#266 (of 365) "How Soon is Now?" The Smiths

On Valentine's Day in 1990, an 18-year-old boy who wanted desperately to kiss another boy, but who had never even come close to a moment like that in his entire life growing up in the significantly less-gay-friendly-than-now 1980s, was doing homework at his suite mate's desk because his roommate was sleeping or studying in his own room, and he picked out a CD from his suite mate's kind of awesome collection, choosing the band that he'd heard good things about, but had really only heard songs from its lead singer, now solo, and that day in 1990, I listened to my first Smiths album, nearly two years after they'd already broken up. It changed my music life. That spring, at Rutgers, I'd walk around campus listening on my Walkman to a cassette copy of The Queen is Dead b/w Meat is Murder (one on each side of the copy I'd made from my suite mate's collection), feeling all the feelings that a lonely teenage boy might feel, to a soundtrack that seemed written exactly for me at the time. I get it--the feelings were pretty universal--and Morrissey had a lot of lonely/sexuality-based struggles while writing all those lyrics, but they definitely spoke to me for a long time.

When you say it's gonna happen now, well when exactly do you mean?
See I've already waited too long, and all my hope is gone.

"How Soon is Now?" - The Smiths // Meat is Murder (1984)