How Soon Is Now? is an 80’s classic, instantly recognizable, and a great song. The guitar, Morrissey’s vocals, the industrial sounds, it all really works, and like many, I can identify with the themes of shyness and alienation expressed by the protagonist.
From Wikipedia:
The song contains only one verse which is repeated twice, plus a chorus and a bridge. The subject is an individual who cannot find a way to break out of his shyness. Two couplets from the song are well known in pop culture, the opening to the verse: “I am the son, and the heir, of a shyness that is criminally vulgar / I am the son and heir, of nothing in particular”, and the chorus: “I am human and I need to be loved / Just like everybody else does”. The opening was adapted from a line in George Eliot’s Middlemarch: “To be born the son of a Middlemarch manufacturer, and inevitable heir to nothing in particular”.[1] While the track is cited as having changed U.S. media perception of the band as “some wacky gay-rock crusade”, the lyrics have also been taken as specifically relating to contemporary Manchester gay club culture.
And of course, the lyrics:
I am the son
and the heir
Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar
I am the son and heir
Of nothing in particular
You shut your mouth
How can you say
I go about things the wrong way
I am Human and I need to be loved
Just like everybody else does
I am the son
and the heir
Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar
I am the son and the heir
Of nothing in particular
You shut your mouth
How can you say
I go about things the wrong way
I am Human and I need to be loved
Just like everybody else does
There’s a club, if you’d like to go
You could meet somebody who really loves you
So you go, and you stand on your own
And you leave on your own
And you go home
And you cry
And you want to die
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
I am Human And I need to be loved
Just like everybody else does
