Song of the Day 1/24: The Smiths, “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want”

I’ve never understood why Donald Trump is so aggrieved. He’s no billionaire except by his own accounting, but he objectively lacks for nothing. So why does he playt this Smiths song at his rallies? He doesn’t already have what he wants? Do these lyrics really describe him?

See, the life I’ve had
Can make a good man bad
So for once in my life
Let me get what I want
Lord knows, it would be the first time

Guitarist/composer Johnny Marr didn’t find out about it until yesterday, but as soon as he did he responded. “I never in a million years would’ve thought this could come to pass,” he wrote. “Consider this shit shut right down right now.” He didn’t say what action he would take.

There’s been nothing about it from Morrissey, who wrote the lyrics, which he described as “a very brief punch in the face.” To people who commented on the tune’s under-two-minute running time, he said, “Lengthening the song would, to my mind, have simply been explaining the blindingly obvious.” It wasn’t until years later that he said he regretted consigning it to a B-side and failing to include it on any but their compilation LPs.

Others were quicker to recognize the song’s potential. The Dream Academy, the only rock band I know of with an oboist, recorded it the next year in an arrangement that extended it to beyond three minutes. They, too, never included it on an LP, but their cover made the lower reaches of the UK charts and was used in the John Hughes film “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”