"Johnny had this riff, where he and Morrissey had worked on it I don't know, but Morrissey's looking through the window and we're playing away there and Mozz is going (look of extreme satisfaction). Yep, again, again, yep, this is it, this is the one. But that song's all over the place, all over the place."
- Mike Joyce, Select, April 1993
The eighth track on The Queen Is Dead, 'Vicar In A Tutu' was conspicuously placed between ‘The Boy with the Thorn in His Side’ and ‘There Is a Light That Never Goes Out’, two of the album's heavyweight songs. ‘Vicar In A Tutu’ is a rollicking two-minutes of iconoclastic humor, unabashedly flavored with a skiffle sound (though us Yanks hear it as sounding akin to an Okie scrub board quartet). The sound, subject matter, and placement was no accident; rather, it was conceived by Morrissey and Marr to be a lighthearted amuse-bouche for the listener.
Written and recorded during the final leg of The Queen Is Dead sessions in November 1985, the song was produced by Morrissey and Johnny with Stephen Street as recording engineer. ‘Vicar In A Tutu’ was a last minute addition to the album's track listing, taking the place of ‘Unloveable’ (which ended up being on the B-side of the 12-inch ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’ single).1
'Vicar In A Tutu' describes a thief encountering the cross-dressing vicar of the Holy Name Church (sliding down a bannister no less), much to the displeasure of the church’s monsignor who lectures the vicar to “…get your vile soul dry-cleaned”. All the while “Rose counts the money in the cannister”, a line that echoes the title track’s criticism of organized religion’s pursuit of monetary gain over more noble ends (“and the church - all they want is your money”).
The song is seemingly overlooked by more than a few listeners, which is unfortunate
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