Ah, into the murky depths that is the whats and hows of preference.
I really don't know. I've observed, for my own part, a general tendency for the first record I really get into by a given artist to assume the subsequent function of a template. That is, it tends to more or less consciously define my expectations or what I'm looking for in subsequent offerings. That again tends to block appreciation of new elements in later work, who get overshadowed by the relative absence of the things you loved in the first record and keep listening out for. It took me many years to develop any great affection for Morrissey's solo work for this reason - it was always disappointing because I was listeninig for the Smiths and rarely found it, and even when I did it was a pale copy. Vauxhall broke that because it made me realise what I had been doing and how pointless it was, and that I needed to approach the music from a different angle. But there is still no way anything different he might do today will equal the early Smiths to me, as nothing else ever will either.
Now, that's not invariably the case. For instance, it took me half a year to get into Pulp's
This is Hardcore, because it just didn't make sense to me against the background of
Different Class. In the end though, I found it superior to its predecessor.
I suspect all of this however is very individual. To some people, personal history will mean a lot - the circumstances under which an album was listened to, the way it connected with their lives at that time. Style seems to matter to many people - some plainly don't much like ballads, others plainly don't much like the noisy songs. There's enough breadth of style in Morrissey's production to make that a possible dividing point - you could well sort his production broadly into "rock songs", "pop songs" and "crooner numbers", with not too many songs that resist such classification. Personally I find this matters little (to me there's a shorter distance between "You're gonna need someone on your side" and "Interlude" than between the former and any non-Morrissey glam number, or the latter and any non-Morrissey french chanson), but people will differ in this. It comes down to what you're looking for, and what you are generally disposed to like. Which, judging from the range of opinion about almost any album or song, is obviously very different things from person to person.
What would be interesting is to select a few songs from the ongoing poll with the lowest possible number of people giving, say, a lower rating than seven. And some songs with the lowest possible number of people giving a high rating. And see if each group have any obvious commonalities. Perhaps that would indicate something about whatever common minimum denominators exist between fans when it comes to liking or disliking songs.
To answer your direct question, the interpretation that preference is guided by the songwriters doesn't hold good for me at least. My rating would be Vauxhall, Quarry, Viva Hate, Arsenal, Refusal, Bona Drag, Maladjusted, Southpaw, ROTT, Uncle. A pretty even spread between periods, songwriters and styles, if my knowledge in that regard holds good? Plus, at least from Vauxhall to Southpaw, the difference in affection isn't really that great - much less than for most other acts I like.
cheers
(but thanks anyway
)
