I Started Something I Couldn't Finish

"I Started Something I Couldn't Finish" is a song by The Smiths. It was released as a single in November 1987, reaching #23 in the UK Singles Chart.

It was the second of three UK singles from the band's last studio album Strangeways, Here We Come, and was released after the band had announced their split. The record company had originally intended to release "Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before" as a single in the UK but felt this would be inappropriate following the Hungerford massacre (the lyrics contain a reference to "mass murder").

"Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before" was still released as a single in other countries, but its promotional video—which featured Morrissey plus a large number of Morrissey lookalikes—was used in the UK to promote "I Started Something I Couldn't Finish".

The track features an outtake during the fade-out at the end, with Morrissey asking "Okay Stephen (Street, the Producer) shall we do that one again?"

The cover of the single features actress Avril Angers in a film still from the 1966 film The Family Way.

Read more about I Started Something I Couldn't Finish:  Track Listing, Etchings On Vinyl

Famous quotes containing the words started and/or finish:

    “According to Father’s lexicon people who started on a job and didn’t stay at it for 50 years were “quitters.” If you stayed 20 years and then shifted to more congenial work you were a “drifter.””
    —Richard Bissell (1913–1977)

    “To finish the moment, to find the journey’s end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. It is not the part of men, but of fanatics, or of mathematicians, if you will, to say, that, the shortness of life considered, it is not worth caring whether for so short a duration we were sprawling in want, or sitting high. Since our office is with moments, let us husband them.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)