconti had heard my music, and asked to produce our new record. One day when Tony was testing out our video on a big screen, a voice behind him said, “Who’s that? She’s very good.” It was Morrissey. When his opening band pulled out of his Ringleader Of The Tormentors tour in April 2006, he asked us to fill in. We’ve opened for him at every gig since. The whole thing is unreal. This man, who I think is the greatest lyricist that ever existed and who I’ve worshipped since I was a teenager, is now my friend. And he’s a good friend. He’s extremely generous and accommodating. He’s given us all these gigs, even though we’re an unsigned band. When we got together for the Guardian photo shoot, Morrissey asked me to sit on his shoulders. At first I thought he was joking, but he really wanted me to. I thought, “This is bizarre!” So there I am, literally heaving with desire for him and suddenly his head is between my thighs. We’d certainly never been that close before.
Singing with Morrissey on the B-side of his last single, ‘Sweetie Pie’, was the thrill of my life. It was incredible, but somehow felt natural. When I was young, listening to his records, I could never sing in his key - it was always too low. So instead, I harmonised. I grew up harmonising to his melodies. I know a lot of people do that, but for some reason it actually happened to me for real. I’m extremely lucky in that regard.” -Kristeen Young, The Guardian, March 10, 2007
Young served as the opening act on Morrissey’s Greatest Hits tour. During her set at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City on October 23, 2007, some audience members chanted “Morrissey.” Apparently exasperated by this perceived affront, Young replied, “Morrissey gives good head, I mean, er, cunnilingus…”. She was subsequently dismissed as Morrissey’s opening act.
“My band, KRISTEENYOUNG, have been asked to leave the Morrissey tour. Although I have been advised not to respond or issue a statement, my feelings are that I must. We have been asked to leave because of something I said on stage at The Hammerstein Ballroom, in New York City, this past Tuesday night. Unfortunately, the statement has been perceived as being profane (when, actually, one of the two words in question is a scientific term found in junior high, health class text books, and the other word, I feel most would agree, is lightweight slang) or defamatory. What I said was part of a thread of stage statements I made throughout our set. They were metaphorical and overstated to make an artistic point. The “offending” statement, in particular, was in no way a literal statement, and was very much in keeping with the tone of my writing in general. I reach for beauty and intelligence in my lyrics, but try to retain a bit of the everyday in them. Maybe the statement was a bit TOO everyday. Maybe I misjudged… but I meant no harm. I love Morrissey with all of my heart, soul, body, spirit, to the core of my existence and always will. These will be the only words I will ever write or speak on the subject ever again. Please don’t ask for an interview or e-mail me with questions.” -Kristeen Young, Friday, October 26, 2007
Remarkably, Morrissey and Young reconciled a few years later, and in 2011 she was once again invited to tour with him. On the World Peace Is None Of Your Business tour in 2014, Young was again dismissed after Morrissey believed she had given him a respiratory infection at a concert in Miami, prompting the cancellation of several subsequent performances. At the time, Young insisted that she had not been suffering from any infectious illness, but rather from an allergic reaction, to no avail.
