The Smiths - Still Ill (1984)

It's no surprise three of the four "Recession Years" songs so far come from debut albums and young musicians. Youths are angry; and they are the ones usually most affected by recession. The Smiths were angry, but in a different way than The Clash or The Jam. They also had in Morrissey arguably the greatest lyricist in rock history; certainly the most literate.

"Still Ill" is probably both a relationships song and a comment on employment and life at the time in England. It starts with a straigthforward statement: "I decree today that life is simply taking and not giving". The line doubles as a critique of both Thatcher's government but of current social values as well. The government is only collecting and not providing for the poor; but English people are also trapped in a consumerism world, not caring for anyone else than themselves. "England is mine and it owes me a living" Morrissey continues; and the heating wouldn't work.
Work and employment - the 9-to-5 daily routine - were considered by Morrissey as a sheer mind- and soul-crushing experience which must be avoided at all costs. For him, staying on the dole was a conscious choice. Nowhere this is clearer than in "You've Got Everything Now" from their debut album, where he explicitly states "I never had a job because I never wanted one". In "Still Ill", he similarly suggests "If you must go to work tomorrow, well, if I were you I really wouldn't bother, for there are brighter sides in life". The message again here is double: he makes us clear of his beliefs about work in general; but he also implies that the type of jobs existing is not worth the effort.
Morrissey expresses with the line "We cannot cling to the old dreams anymore" a deep longing of the past, of a time where things were better. In that sense, he shares this view with other fellow recession songwriters: in "Ghost Town" The Specials asked "Do you remember the good old days before the ghost town?"; in "Town Called Malice" Paul Weller noted "those rosey days are few''.
The rest of "Still Ill" is an exercise in ambiguity: what is the illness that Morrissey suffers from throughtout the song ("Am I still ill?")? Is he lovesick, is he mentally troubled, or literally ill? It is never actually revealed. In another verse he continues thinking loudly, pondering "Does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body? I don't know...", one of his finest lyrics.

The song's textbook rock rhythm does not do quite justice to Johnny Marr's beautiful arpeggio work which accentuates the sad and nostalgic aura of Morrissey's vocals and words.
"Still Ill" has been performed by Morrissey during his recent solo tours (where he often changed the lyric from "England is mine" to "England is a swine").