The Smiths / Louder Than Bombs / 1984
Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want
wistful, quietly bitter, resigned
A short, almost prayer-like song built from just two brief verses and a repeated plea, this track compresses a lifetime of disappointment into barely a minute and a half. Its power comes from restraint: the request stated is never specified, and the music's gentleness sits uneasily against the bitterness of the words.
longing and deprivation fatalism the erosion of goodness by circumstance prayer and supplication romantic disappointment
Who's speaking
A first-person speaker addresses an unnamed higher power or fate directly, using the language of prayer. The voice reads as sincere rather than ironic, though its calm delivery undercuts the desperation of the words, making the speaker seem both plaintive and self-aware about how unlikely the wish is to be granted.
What happens
The song doesn't tell a story so much as state a condition and then beg for its reversal. It opens by acknowledging a run of bad luck, moves to admitting an absence of hope or dreams, and closes by repeating the request with an admission that success would be unprecedented. There's no resolution — the song simply ends on the plea, suspended.
How it's built
The song is built on near-identical two-line verses followed by a repeated, escalating refrain, with almost no variation in form. This circularity mimics obsessive rumination or the repetition of a prayer recited under one's breath, and the brevity of the whole piece reinforces the sense of a single held breath rather than a developed narrative.
Section by section
Opening verse
The song begins with a phrase that sounds like optimism but is immediately undercut, since it's framed as a wish rather than a description of the present. The admission that misfortune could turn decency into something worse introduces the moral stakes quietly, without melodrama.
First refrain
“let me get what I want this time”
The plea arrives almost shyly, stacking the same verb in halting repetition as though the speaker can barely bring themselves to ask. The word choice implies this is not the first attempt, and probably not the first failure either.
Second verse
The second verse nearly repeats the first, but shifts from talking about luck to talking about the absence of dreams, deepening the sense of exhaustion. The repetition of the claim about a good man being worn down suggests this isn't a passing complaint but a settled belief about the self.
Closing refrain
“it would be the first time”
The final lines abandon any pretense of hope disguised as prayer and admit outright how improbable the request is. Repeating this admission twice, rather than resolving it, leaves the song hanging on doubt rather than granting any relief.
Craft
- anaphora
- The repeated plea that opens and structures the refrain mimics begging or liturgical repetition, turning the request itself into the song's central musical and emotional gesture.
- understatement
- The speaker never names what is wanted, which universalizes the longing and makes the song adaptable to any unfulfilled desire — romantic, spiritual, or material.
- parallelism
- The two verses mirror each other almost exactly, both ending on the same claim about circumstance corrupting a good man, which reinforces the idea of a fixed, unchanging fate.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats this as a song about the fatigue of hoping when experience has taught you not to expect anything — the plea is real, but so is the certainty that it likely won't be answered. A secondary reading, common in discussions of Morrissey's writing, frames it more specifically as romantic longing, with the vague 'what I want' standing in for requited love. Both readings coexist without contradiction, since the song's refusal to specify its object is what allows it to function as either.
Context
Written by Morrissey and Marr, this song was released as a non-album single in 1984 and later collected on the compilation Louder Than Bombs. Its brevity and stripped-down arrangement, built mostly around acoustic guitar, are often noted as atypical for the band's more layered guitar sound, giving the track a hymn-like plainness that suits its content. I don't have detailed session history or chart specifics to offer beyond this general context.
Listen for
- how the repeated plea in the refrain is stretched and stacked rather than delivered as one smooth line
- the contrast between the gentle, almost lullaby-like guitar arrangement and the bitterness of the lyric
- the parallel structure between the two verses and what changes between them
- the way the song ends without resolving the request, leaving the final admission of improbability as the last word
About The Smiths
The Smiths were an English rock band formed in Manchester in 1982, composed of Morrissey (vocals), Johnny Marr (guitar), Andy Rourke (bass) and Mike Joyce (drums). Morrissey and Marr formed the band's songwriting partnership.
1982 - 1987 / United Kingdom
Full biography and catalogue