Alt Rock Autumn Day Nine: This Charming Man By The Smiths

Day Nine.

Yesterday for day eight of Alt Rock Autumn, I examined the song writing and meaning of the title, Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana. Who knew Kurt Cobain was so fond of the Pixies? Now today for day nine, I’ll be going back in time to the early 80s to cover a song from The Smiths.

Today, I’ll be looking at This Charming Man by The Smiths.

This Charming Man released on October 31, 1983 after being recorded during the month of October and was on The Smiths self titled album that came out in 1984. The song was later remastered in 2011. I would say that This Charming Man is probably my favorite song from The Smiths song because it’s so upbeat and has a high range of playability. You can sing along to it alone in you room, jam out to it with friends in your car, or throw it on at the beach when you’re playing spike ball. The opportunities for This Charming Man are endless.

The song opens with a “di, di, di, didi, dididi, di, di, di” guitar melody that’s very pleasant and sticks throughout the song. It gets overtaken by the drums and more guitar play, but it’s the underlying beat for the whole song.

When I covered Speed Racer by Hers, I mentioned how I like to paint a picture of a movie when a song is maybe a bit too vague lyrically or doesn’t tell a direct story. For This Charming Man, The Smiths are telling you a story.

The lyrics open with “Punctured bicycle on a hillside desolate, Will nature make a man of me yet?, When in this charming car, This charming man” Our male protagonist has punctured the tire on his bike, but a charming man has offered him a ride to suppress his troubles. Once in the charming mans car, the two begin to flirt a bit, and we see a dynamic of this wealthy, charming man, and what seems to be a poorer man in distress who popped his bike tire.

When the lyrics “Why pamper life's complexity, When the leather runs smooth on the passenger seat?” are sung, I think that Steven Morrissey is looking through the eyes of the protagonist who was picked up. He’s admiring the leather seats of this mans car while also questioning why a person would put so much money into their car. The two converse more and our charming man invites the protagonist out. There is some hesitation from the protagonist though, but the charming man is…charming. “I would go out tonight but I haven't got a stitch to wear, This man said, "It's gruesome that someone so handsome should care”.

Through all of Morrissey’s song writing, he uses phrases from films. The chorus of This Charming Man is no different. Morrissey pulls “Ah, a jumped-up pantry boy” from the 1972 British-American mystery comedy thriller film, Sleuth. A pantry boy is defined as a “low class, at the very bottom of the social scale” type of person. Our protagonist is a pantry boy.

Verse two opens with our protagonist once again questioning going out. “I would go out tonight but I haven't got a stitch to wear, This man said, "It's gruesome that someone so handsome should care”. The chorus then starts again as we’re given a short verse two.

“Ah, a jumped-up pantry boy, Who never knew his place, He said, "Return the ring", He knows so much about these things, He knows so much about these things, He knows so much about these things”. The “return the ring” makes me think that our pantry boy protagonist is engaged or married to another man. The charming man is attempting to get our protagonist to throw away his relationship and go out with him. The lyrics that follow are “He knows so much about these things, He knows so much about these things, He knows so much about these things”. This makes me think that this isn’t the first time the charming has done something to this extent.

It does upset me that our story of these two men with clear sexual tension ends here. We’re only introduced to their potential relationship and will never know how it ends. Does our pantry boy protagonist disregard his relationship and go out with this man? Does the charming man just drop off our protagonist and they never talk again? I NEED TO KNOW HOW THIS STORY ENDS.

In 1983, This Charming Man reached number one on the UK Indie chart and twenty five on the UK Singles chart. The following year in ‘84, it hit number fifty two on the Australian chart and fifteen on the New Zealand chart. Almost a decade later in 1992, This Charming man peaked at nine on the Irish charts and eight on the UK Singles chart. The smash hit earned a platinum certificate in the UK with over six hundred thousand records sold.