Wiki
-
Length
3:13
"Bigmouth Strikes Again" is a 1986 song by the English rock band the Smiths from their third album "The Queen Is Dead". Written by Johnny Marr and Morrissey, the song features self-deprecating lyrics that reflected Morrissey's frustrations with the music industry at the time. Musically, the song was inspired by the Rolling Stones' "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and centres around a guitar riff that Marr wrote during a 1985 soundcheck.
"Bigmouth Strikes Again" was released as the lead single from the album, bypassing Rough Trade's preferred choice, "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out". The single reached number 26 in the UK Singles Chart and has since seen critical acclaim along with several version recorded by other artists.
"Bigmouth Strikes Again" began as a lyric written by Morrissey in the summer of 1985. The lyric was the final one of three written about Morrissey's frustration with the music industry, the previous two being "The Boy with the Thorn in His Side" and "Rubber Ring." "Bigmouth Strikes Again" specifically reflects Morrissey's negative experiences with the music press. When asked by the NME about the song, Morrissey replied, "I can't think of one sentence . We're still at that stage where if I rescued a kitten from drowning, they'd say: 'Morrissey Mauls Kitten's Body'. So what can you do?"
Morrissey intended the lyrics of the song to be humorous; he explained, "I would call it a parody if that sounded less like self-celebration, which it definitely wasn't. It was just a really funny song". Drummer Mike Joyce commented, "What a fantastic title – one of Mozzer's better ones. And with this song, you can see why he made journalists cream their pants. Listen to the lyrical content. He was a one-off."
Johnny Marr based the song's music on a guitar riff he had written during a soundcheck of the band's 1985 tour. Marr later claimed that he had been inspired by The Rolling Stones' "Jumpin' Jack Flash", stating, "I wanted something that was a rush all the way through, without a distinct middle eight as such. I thought the guitar breaks should be percussive, not too pretty or cordial". Marr described the song as being "as close as getting to the sound of my heroes as we came".
Track descriptions on Last.fm are editable by everyone. Feel free to contribute!
All user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.
![Unknown Pleasures [Collector's Edition] Disc 1](https://lastfm.freetls.fastly.net/i/u/300x300/e3fe23fa23107539fc3d12cc1eb9d0d0.jpg)
