5,765 views

Watch
- Search Videos
  
  Advanced search »
- Submit a New Video
Discuss
About
- Try clicking on the various channels to see videos posted to that channel - if you're into music you can click the Music channel to get more music sifts - go on and explore! Use the "hotness" when you have opened the channel link to get videos that have gotten a lot of votes, or use "newness" to have a look at the new sifts.
  When browsing sifts you like, have a look at the Related Posts list to see other related videos, click the tags under the video title to see more sifts tagged with the same tags or have a look at other sifts from the same user in the More Posts By list. If the sifted video is in a play list, have a look at the play list to see other interesting videos the Sift users have linked together.
  Enter the Sift Lounge to chat with online sifters about anything and everything, or read interesting posts in the Sift Talk forum.
  The Top New Videos list is always full of interesting, current videos. It is always recommended that you have a look through the Top New Videos, but also have a look at these:
  - Upcoming Unsifted Videos - active video submissions that neither are published to the front page nor archived to the submitter's personal queue
- Have you seen a really funny, surprising, scary, interesting, cute or in any other way extra good quality video?
  Post and share it here - VideoSift is the best video aggregator on the Web, where we share, discuss, promote, and interact with the best videos out there on the web. Post it here, and share it with the large community of video-interested users. And - you are guaranteed to find more very good videos here already!
  Mind you, we only share videos you discover that someone else has made; if you "self link," by posting a video you have made, have posted or have interests in, you risk the ban hammer - read the posting guidelines before posting. The sift is NOT for promoting your own videos - it is for sharing videos others have made.
  Submit a Video Now »
Login

The Smiths - There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

submitted by fozi999

1 decade 7 years 10 months 2 weeks ago

From Wikipedia:

"There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" is a song by the British rock group The Smiths, written by Morrissey and Johnny Marr. It was originally featured on their 1986 album The Queen Is Dead. It has subsequently been covered by a number of artists, including Anberlin, Eurythmics, Erin Ivey, Null Device, Neuroticfish, Oasis, The Magic Numbers, The Ocean Blue,Braid, Schneider TM with KPT.michi.gan (as The Light 3000), Norwegian Erlend Øye, Loquat, Spanish artist Mikel Erentxun, the The Divine Comedy (on the tribute album The Smiths Is Dead), Neil Finn and Walleye (on the tribute album The World Still Won't Listen), Pilot Scott Tracy and Ghost Mice. The song was originally planned to be a single from the album, but Rough Trade Records label boss Geoff Travis selected "Bigmouth Strikes Again" from the same album as the release instead.

The song lyrically utilises a first-person narrative concerning yearning, anxiety, and implied romance. Morrissey assumes the role of a person who has, one could infer from the lyrics, been kicked out of home, so seeks solace and company in the form of the person the song implores to - the car's driver. The chorus, often taken as tongue-in-cheek melodrama, pleads for an early, sudden death whilst in this person's company.

In Simon Goddard's book Songs That Saved Your Life, he argues that the basic narrative story is similar to that of the James Dean film Rebel Without a Cause, in which Dean - an idol of Morrissey's - leaves his torturous home life, being the passenger to a potential romantic partner. Given Morrissey's previous thematic and lyrical borrowings from literature and cinema, this is a viewpoint with some plausibility.

Musically, the song begins with a staccato bridge similar to that heard on "There She Goes Again" by The Velvet Underground and "Hitch Hike" by The Rolling Stones, which recurs as a musical motif throughout the song. With synthesized strings, a balladesque arrangement and yearning lyrics, many listeners have viewed "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out" as a straightforward love song despite some ambiguity in the lyrics themselves.

Ex-BBC Radio 1 DJs Mark Radcliffe and Janice Long (both now on BBC Radio 2) list it among their all-time favourites. Recently asked in an interview with GQ magazine about rumours that this song was supposedly about Marr, Morrissey replied "It wasn't and it isn't."

According to Goddard, an earlier version lacked some of the finished version's ambiguity, culminating in the line "There is a light in your eyes and it never goes out". When Australian indie band The Lucksmiths covered the song, they used this version of the final line.