MORRISSEY - "THE MORE YOU IGNORE, THE CLOSER I GET" from his 1994 album, "Vauxhall & I"
This song makes me feel all kinds of wistful. I was 15 years old, a sophomore in high school and just coming into full fruition as a maniacal Smiths fan. Being the melodramatic sort that I was as a teenager, I listened to "The World Won't Listen" (1987) almost everyday on my hour-long bus ride to my all-girls Catholic high school, and played "Asleep" and "Stretch Out and Wait" over and over and over again. Morrissey understood the misery of having to wear an ill-fitting plaid jumper and itchy wool knee socks nearly every day of one's young life.
I was familiar with his solo stuff at that point, including 1992's "Your Arsenal" album (that features the increasingly-relevant-to-my-life single "We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful"), 1990's comp album "Bona Drag" ("November Spawned A Monster,") and 1988's 'Viva Hate" ("Suedehead," 'Everyday Is Like Sunday"), but nothing Morrissey put out under his own name lit my fire quite like this tune.
Because I worshipped Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr, I always bemoaned the loss of the element of his piercing fretwork on Morrissey's solo stuff. This song solved that problem for me. This track has biting but beautiful guitar work to match the equally biting wit hunkered down in Morrissey's lyrics. This song became Moz's first hit single in the U.S., and the album went Top 20 here as well. Not bad.
Here's a live version of this wonderfully 90's work from one of my very faves and Coachella 2009 artist:
Morrissey - The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get (1994 Live, Top of The Pops)
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