Music

You Should Listen to this Song Right Now #79

Ganglord, Morrissey (Swords, 2009)

www.en.wikipedia.org

Incessant Airplay. That’s how they used to sell music, and heavy rotation was a music industry term for songs that one way or another got it. It referred to the large number of times a particular record was placed on turntables at radio stations and let to spin. Until the 1980s, this was the only way to get new music into the ears and brains of listeners, so heavy rotation meant increased sales — good for record companies and artists alike.

Some people still spin records at home and let them play. Most don’t. However, the term still applies, just in a different way. Streaming services like Spotify sell subscriptions to listeners and then pay artists based on listens. At least, that’s the way we think it works.

There are these things called algorithms and artificial intelligence involved now that have rapidly changed how this whole industry operates. But that’s for another time.

For me, these days, heavy rotation means a song that is in my head for some reason. Maybe for a moment, maybe for a day, maybe for longer. It’s a song that I come back to time and again, and it still feels just as good. This series of articles is dedicated to these songs.

My aim here is to highlight a particular song by a particular band or singer. It’s good to know a bit about the band, a bit about where the song fits into its history, and where the song fits into what was happening in music at that time. Then there’s the song itself. Who’s playing on it, what are the lyrics getting at, and why is it so good? How does it still occupy sonic space in our lives?

I’ll (try to) keep it short. It shouldn’t take you any longer to read this than to listen to the song itself. To that end, I put a YouTube video of the original recording at the top of the article so you can listen as you read. Or not. And because a song is often much different live than in the recording studio, I stick a live clip on at the end.

What song is in your head right now? Here’s the one that won’t leave mine today:

#79 — Ganglord, Morrissey (Swords, 2009)

[embed]Ganglord / Morrissey / Swords (2009) / Polydor Records / www.youtube.com

Yeah yeah, say what you like about Morrissey, plenty of people do. I’m not sure there’s an artist out there with more former fans. He’s pompous, he’s arrogant, he’s a right-wing nut job who’s lost his way, and has been resting on his gigantic Smiths-shaped laurels for years. And he cancels shows like the ship is going down.

To others, he continues to be idolized as a musical genius and one of the greatest lyricists of all time, and no matter how many concerts he doesn’t show up for, his fans remain legion and hang on his every word and lyric.

For the record, the one time that I have seen him live, in Lima, Peru, in December 2015, he did indeed perform, and it was a great show. But so was Johnny Marr, when I saw him last year, and he seemed a lot happier about being there.

I’m on the fence, you see. I find some of his views abhorrent, and as far as I’m concerned, his publicist should stop scheduling interviews. But I find a lot of his solo music — beginning with *Suedehead in 1998, [Tomorrow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDdQcfz6pbo) in 1992, and [Now My Heart is Full](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef2mzOKSwcM) in 1994- exhilarating. So what to do? He has a new album out now, “Makeup is a Lie”* — his fourteenth without the Smiths — and I guess I’ve answered my own question. Apparently, it is quite good.

But it’s a song from a few years ago, Ganglord, that I want to get into here. It is taken from his 2009 compilation album, “Swords,” and given the events in the United States in which he once lived (specifically, Los Angeles), its words, music, and general swagger could easily come from early 2026.

Be warned, if you are not into a massive drum sound, you might want to turn this down as things get going right away. You can ease into it, if you want, but I don’t think our Stephen Patrick has any intention of playing nice here. He’d want you to turn it up, because he has something to say about police overreach, and he, the drums, and menacing piano sequence that could have been nicked off a Massive Attack album, that kick things off, insist that you listen.

Then, at :36, one of the most instantly recognizable voices of the last 40 years enters the fray:

“Ganglord,

The police are

Kicking their way

Into my house

And haunting me, taunting me, wanting me

To break their laws”

Like I say, this could have been written in 2025 and early 2026 and included on his new album. The wash and crash of the cymbals and the crack of the snare drum rain down together, covering the listener in Morrissey’s disdain.

“And I’m turning to you, to save me”, he says to the ganglord, hitting the nail on the head as to why some people’s circumstances lead them to a life in the underworld of crime and why they don’t trust the police. He doesn’t blame them, he blames the police themselves and their methods.

“Ganglord, the police are grinding me into the ground. The headless pack, are back. Small boy jokes and loaded guns.” You can see him singing these verses live in Minneapolis this past January, and not necessarily as the virulent right-winger that he sometimes performs as in interviews.

I don’t know what it is about the oooh-na-na backing vocal that starts at 2:30 and leads into the second half of the song. But it does seem to fill the space between head nods. “Ganglord, the clock on the wall makes a joke of us all.”

“They say to protect and to serve. But what they really mean is get back to the ghetto.”

The 45-second coda at the end is a moment to cool off from the heat of LA and the song's searing indictment.

I’ll end the way I started; say what you like about Morrissey. But this song is a banger and is as good as anything else he’s done in his solo career, and dare I say, in the salad days with the Smiths as well.

Here he is, in younger days, 2007 to be precise, at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles:

[embed]Ganglord (live in 2007) / Morrissey / Swords (2009) / Polydor Records / www.youtube.com

If you’ve made it this far, it will occur to you that if this is #79 in this series, there must be 78 previous ones. Well, right you are, and here I will link access to the list of all of them, starting from the latest instalment and going all the way down to the first! These have all been generously published on The Riff, and I’m grateful to my guy, Kevin Alexander, for his continued support!

[embed]List: You Should Listen to This Song Right Now | Curated by Scott-Ryan Abt | Medium You Should Listen to This Song Right Now · 79 stories on Mediummedium.com