The sentimentalists of Britain might still say "Ah, I remember that last summer by the sea", but the British have a peculiarly on-off, ambivalent relationship with their seaside these days. The old simplistic affection disappeared long ago, and almost all rhetoric about our coastline (apart from the odd student-fuelled rejuvenation, as in Bournemouth) is now retrospective, dissecting and analysing what it once was, and ruefully accepting that its future will inevitably bring a continuing slow decline.
This song has been compared to John Betjeman: half-right. Betjeman declared that there was a certain kind of place that was so unpleasant, so hideous, that a friendly, gentle bombing might benefit Britain in the long term. But the target of his ire were the new towns, those curiously rootless, utopian centres for the London overspill that populated the south-east of England between the 1920s and the 1970s, and which themselves have fallen into a similar decay. He was alienated by, and couldn't relate to, their essential newness, while simultaneously feeling deeply reassured by the weight of history carried by the seaside. When Betjeman looked on a windswept beach in mid-winter, he saw the heart of the England he cherished. When Morrissey looked on the same sight, he saw everything he felt had grown old, tired and desperate, however appealing it may had once been. In short, he felt that elimination of this dying culture by nuclear war - a receding threat by 1988, but a universal fear only five years before - might not necessarily be a bad thing, since at least it would lift the crushing weight of history from the British psyche.
Every Day Is Like Sunday itself is a slow, mournful piece, with its methodical chord progression, the deeply sad echo on Morrissey's voice, and the sincere politeness of his call for armageddon. It sounds like its subject matter, paced like a walk under grey skies, a slow trudge through the puddles, with a deep melancholia in its arrangement which suggests a knowledge that things were, once, different. Certainly, the resorts of East Kent seemed like this to me around 1988. And if you've ever surveyed a town at the end of its natural life, desperately waiting for the rejuvenation that you know can never now come, its erstwhile raison d'etre disappeared, its population ageing and depressed, you know exactly what this song is about.
Cherish this as the last moment when Morrissey's usual recurring subject matter sounded fresh and (however depressing) fascinating, one of the last real flourishes of his genius before his descent into repetition, pastiche, and an endless investigation of the same increasingly thin territory. Remember him this way.
Robin Carmody, 16th August 2000
http://www.elidor.freeserve.co.uk/80s.htm