Bigmouth Strikes Again

Morrissey wrote the lyric in summer 1985, the last of three about his frustration with the music industry after The Boy with the Thorn in His Side and Rubber Ring. It is aimed at the music press, and he said it was a really funny song, and that calling it a parody would sound too much like self-celebration. The music grew from a riff Marr wrote at a soundcheck in 1985, and Marr said it was as close as the band came to the sound of his heroes, the early Rolling Stones. The recording was made at RAK Studios in London in August 1985. Kirsty MacColl sang a backing vocal that Marr found really weird, so Morrissey's own voice, sped up, replaced it and was credited to Ann Coates.

Rough Trade pressed for There Is a Light That Never Goes Out as the first single, but Marr insisted on this one. It came out in May 1986 with Money Changes Everything as the B-side, reached 26 in Britain, and has a James Dean photograph on the sleeve. Rolling Stone ranked it 13th among the band's songs and said the drum break alone was a comic masterpiece. Billboard put it second and NME fourth. Treepeople, Placebo and Slapshot have covered it.

Live

It was one of the songs debuted on a Scottish tour in September and October 1985, and the first logged performance was at the Magnum Leisure Centre in Irvine on 22 September 1985. It was played at Brixton Academy on 12 December 1986. A live version closes the album Rank, and one from the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, recorded in August 1986, was released in 2017.