Certain Songs #578: Hank Williams - Nobody's Lonesome For Me

Album: 40 Greatest Hits
Year: 1950

Time for one of my all-time favorite crackpot theories: Hank Williams was a secret influence on non other that Stephen Patrick Morrissey.

I’ve had this theory since I got Hank Williams 40 Greatest Hits at some point in the 1990s, and realized how many of his lyrics could be Morrissey lyrics, especially “Nobody’s Lonesome For Me.”

Everybody’s lonesome for somebody else
But nobody’s lonesome for me
Everybody’s thinkin’ ’bout somebody else
But nobody thinks about me
When the time rolls around for me to lay down and die
I bet I’ll have to go and hire me someone to cry
Everybody’s lonesome for somebody else
Nobody is lonesome for me.

See what I mean? Easily could have fit on any Smiths album right there with “Never Had No One Ever” or “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want.” And then you add the catch and yodel in Williams’ voice as he’s singing the lyrics, and it gets downright spooky, especially when his guitarist is also killing it.

Everybody’s pinin’ for somebody else
But nobody’s lonesome for me
Everybody’s crazy ’bout somebody else
But nobody’s crazy ’bout me
Oh, I shined up my shoes and then I slicked down my hair
Put on my Sunday suit, but I ain’t goin’ nowhere
Everybody’s lonesome for somebody else
But nobody’s lonesome for me.

How soon is now, Hank? How soon is it?

OK, obviously being the sad sack in song certainly pre-dated Morrissey and probably pre-dated Williams, so I’ve figured that this theory was mostly in existence to tweak both Morrissey lovers and Morrissey haters, and not something I truly believed.

But then when I googled “Hank Williams Morrissey” today to see if anybody else had ever come up with this crackpot theory, I discovered that Morrissey covered “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?” in concert last year. Which I choose to interpret as his roundabout way of acknowledging this key key influence.

“Nobody’s Lonesome For Me”