The Smiths - I Started Something I Couldn't Finish (Official Promo Video)

Official promo video for The Smiths 1987 single I Started Something I Couldn't Finish. Directed by Tim Broad.

Note: The video is slightly different to the one originally produced for Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before and used on There Is A Light That Never Goes Out thereafter.

• Category

  Music

[NeverGetOld2009]

Typical me, typical me, typical me...

:))

[Kurt Wagner]

One of the greatest bands of all the time!!

[mojav26]

Very interesting. I'd heard of this affair but thanks for the details. And you're probably right about the gilded beams, but poetry can be reinterpreted!

[Homar Marchebout-García de la Cadena]

Oh, yes. The gilded beams would then refer to the coat of arms of the Marquissate of Queensberry. Google it, and you will see two gilded beams traversing azure fields of Crusade crosses in it... Which is ridiculously pretentious, as the Queensberry Marquessate does not date back past the 16th century, and the last crusade took place during the 13th.

[Homar Marchebout-García de la Cadena]

.... As he had called Wilde a "somdomite". The lyrics "I forced you to a zone and you were clearly never meant to go" is the fact that he forced both Douglass and his father the Marquiss into a trial none wanted to be in, much less alone Wilde, who ended up sentenced to 24 months half labour, of which three he spent initially in a holding pen, two in an infirmary, and one that was commuted due to illness, making them actually 18, as in "18 months hard labour seems fair enough".

[Homar Marchebout-García de la Cadena]

I read in the Times, more than 20 years ago, that Morrissey wrote this song referring to Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, both a gay couple in Victorian England at the end of the 19th century. There is even a picture of him in the video, with "hair brushed and parted" in the middle. The thing that he claims to have started, and now somehow can't seem to finish would have been the trial for libel Wilde presented against Douglas' father, the Marquiss of Queensberry...

[Homar Marchebout-García de la Cadena]

It appears that there is a need to clarify that the fact that someone needs to work for a living does not convert such a person into "working class" in or by itself: Working class refers to those unskilled or semi-skilled labourers who rely on government, unions or their bosses for their welfare, not on family and/or professional degrees, as is the case with hipsters. The distinction is made from both sides to underline differences that do exist and both mark and mar their lives throughout.

[mcn625]

I don't get the hipster hate. At least they are for the most part working class people. I live in Philadelphia and believe me, the hipsters keep their neighborhoods nice. The few neighborhoods here that haven't been turned into crime ridden ghettos, are the ones dominated by hipsters. They're not rich, but regular working class. Sorry but it's true, at least here anyway

[tsartodd]

this video was really filmed in Manchester, England in 1987. but it could've been filmed in Williamsburg, Brooklyn yesterday afternoon given all of the hipster douchebags running around there.

[musicmadjenny]

Tune.

[laspilly]

Their look is pretty contemporary

[hobbitta]

hahaha.... why?