November Spawned A Monster
"... this little ditty has just about been squeezed juiceless"
"A really fucking cool song"

November Spawned A MonsterHe Knows I'd Love To See Him
The Girl Least Likely To
Released In April 1990

Yea-Sayers:

"It's a really fucking cool song."
- James Aitken (EMF), Q, September 1992


Nay-Sayers:

From the belly of the beast the Lord Of The Flies continues to malk and blether as he watches his hordes of former fans defect in droves to the beflared basin-cut muppets of the council estate hippy-dippy Mankdance. Presumably 'NSAM' is about child murderers rather than Pete Waterman or the Queen (although doubtless Mobo Ra would claim that they're all the same thing anyway really). Like all great pop acts Morrissey repeats his one tune endlessly (POP FACT: You can sing all Morrissey lyrics to all his 'tunes') and to tell the truth, this little ditty has just about been squeezed juiceless.
To have one flopped single, Mr. Laughaminute, could be considered unfortunate. To have several suggests a distinct drying up of the old creative gastrics. You are a genius - we all know this. Can I suggest that you take some time off, get laid and return refreshed so's you can finally get your finger out and start poking it in some boggly eyeballs before it's too late and you finally turn into Julian Cope?
There's an upturn on the way, Mobbydog, and sad and whiny and masochistically melancholic grey canvases of wangst ain't going to cut it any more.
- Steven Wells, NME


Moz-Speak:

"...then there's 'November' (Spawned A Monster) which in a sense is my version of the New York Dolls' 'Frankenstein'. It's about a person who's confined to a wheelchair, who can't make much sense of her life and whose only ambition is to walk down the road in clothes she personally went out and chose and bought herself. And that is as far as her ambitions can stretch."
- Morrissey, The Face, March 1990

"['The Girl Least Likely To' is about] that friend you have who really believes in the imminence of her success yet secretly you know it's never going to happen for her"
- Morrissey, The Face, March 1990

"It's that attitude that excludes those people who are inverted commas, italics, whatever, less fortunate than the rest of us. They think they're being protective but they're not, they're being insultive (sic). They're the type of people who will condemn me for even considering writing a song about a person who is, inverted commas, incapacitated etc."
Were you referring to one person in particular?
" No, if you're a genuine artist you have a very powerful... oh God... vision of most situations, whether or not they're painful, as in my case they most often are. I don't have to know people. It's a matter of understanding many extreme situations in life. And if you see someone in what we oddly refer to as an unfortunate situation, someone who's wheelchair bound, if you're very perceptive and sensitive you can fully imagine the lifelong frustrations of constantly being discussed by other people, and constantly having people being irritatingly kind to you. "
- Morrissey on 'November...', Vox, November 1990

"... she's the oddest most eccentric person I've ever met, I went into the vocal booth and said 'Just simply give birth', which she most expertly did, while I stood behind with a mop and a bucket."
-Morrissey on Mary Margaret O'Hara, Vox, November 1990