Steven's whines could be heifer's cries
Farther runs the screaming crowd
This horrible guilt trip must play
This horrible guilt trip must play
A song for no reason
And a song for no reason is MORRISSEY'S
And the songs you find poignantly wry
Are not musical, funny or nice
They are songs for no reason
And songs for no reason are MORRISSEY'S
And the disc that so tortures my ears
Is MORRISSEY
And the record you painfully spin
Is MORRISSEY
Do you know how CDs are pressed?
Plastic forced to become Meat is Murder
It's not "comforting", "cheery" or "kind"
It's vibrating air and the horrible sound
Of MORRISSEY
It's not "natural", "normal" or kind
The songs you find poignantly wry
The pain in your ears
As you flee from the sound
Of MORRISSEY
NO, NO, NO, IT'S MORRISSEY
NO, NO, NO, IT'S MORRISSEY
Who hears when listeners cry?

I like The Smiths. I own all their albums. My Last.fm screams "Smiths fan". I've sat watching I Keep Mine Hidden transfer at about 5 bytes a second from a single lonely ed2k user in Bumfuck, Ohio. I would go so far as to say that they have not made a single song I would actually dislike.

...except for Meat Is Murder.

To make it clear going forward, I have no problem with vegetarianism. If people don't want to eat meat, that's absolutely A-OK with me; their choice, not mine. That is, of course, unless they want to class me as some kind of sick murderous weirdo for liking a cheeseburger from time to time. In which case I get pissed off.

What pisses me off even more is when this kind of militant vegetarian tries to guilt trip you into it, as Morrissey did with Meat Is Murder. "That steak you're eating was once a cow. Someone killed it." Shock fucking horror. I know full well that that Whopper was once standing in a field mooing contentedly, possibly being photographed for a Pink Floyd album cover, before it was killed, smushed into mince and grilled (and subsequently microwaved in the case of a Whopper). I know. Stop trying to make me feel guilty about it.

In any event, the whole logic of the song is flawed. First off, slaughtering of animals for food is not a "death for no reason" (which is murder, according to Morrissey). It is a death for food. It has been going on for millennia, since before the days of hunter gatherers. Granted, not on an industrial scale like it is now, but still, it happened. Also, the song does not give any solid arguments or reasons as to why meat is bad; just "it's animals which were killed", which anyone with a reasonably high level of intelligence would have realised fairly quickly. All it really does is frame normal, mundane things in a negative light (e.g. smells of cooking meat are really "sizzling blood and the unholy stench of murder".)

In so few words, it's vapid bollocks designed expressly to get a kneejerk reaction. Come on Morrissey, I expected more.

I can hear you saying now "well, it's just a song. Who cares". Given the number of people who say that song has converted them into vegetarians, it does require a little bit of insight. God knows how it converted anyone to anything, because when you look at it a little closer it falls apart; it really is just the musical equivalent of the Daily Mail and its various "evil terrorist immigrants aiming to destroy the UK" articles.

End of rant.