The Smiths song .. apathy??

"what difference does it make"??

I think esoj's answer is about the best you'll get.

I don't think the message of any Smiths song is that apathy is OK.

Maybe 'Stretch Out And Wait' is about being apathetic towards certain things and surrendering yourself to sex.

i posted for a pal who writes about employment law and thinks her sub-heading is to be found in that title, is all. i've never listened to the smiths.

Oh! so electric Jim, is that a proper, ie non-sarcastic, answer? you could lie to me and I wouldn't know so I'm your mercy. behave.

yes that was a proper answer

i didn't even realise the sarcasm potential to be honest

Is that sarcastic too...?

d'oh!

i think e s o j is so brimming with sarcastic potential he doesn't even realise he has a gift.

thank you SO much for your help.

still ill - "if you must go to work tomorrow / well if i were you i really wouldn't bother / for there are brighter sides to life and i should know becos i've seen them / but not very often"

work is a four letter word, of course [but it's a cover, and one of their least-loved recordings]

um... nowhere fast - "when i'm lying in my bed / i think about life
and i think about death / and neither one particularly appeals to me"

also, i guess, "the poor and the needy are selfish and greedy on her [the queen's] terms"

pre-smiths he never did have a proper job, right? hence a lot of the early stuff has a strong unemployed perspective. ties in to the obsession with ambiguity i think. didn't have much of a work ethic when it came to his girlfriend annalisa, either.

actually up to the end he's berating work - shoplifters and hooligans, the cilla black tune, castigating the diligent and industrious star of paint a vulgar picture, refusing to write words for "money changes everything". on the last smiths song, i won't share you - his drive, ambition and zeal incline him to suicide rather than a steady job. however he is in real life too apathetic to do finish the job, despite the urging of thousands of intolerant macho people such as black flag fans. cue band breakup and sordid wrangling over money.

Pre-Smiths Morrissey worked as a clerk for long enough to save up and visit relatives in America.

Working a job sucks, especially compared to being in a band and getting famious. The "pays my way and carrodes my soul" message is about hating to do the "responsible thing" and turn into a wage slave. I'm glad he didn't.
What does not wanting to work have to do with apathy?
Morrisey was gloomy and mopy, but he was putting millions of people's reality out there, ie. "Life sucks because I have to DO all this shit I don't want to."