Happy Anniversary: The Smiths, “I Started Something I Couldn't Finish”
28 years ago today, The Smiths released the second UK single from their final studio album, Strangeways, Here We Come, but when they did so, it wasn't the song they'd originally selected.
On August 19, 1987, a gentleman named Michael Robert Ryan went on a shooting rampage in Hungerford, England, killing 16 people before turning the gun on himself. The incident, which was quickly dubbed “The Hungerford Massacre,” was still fresh enough in the minds of the British populace-that sort of thing almost never happens over there, you know-that The Smiths' label decided that it might be wiser if the band set aside their intended second single, “Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before,” lest anyone find themselves traumatized by hearing Morrissey sing about how “the pain was enough to make a shy, bald Buddhist reflect and plan a mass murder.”
Instead, “I Started Something I Couldn't Finish” was chosen to replace “Stop Me,” and while it still provided the band with another top-40 hit in the UK—it hit #23—its climb ceased a full 10 spots lower than the first single from the album, “Girlfriend in a Coma.” Meanwhile, “Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before” ended up being released as a single in other territories,
Arguably the most interesting thing to result from the switch-up in singles was the video, mostly because of an executive decision somewhere up the chain of command to just use the same video for both “I Started Something I Couldn't Finish” and “Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before.” That's right: if you remember the video with Morrissey and a bunch of lookalikes pedaling their bikes around Manchester, then you've seen the video for both songs.
You might be thinking that this is was a cost-cutting copout, and fair enough, it probably was, but when you consider that the band had already broken up by that point and it's not like anyone was lip-synching in the video anyway, it was probably the only video they were going to get, so what they really deserve is kudos for making the most of what they had.
