"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:
“Listen, that’s the one that done it. The dusters. They started it anyways. Blowin’ like this year after year. Blowin’ the land away. Blowin’ the crops away. Blowin’ us away now.”
—Nunnally Johnson (1897–1977)
“The mother must teach her son how to respect and follow the rules. She must teach him how to compete successfully with the other boys. And she must teach him how to find a woman to take care of him and finish the job she began of training him how to live in a family. But no matter how good a job a woman does in teaching a boy how to be a man, he knows that she is not the real thing, and so he tends to exaggerate the differences between men and women that she embodies.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)