"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:
“A piper in the streets to-day
Set up, and tuned, and started to play,”
—“Seumas” “O’Sullivan” (1879–1958)
“An accurate charting of the American woman’s progress through history might look more like a corkscrew tilted slightly to one side, its loops inching closer to the line of freedom with the passage of time—but like a mathematical curve approaching infinity, never touching its goal. . . . Each time, the spiral turns her back just short of the finish line.”
—Susan Faludi (20th century)