Morrissey A-Z: "Spent the Day in Bed"

BookishBoy

Well-Known Member






Today's song is this Morrissey/Manzur composition, the lead single from the Low in High School album. (It reached #69 on the UK singles chart.)

What do we think?
 
I didn’t like it on first hearing it, I thought the music sounded like a video game soundtrack. But I enjoy it now and think it’s a great song.
 
No. No. No. Lyrically it’s way too silly, but I could live with that had the music not been so GODDAMN ANNOYING. I know Gustavo must think he’s a terribly proficient musician and an exciting composer, but the truth is that he couldn’t write a straightforward and strong tune to save his life. How this song nearly became a hit I will never understand.
 
Hearing this on the wireless for the first time was like watching the second plane fly into the twin towers.

I knew something wasn’t quite right
But couldn’t quite work out what the hell was going on...

Fast forward a few years and I find it to be still a confusing song..
Sometimes I can sing along and really enjoy it, other days it’s like getting your council tax bill, you just want to rip it up and forget about how much you feel pissed off.

Good day 6/10
Council tax bill day 0/10
 
quite like it,this song was everywhere,i was in tesco at three o clock on a saturday and it came blaring out the speakers,sounded great.it was almost like a comeback song the way it was premiered on chris evans show.one thing i dont like is the Do As I Wish being sung eight times.
8 double hotel cotton/10 500 thread count.
 
This is such a strange one for me - I hated it on first listen but then it grew and grew on me and now I think it's a witty, catchy pop song about mental health and loneliness.

(Although, let's be fair, it is almost ruined by the cringe lyrics about watching the news. I mean, it's great that you tell your friends that kind of thing, fair enough, but don't put it in a bloody song! You might as well sing "And I recommend to all of my friends that they / Stop shopping online / Because the retail experience is much better in person"...)
 
A more polarising song than I would have thought. Sure, some of the lyrics are painfully basic (really, Moz, “the news contrived to frighten” us? Never heard that one before), but I actually really like the tune and the bridge section has some great vocals. The little keyboard riff provides some more complex instrumental interplay that builds more layers to the song that one might have thought. And, after another drought of Moz content, it was kinda a hit (!) - for him, and his seeming obsession with Polish chart placements, this must have been an up-yours to the so-called “pop establishment.” So, yeah, I like this song, despite the amount of times I’ve heard it.
Weird video, though.
8/10
 
A more polarising song than I would have thought. Sure, some of the lyrics are painfully basic (really, Moz, “the news contrived to frighten” us? Never heard that one before), but I actually really like the tune and the bridge section has some great vocals. The little keyboard riff provides some more complex instrumental interplay that builds more layers to the song that one might have thought. And, after another drought of Moz content, it was kinda a hit (!) - for him, and his seeming obsession with Polish chart placements, this must have been an up-yours to the so-called “pop establishment.” So, yeah, I like this song, despite the amount of times I’ve heard it.
Weird video, though.
8/10
Yes, for a modern day Morrissey song, it really was a hit: its plays on YouTube dwarf most of the other songs we've looked at so far in the A-Z - 3.7 million, when I looked this morning.
 
I really like this. Many witty lines (except the "stop following the news" part), a catchy melody and in 2017 this was exactly the Morrissey single world needed instead of some nonsensical political statement (like World Peace Is Not Your business) or a forced trite pop ditty (Kiss Me a Lot). Of course he had to blew all the goodwill brought by this with that SPiegel interview, but that's Morrissey.
 
This is such a strange one for me - I hated it on first listen but then it grew and grew on me and now I think it's a witty, catchy pop song about mental health and loneliness.

(Although, let's be fair, it is almost ruined by the cringe lyrics about watching the news. I mean, it's great that you tell your friends that kind of thing, fair enough, but don't put it in a bloody song! You might as well sing "And I recommend to all of my friends that they / Stop shopping online / Because the retail experience is much better in person"...)
Have to say that I disagree with you here. I think the 'stop watching the news' line is actually pretty good and original advice, as is the follow-up about the news contriving to frighten you, and making you feel like your mind is not your own. It's well observed and expressed, and particularly resonant in these current times. The lyric that makes me cringe (and almost ruins the song) is 'no bus, no boss, no rain, no train etc' which just seems childish and lazy.
The song may prove to be Morrissey's last ever airplay hit. All the Morrissey-friendly UK radio stations A-listed this making it his best known song since First of the Gang, which is why it gets such a good reception at concerts. It's nowhere near his best song, but it's one of his best known.
 
Have to say that I disagree with you here. I think the 'stop watching the news' line is actually pretty good and original advice, as is the follow-up about the news contriving to frighten you, and making you feel like your mind is not your own. It's well observed and expressed, and particularly resonant in these current times. The lyric that makes me cringe (and almost ruins the song) is 'no bus, no boss, no rain, no train etc' which just seems childish and lazy.
The song may prove to be Morrissey's last ever airplay hit. All the Morrissey-friendly UK radio stations A-listed this making it his best known song since First of the Gang, which is why it gets such a good reception at concerts. It's nowhere near his best song, but it's one of his best known.
Absolutely fair enough! (Weirdly, I love the "no bus, no boss, no rain, no train" section, which seems to sum up perfectly the drudgery of a daily commute to a crappy job - although the emasculation / castration bit just makes me laugh...)
 
Big disappointment on first listen and it never really got better. I guess it's Gustavo's strange keyboard motif that doesn't reach me at all. It's all very trying but without the grandeur and the big chorus that it desperately needed for a lead single after WPINOYB. And no, the NEWS are not just there to scare me and keep me down. Silly contrarian rhetoric!
 
I could not listen to this for more than 3 seconds for a long time, but then it popped up on shuffle in the car the other day and it seems that it might be time to revise things a little. The ADHD keyboard frippery is very annoying, akin to a Commodore64 game loading in 1985, and some of the lyrics are beyond awful ("pillows like pillars"?) but it bounces along quite harmlessly and then end refrain is a pleasant earworm. I will make a point of listening to it again later on and, if I don't have a spasm, will add it to the list of 'not essential but just about okay' playlist of recent Moz songs.
 
Like others here, I was disappointed when I first heard Spent The Day in Bed – being the lead single of the album I was hoping for something a little… stronger. On hearing this and seeing that album ‘artwork’ for Low In High School, I was rather nervous. As an album track or B side it would have been fine, but as a single I find it weak. (Although it is a song a couple of my non-Morrissey-fan friends seemed to enjoy). It has grown on my over the last 4 or so years, but it’s not going to get into my personal Morrissey Top 100 list (should I ever take the time to make one).

If I had a time machine and had to spend the day in bed with any Smiths / Morrissey cover star it certainly wouldn’t be Rocky Graziano! Alexandra Bastedo perhaps…. ;)
 
While I wasn’t disappointed at first hearing I was surprised at the keyboard riff. It grew on me real fast though as I couldn’t stop humming it. It’s nicely melodic and I loved the lyrics and just damn catchy. I don’t find the part about the news to be untrue just not the whole truth or the whole picture. I know it can be frustrating when so many conspiracy nuts say something similar and i wish morrissey would be wise enough to avoid these superficial similarities but here we are
 
I REALLY disliked this song at first. But, it has grown on me a bit. Especially since much of LIHS is so dull.
 
It's a great single which I also heard first via Chris Evans R2 show (I recall it well; I was on my way to Leeds of all places) - he liked it; it's very catchy, love the pulsing bass on this especially. 'The news contrives to frighten you' aligns with the later 'I do not read newspapers' on IANADOAC track, & which continued Moz's dislike/condemnation of MSM. It's probably the weakest track on LIHS &, for me, seems a little bit of an oddball when compared to the depth & sentiment of the rest of the album. Lyrically some sections are decent, some not so, but enjoyable all the same. Vocally, pretty solid I reckon. So I recommend, to all of my friends...'Be good to yourself for once'...& just enjoy it.
Poptastic!
 
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