"You Have Killed Me" is the first single from the album Ringleader of the Tormentors by Morrissey. The single was released on 27 March 2006. The title track was written by Morrissey and Jesse Tobias. Morrissey said it would showcase the "marked difference in sound" brought about by the new influence of Tobias on Morrissey's work while Billboard magazine described it as a "simple, effective first single."
The lyrics reference Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1961 film, Accattone, about prostitution in the slums of Rome, as is shown in the first two lines of the lyrics ("Pasolini is me"/"Accattone you'll be"). There is much speculation as to the meaning of this quote. Some fans believe that it is merely an example on Rome's influence on Morrissey whereas some believe that it is a reference to the loss of virginity, since Accattone is Pasolini's first film.
A picture of Terence Stamp, main character of Pasolini's movie Teorema, was also chosen by Morrissey as cover of one of The Smiths early singles, What Difference Does It Make.
The lyrics also mention Anna Magnani, Luchino Visconti, and in some live performances Fellini. The references to Anna Magnani and Luchino Visconti probably refer to the Visconti's segment of the anthology film Siamo Donne, in which actresses are shown in their everyday lives, rather than as glamorous or sexualised. Anna Magnani frequently portrayed ordinary women who sacrificed everything for her family as in Visconti's Bellissima or Pasolini's Mamma Roma.
Read more about You Have Killed Me: Chart Positions, Musicians
Famous quotes containing the words killed me, you have and/or killed:
“You killed me, Margo. Im not taking the rap for you.”
—Blake Edwards (b. 1922)
“And he thought to himself...., Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry. But God said to him, You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”
—Bible: New Testament, Luke 12:17-20.
“Normality highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years.”
—R.D. (Ronald David)