Thanks. I still hear “Wailed-a-lover Wilde” which I doubt it is."'Cos Whale-blubber Wilde is on mine. Sugar."
Yes, it is. There are several lyrics that have been misheard, typed up on the internet, and been copied and spread all over the place, unfortunately. One of them led to masses of people believing he sang 'Weird lover Wilde', when clearly he doesn't.
This one has come up on this site several times before, for example:
https://www.morrissey-solo.com/threads/cemetery-gates-what-does-morrissey-say.64176/
Whoa. This is revelatory for me. I just cannot imagine why a whale, much less blubber, would be associated with Wilde.
Whoa. This is revelatory for me. I just cannot imagine why a whale, much less blubber, would be associated with Wilde.
"Where, if not from the Impressionists, do we get those wonderful brown fogs that come creeping down our streets, blurring the gas-lamps and changing the houses into monstrous shadows? To whom, if not to them and their master, do we owe the lovely silver mists that brood over our river, and turn to faint forms of fading grace curved bridge and swaying barge?"
The only connection between Oscar Wilde and whaling that I can find is this:
"According to Oscar Wilde, life imitates art. In his The Decay of Lying — An Observation (1891), he wrote:
A Look At Accuracy And Turner's Whaling Quartet
Turner's whaling paintings, recently on display at the Met, do little to convey the detail of the whale's powerful movement or the seas — but what they do create is atmosphere, says Alva Noë.www.npr.org
And if Wilde was talking about Turner, Turner painted Whalers. See link above.
Interesting, but seems like a stretch to me. Hey but who knows - he may have like to read by lamp light and developed an appreciation for where the oil came from....
It always seemed to me that Moz had something against overweight folks. Except of course that one fattie he sang about that was for him...
Probably his own body issues - he thought he was a fat child, then he thought he was emaciated, then he was back to feeling fat. Too much time gazing at American GQ.
Listening to both the original studio version and the Rank version, it is definitely 'whale blubber'. Doesn't sound like weird lover at all in the rank version.What would Mike Joyce know about The Smiths? "Weird lover Wilde" fits for me, in the context of the song (i.e. being in love with morbidity, like walking round a cemetery) and in Morrissey-life general. I will never buy "Whale blubber Wilde." Why would Morrissey insult one of his heroes by describing him in such an irreverent fashion? Makes no sense, especially as he doesn't insult Keats and Yeats; indeed, he furnishes no description of them whatsoever, positive or negative. Shrug.