Colin Meloy - "I Know Very Well How I Got My Name"

Colin talks Moz in The Believer:

BLVR: I noticed a Morrissey connection, and I know you’ve addressed it in interviews. I hear it in vocal inflections but it’s funny because, to me, your songwriting is nothing like Morrissey’s. He’s known for introspection and here you are writing these third-person narratives about Victorian rogues. Maybe you took that same urgency and desperation and applied it to these characters of yours?

CM: Absolutely. Morrissey has been a huge influence on me and I think he tends to get overlooked as a songwriter just because “Morrissey” as a character tends to outshine what he’s created. I think he is a phenomenal songwriter—an incredibly complex and incredibly intelligent songwriter. He’s writing songs that work on so many different levels. I continually go back to the Smiths and to some of his early solo work and find something new. Come at it from a different angle, from a different mode of experience and think, “OK, OK I think I get it!” So many layers of irony…

I think of his literary allusions, the flaws of his characters, his self-referential tone, and how well he treats that. That’s one of his strongest traits and it’s also what he gets a lot of criticism for: his being this sort of egomaniacal character in songs when in fact there’s heaps and heaps of irony there—I’m talking strata upon strata. Like there is that egoism, but it’s defending a very, very sincere fragility, but also poking fun at that at the same time—poking fun at shyness and extrovertedness.

There are so many different levels to him, and he’s just so funny and cutting and people don’t see how funny he is and what a sense of humor he has. They just see the surface. So, that’s definitely been the inspiration.


The original; a B-side to the Suedehead single, released February 1988:

Morrissey - "I Know Very Well How I Got My Name"