The Moz/Smiths Top 100, Part 63: HOLD ON TO YOUR FRIENDS

How do you rate Hold On To Your Friends?


  • Total voters
    167

Houdini

Junior Member
While we wait for the new album to arrive, let us go about rating the songs we know, on a daily basis, and compile our own Morrissey/Smiths Top 100.
And instead of chronologically, let's do them alphabetically.

Song for Today: HOLD ON TO YOUR FRIENDS

Voting should be something along these lines:
10: Classic, perfect
9: Near classic, brilliant
8: Really good Moz/Smiths song
7: Good Moz/Smiths song
6: Decent, OK, Nothing special
5: Uninspired
4: Poor
3: Bad
2: Should never have been released
1: He/They should be ashamed

The songs we've done so far (voting is still open, click to vote):

Part 1: A Rush And A Push And The Land Is Ours
Part 2: A Song From Under The Floorboards
Part 3: A Swallow On My Neck
Part 4: Accept Yourself
Part 5: All The Lazy Dykes
Part 6: Alma Matters
Part 7: Alsatian Cousin
Part 8: Ambitious Outsiders
Part 9: America Is Not The World
Part 10: Ammunition
Part 11: Angel, Angel, Down We Go Together
Part 12: Asian Rut
Part 13: Ask
Part 14: Asleep
Part 15: At Amber
Part 16: At Last I Am Born
Part 17: Back To The Old House
Part 18: Barbarism Begins At Home
Part 19: Bengali In Platforms
Part 20: Best Friend On The Payroll
Part 21: Bigmouth Strikes Again
Part 22: Billy Budd
Part 23: Black-Eyed Susan
Part 24: Boxers
Part 25: Break Up The Family
Part 26: Cemetry Gates
Part 27: Certain People I Know
Part 28: Christian Dior
Part 29: Come Back To Camden
Part 30: Cosmic Dancer
Part 31: Dagenham Dave
Part 32: Dear God Please Help Me
Part 33: Death At One's Elbow
Part 34: Death Of A Disco Dancer
Part 35: Dial-A-Cliche
Part 36: Disappointed
Part 37: Do Your Best And Don't Worry
Part 38: Don't Make Fun Of Daddy's Voice
Part 39: Driving Your Girlfriend Home
Part 40: East West
Part 41: Everyday Is Like Sunday
Part 42: First Of The Gang To Die
Part 43: Found Found Found
Part 44: Frankly Mr Shankly
Part 45: Friday Mourning
Part 46: Ganglord
Part 47: Get Off The Stage
Part 48: Girl Afraid
Part 49: Girl Least Likely To
Part 50: Girlfriend In A Coma
Part 51: Glamorous Glue
Part 52: Golden Lights
Part 53: Good Looking Man About Town
Part 54: Hairdresser On Fire
Part 55: Half A Person
Part 56: Hand In Glove
Part 57: Handsome Devil
Part 58: Have-A-Go Merchant
Part 59: He Cried
Part 60: He Knows I'd Love To See Him
Part 61: Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now
Part 62: Heir Apparent
 
I love how this song builds and builds from its slow start to its dizzying conclusion.
 
Not my absolute fave, but I meant to say 7, not 6 :o .
 
TEN

i like this song an awful lot
 
Underrated.


Now you only call me when you're feeling depressed
 
This song has a lovely intro, a great verse melody, some touching lyrics but ... the chorus is just flimsy. Try whistling it!
I think it was the first Morrissey solo song to fail to reach the top 40; even more surprising considering it came straight after the top 10 success of The More You Ignore Me. Poor Moz didn't take it too well at the time.
The radio support that Ignore Me received simply wasn't there for this song. Not really surprising considering the song lacks anything resembling a catchy chorus.
It's a real shame that none of the true stand-out songs on Vauxhall was released as a single...
 
This song has a lovely intro, a great verse melody, some touching lyrics but ... the chorus is just flimsy. Try whistling it!
I think it was the first Morrissey solo song to fail to reach the top 40; even more surprising considering it came straight after the top 10 success of The More You Ignore Me. Poor Moz didn't take it too well at the time.
The radio support that Ignore Me received simply wasn't there for this song. Not really surprising considering the song lacks anything resembling a catchy chorus.
It's a real shame that none of the true stand-out songs on Vauxhall was released as a single...

With no video, no tour, no tv-performances, and a pretty poor b-side this song was bound to fail. I doubt if any of the other songs had fared better under the same circumstances. On the back of his best solo-album and his first Billboard-hit 1994 could have been a great year for Moz, but he decided to stay home.

Still a really good album track, like most of them really, and one wonders why Morrissey, in a live-capacity, seems to have reduced V&I to 3 songs only:
Now My Heart Is Full, Speedway and The More You Ignore Me.
 
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'You only call me when your feeling upset, when your happy I'm so far from your mind'

I'm sure we can all relate to that!

8

Yes I can - a friend of mine sort of began to just drift away from me around the time I first gave this song a good listen. Needless to say it remains a personal favourite of mine!
 
With no video, no tour, no tv-performances, and a pretty poor b-side this song was bound to fail. I doubt if any of the other songs had fared better under the same circumstances. On the back of his best solo-album and his first Billboard-hit 1994 could have been a great year for Moz, but he decided to stay home.

Still a really good album track, like most of them really, and one wonders why Morrissey, in a live-capacity, seems to have reduced V&I to 3 songs only:
Now My Heart Is Full, Speedway and The More You Ignore Me.

Ahh, the classic 70’s rock myth! That to sell records you need to go out on tour. Virtually no truth in that at all. With the exceptions of Viva Hate and Who Ate Me Curry, every single Morrissey solo album has had a fairly high first week in the chart and then disappeared within weeks, never to return. The reason why those two albums bucked the trend? Large (well for Moz) radio support for the second singles (Everyday and First of the Gang). Touring really doesn’t make a jot of difference. Viva Hate wasn’t toured at all; his second best-selling album. Kill Uncle was extensively toured; one of his worst selling albums. Touring is great for us fans but makes virtually no difference to record sales. Moz toured loads last year in the UK; small venues, arenas, festivals etc but nothing could revitalise ROTT’s fortunes. A brilliantly catchy second single like ‘First of the Gang’ (which we now know is officially as good as prime-time Smiths-see Houdini’s poll) would’ve done the trick…
A lack of an original b-side would’ve made some difference to Hold On; probably a few thousand sales, but it’s the airplay for the A-side which is the overwhelming factor. End of lecture!
 
Ahh, the classic 70’s rock myth! That to sell records you need to go out on tour. Virtually no truth in that at all. With the exceptions of Viva Hate and Who Ate Me Curry, every single Morrissey solo album has had a fairly high first week in the chart and then disappeared within weeks, never to return. The reason why those two albums bucked the trend? Large (well for Moz) radio support for the second singles (Everyday and First of the Gang). Touring really doesn’t make a jot of difference. Viva Hate wasn’t toured at all; his second best-selling album. Kill Uncle was extensively toured; one of his worst selling albums. Touring is great for us fans but makes virtually no difference to record sales. Moz toured loads last year in the UK; small venues, arenas, festivals etc but nothing could revitalise ROTT’s fortunes. A brilliantly catchy second single like ‘First of the Gang’ (which we now know is officially as good as prime-time Smiths-see Houdini’s poll) would’ve done the trick…
A lack of an original b-side would’ve made some difference to Hold On; probably a few thousand sales, but it’s the airplay for the A-side which is the overwhelming factor. End of lecture!

But ROTT still outsold Vauxhall and I in the UK, which is odd given that Vauxhall is considered his best by fans and critics.

I didn't say a tour would have made Hold On a hit. It wouldn't, but a tour, interviews and tv-performances (if only for The More You Ignore Me) would have made a lot of difference, if only to us fans. It's obvious that Moz lost a lot of fans in the 1990s and ironically his downfall started in 1994, the year he released his best album. Of course there are other factors at play here, but his refusal to go out and do anything (bar a few instores) was a big mistake, perhaps his biggest career mistake, and it cost him 10 year to recover from it.
 
But ROTT still outsold Vauxhall and I in the UK, which is odd given that Vauxhall is considered his best by fans and critics.

I didn't say a tour would have made Hold On a hit. It wouldn't, but a tour, interviews and tv-performances (if only for The More You Ignore Me) would have made a lot of difference, if only to us fans. It's obvious that Moz lost a lot of fans in the 1990s and ironically his downfall started in 1994, the year he released his best album. Of course there are other factors at play here, but his refusal to go out and do anything (bar a few instores) was a big mistake, perhaps his biggest career mistake, and it cost him 10 year to recover from it.

It’s not quite that simple. Morrissey lost lots of fans in the 89-91 period up to and around Kill Uncle when his singles stopped going top 20. So you could say his downfall started then. He then had a resurgence in popularity for Your Arsenal (singles top 20 again) and Vauxhall which saw him back with a top 10 single and gold album.
Then things dropped away in the mid/late 90’s but that was more to do with releasing bafflingly bad singles like Roy’s Keen and Dagenham Dave than not touring or refusing to give interviews.
Interviews and one-off TV appearances etc are great for the fan-base but they have a negligible impact on record sales. It’s all about getting catchy songs played heavily on the radio.
Maurice
PS Quarry outsold all Moz and Smiths albums yet no-one (not even here!), would claim it to be the best so it's not that surprising that ROTT outsold Vauxhall (although it probably won't in the long term). Critical acclaim and record sales often don't go hand in hand…
 
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But ROTT still outsold Vauxhall and I in the UK, which is odd given that Vauxhall is considered his best by fans and critics.

I didn't say a tour would have made Hold On a hit. It wouldn't, but a tour, interviews and tv-performances (if only for The More You Ignore Me) would have made a lot of difference, if only to us fans. It's obvious that Moz lost a lot of fans in the 1990s and ironically his downfall started in 1994, the year he released his best album. Of course there are other factors at play here, but his refusal to go out and do anything (bar a few instores) was a big mistake, perhaps his biggest career mistake, and it cost him 10 year to recover from it.

Wasn't that a really difficult time for him anyway though? He'd just lost three friends and colleagues and was in mourning and probably felt like the last thing he wanted to do is go out and sing. If he'd have forced himself out on the road it might have been the end of his career.
 
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