Commentary

“It’s about being friendly – not in the male, sexual sense, just friendly – to someone who didn’t accept that.”

Mark E. Smith, interviewed by Meijer, c.July/August 1989. Publication details unknown, but originally published in Dutch. [Archive]

As is often the case, MES’ “explanation” leaves a lot of room for interpretation. It’s not even clear whether why the friendly overtures appear to have been rejected, or whether they were MES’ friendly overtures or friendly overtures he had observed, or indeed been on the receiving end of himself.

For example, someone might not “accept” friendly overtures if they misinterpret them as sexual and unwelcome, or someone might not “accept” that friendly overtures misinterpreted as sexual and welcome are in fact merely friendly. Does the word “entitled” refer, as I am guessing it does, to a sense of entitlement? And if so, is it the person being friendly who is “entitled”, in some way, or the person who is the target of the friendliness? A first-person voice of the lyric (it isn’t clear to me that there is only one “I” in the text) states “I’m entitled”, but it isn’t obvious whose point of view this is.

And what’s this photograph?

A song with this title appears on the setlists for two gigs in 1977:

• 2 September 1977: Kirkby Civic Suite; Kirkby, Knowsley, Merseyside
• 6 September 1977: Barbarella’s; Birmingham

There are no known recordings of these gigs, so unless and until someone comments who has first-hand knowledge, we do not know if the 1977 “Entitled” is fundamentally the same song as the “Entitled” that appeared in December 1986 on the Hey! Luciani 12″. Note that the song is credited to Mark E. Smith, Stephen Hanley and Craig Scanlon, and that of course Hanley and Scanlon were not in the group in 1977. Also note that the mid-1980s saw the resurrection of a couple of other early songs – “Oh! Brother” and “Copped It” (both of which appeared on record for the first time in 1984, but were on setlists in 1977).

“Entitled” doesn’t seem to be highly regarded, but nor does it fall into the hated-by-many-fans camp. Dave Thompson (2003, p.91) thinks it “revisits the musical pastures mapped out by ‘Auto Tech Pilot‘, nudging into New Order parody – a mischievous notion that Smith’s purposefully lackadaisical (and deliberately under-sung) vocal only heightens.” Tommy Mackay (2018, p.90) repeats the “New Order parody” idea, but also notes that the song is “one of those rare occasions where MES sort of sings a melody, albeit wearily.” Steve Pringle (2022, p.188) describes it as “a pleasant but inconsequential bit of melancholy C86-style indie-jangle.” The song isn’t mentioned in any of the group members’ memoirs.

Footnotes

1. I checked and currently the earliest citation for “user friendly” in the Oxford English Dictionary (online edition) is from 1972, but a few searches in newspaper databases will show that the phrase was in use from the late 1960s, usually in a computing context. It had of course become a common phrase by the 1980s, but it is unclear whether MES intended a computer-related meaning or was using it metaphorically. ↩︎
2. These days a line like “drowned in plastic” carries inescapable ecological associations which it wouldn’t necessarily have had when the song was written (though I remember writing despairing stories about small furry animals and fish being killed by litter when I was at school in the 1970s). A plausible reading of the line is to think about a photograph in the plastic pocket of a photograph album, or wrapped in a protective plastic bag or something. ↩︎

Sources / Links

• The Annotated Fall: “Entitled” [Archived]
• Mackay, Tommy (2018). 40 Odd Years of The Fall. Place of publication unknown: Greg Moodie.
• Pringle, Steve (2022). You Must Get Them All: The Fall on Record. [paperback edition]. Pontefract: Route Publishing Ltd. [Online store]
• Thompson, Dave (2003). A User’s Guide to the Fall. London: Helter-Skelter Publishing.
• The Track Record: “Entitled”