The Ordinary Boys
Morrissey's Revealing Song
Question: "And your gang [Morrissey's group of friends as a youth in Manchester], were you outcasts, victimized by ‘The Ordinary Boys’?
Answer: "Yes, but half of it, I have to confess, was the effect of deliberate choosing. We chose to reject the normality of life, and be intense and individual."1
Co-written and produced by Stephen Street (who also played bass on the song), ‘The Ordinary Boys’ is the 9th track on Morrissey's debut album, Viva Hate, which was released on March 14, 1988. The song was recorded during the course of the Viva Hate recording sessions at Wool Hall Studios in Bath, England. These sessions stretched from October on to December in 1987. The other musicians on the recording were Vini Reilly (guitar) and Andrew Paresi (drums).
Listen to ‘The Ordinary Boys’ here:
The song was released again on March 24, 1997 when EMI issued a remastered special edition of Viva Hate (limited to the UK and Europe) to celebrate their 100th anniversary.
Re-issue! Re-package! Re-package! A remastered, special edition of Viva Hate was released on April 2, 2012, sans ‘The Ordinary Boys’, which Morrissey replaced with ‘Treat Me Like A Human Being’2. The latter track was recorded alongside ‘The Ordinary Boys’ during the course of the Viva Hate recording sessions back in the 1987. One can only presume that the passage of time soured Morrissey’s assessment of ‘The Ordinary Boys’.
As Morrissey touched upon in his 1988 interview with Melody Maker, ‘The Ordinary Boys’ reveals as much about him as it does his contemporaries growing up in Manchester.
Morrissey’s lyrics speak of a youth who possesses the self-awareness to know that he is different. Rather than descend into the hopeless cycle of compromise and rejection of self pursuing acceptance from his peers (the “Ordinary boys”), Morrissey instead recognized - even embraced - that he was “…so different” and thus that “it had to be so”. Describing a sort of self-exile, the lyrics describe “Avoiding [the] Ordinary boys” who could care less where life will take them, as well as the “Ordinary girls/Never seeing further/than the cold, small streets that trap them”. As if to put an especially fine point on the matter, Morrissey adds:
You had to say no
When those empty fools
Tried to change you and claim you
For the lair of their ordinary world
Remarkably, the song exemplifies Morrissey’s view that he was, and is, extraordinary, but does so without the rot of arrogance or self-aggrandizing. Indeed, the ethos of ‘The Ordinary Boys’ is even-tempered and exudes a certain gentle modesty as it describes a young man trying to find himself in the world.
As Morrissey has shown time and again, he cannot be anyone or anything other than himself - a path that has cost him dearly throughout his personal and professional life.
While such an individual could readily be described as stubborn or even intransigent, it would be equally accurate to say that Morrissey is an exceptionally honest individual who must always be true to himself. Suffice it to say, such an individual is an anachronism in the world of popular music. But then we would all be the poorer for it were it otherwise.
Morrissey, Melody Maker. Songs of Love and Hate (March 12, 1988)
‘Treat Me Like A Human Being’ was initially released in April 2011 as the second track on Morrissey’s ‘Glamorous Glue’ single (CD and 7-inch picture disc formats).
