"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:
“Helen: What do you do?
Don: Yes, what do I do? I’m a writer. I’ve just started a novel. As a matter of fact, I’ve started several but I never seem to finish one.
Helen: Well, in that case, why don’t you write short stories?
Don: Oh, I have some of those. The first paragraph.”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“None can re-enter there—
No thief so politic,
No Satan with a royal trick
Steal in by window, chink, or hole,
To bind or unbind, add what lacked,
Insert a leaf, or forge a name,
New-face or finish what is packed,
Alter or mend eternal fact.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)