CD Cover

The Smiths -
This Charming Man

A punctured bicycle
on a hillside desolate
Will nature make a
man of me yet ?
When in this charming car
This charming man

Why pamper life's complexity
When the leather runs smooth
On the passenger seat ?

I would go out tonight
But I haven't got
a stitch to wear
This man said
"It's gruesome that
someone so handsome should care"

A jumped up pantry boy
Who never knew his place
He said "return the ring"
He knows so much about these things

"This Charming Man" is a song by the British alternative rock band The Smiths, written by guitarist Johnny Marr and singer/lyricist Morrissey. It was released as the group's second single in October 1983. The song is defined by Marr's jangle pop guitar riff and Morrissey's characteristically morose lyrics, which revolve around the recurrent Smiths themes of sexual ambiguity and lust. The cover photo is of Jean Marais feeling detached from and unable to relate to the early 1980s mainstream gay culture, Morrissey wrote "This Charming Man" to evoke an older, more coded and self-aware underground scene. The singer explained of the song's lyrics, "I really like the idea of the male voice being quite vulnerable, of it being taken and slightly manipulated, rather than there being always this heavy machismo thing that just bores everybody." The lyrics of "This Charming Man" comprise a first person narrative in which the male protagonist punctures one of his bicycle's wheels on a remote hillside. A passing "charming man" in a luxury car stops to offer the cyclist a lift, and although the protagonist is at first hesitant, after much deliberation he accepts the offer. While driving together the pair flirt, although the protagonist finds it difficult to overcome his reluctance: "I would go out tonight, but I haven't got a stitch to wear". The motorist tells the cyclist: "it's gruesome that someone so handsome should care". 
The group had a distinctive visual style on their album and single covers, which often featured colourful images of film and pop stars, usually in duotone, designed by Morrissey and Rough Trade art coordinator Jo Slee. Single covers rarely featured any text other than the band name, and the band themselves did not appear on the outer cover of their UK releases. (Morrissey did, however, appear on an alternative cover for "What Difference Does It Make?", mimicking the pose of the original subject, UK film actor Terence Stamp, after the latter objected to his image being used.) The "cover stars" were an indication of Morrissey's personal interests in obscure or cult film stars from 1960s British culture or images of unknown models taken from old films or magazines.

Our task was to create a CD cover for our chosen song. Mine was 'This Charming Man' by The Smiths. My final CD cover is shown to the left. I stuck to the original style that The Smith's stuck to. This was not using an image of the band, although i stuck to the images the band used of unknown actors and models. This gave me the idea to use the hidden message behind the song which was the relationship between two male strangers. Doing so, i took a picture of two males, one with his arm around the other. One wearing white,the other wearing black. I hoped this would show the kindess by wearing white of the man stopping to help the young man who had broke his bycyle who is wearing black. I cut off the two males heads, to not allow the viewer to know they were males like in the song, it is not obvious that it is about two gay men.