These words are transcribed without permission the way they appear in the Smiths' debut album. Additions to the printed lyrics are in darker text while omissions are striken out.

So, goodbye
please stay with your own kind
and I'll stay with mine

There's something against us
it's not time
it's not time
So, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye

I know I need hardly say ¹
how much I love your casual way ²
but please put your tongue away ³
a little higher and we're well away
the dark nights are drawing in
and your humour is as black as them
I look at yours, you laugh at mine
and "love" is just a miserable lie ⁴
you have destroyed my flower-like life
not once - but twice
you have corrupt my innocent mind ²
not once - but twice
I know the wind-swept mystical air *
it means: I'd like to see your underwear ⁵
I recognise that mystical air *
it means: I'd like to seize your underwear ⁶
what do we get for our trouble and pain? ²
just a rented room in Whalley Range
what do we get for our trouble and pain?
Whalley Range
into the depths of the criminal world
I followed her...

I need advice, I need advice
I need advice, I need advice
because nobody ever looks at me twice
nobody ever looks at me twice

I'm just a country-mile behind ⁷
the world

I'm just a country-mile behind ⁷
the whole world

(repeat above 4 lines)

so take me when you go
take me when you go
I need advice, I need advice

 

¹ In an early rehearsal of the song which has leaked on the internet, Morrissey sings "Because I need hardly say".

² For a short period on the UK leg of the Meat Is Murder tour in March 1985, Morrissey echoed the endings of these three lines, singing "how much I love your casual way, casual way", "you have corrupt my innocent mind, innocent mind" and "what do we get for our trouble and pain, trouble and pain?".

³ On the Scottish leg of the "Meat Is Murder" tour, Morrissey changed this line to "Oh but put your mother's dress away".

⁴ Live in Oxford 1985, and some other occasions on the Meat Is Murder tour: "and life is just a miserable lie".

⁵ On stage, Morrissey has at least once changed this line to "I'd like to be your underwear".

⁶ Peel session version and early rehearsal: "I'd like to see your underwear". On stage Morrissey has been known to sing "I'd really like to see your underwear".

⁷ Live early and on the last ever concert: "I'd run a hundred miles away from you".

Note: Morrissey shouts "what did I do to deserve this?" in a falsetto voice in the second half of a very early demo of the song,

Quotes

Does Whalley Range really exist?
"I'm afraid so. It's the little suburb of Manchester bedsit land and everyone who lives there is an unrecognised poet or a failed artist. Anyone who wishes to pursue their destiny ends up there and never gets out."
- Morrissey on the lyric from "Miserable Lie", The Face, 1984