This is one of the few tracks the band could jam on. It often closed out shows during their Meat is Murder tour. There's a New York live version that goes for over 10 min.

This is not one of their most popular tracks, but over time, through multiple listens, it became one of my favourite by The Smiths especially when I saw a cool live performance of this song here on YT in which Morrissey and Johnny Marr end up dancing on stage during the second half of the song. But thanks for your honest reaction, we can't all like the same music. - Bratislav

This song is just so fun!

Thank you so much for making this content. you're the best music reactor IMO and I'm constantly surprised your channel hasn't blow up massively yet! you deserve it.

When see The Smiths live this amazing tune was often played last and sent you home absolutely buzzing, the bass line is perfection from the legendary Andy rourke still my favorite band ever. R.i.p Andy 💔

It sounds like goth dance music. I, myself enjoy new music i have never heard before. great reaction, like always

Morrissey is a big vocalizer, but this song really has a lot of them, way more than usual. Some of what makes a lot of these bands like the Smiths and The Cure and others great is that the singers are not afraid to go for it, even at the risk of going off pitch. I think that honestly, sometimes, that is what makes them endearing, is those vocal quirks.

The Smiths is my favorite band of all time. Morrissey imo the best song writer of all time along with Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, Paul Westerberg, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Stephin Merritt.

The biggest Soviet (pop?)-rock group, Kino, was heavily inspired by this band. Their biggest track - Khochu peremen (i.e. I want changes) - sounds very similar to Barbarism Begins at Home. So, In a way this track had a big influence on musical taste of late Soviet and post Soviet listeners. Here's a link if you want to check it out - kzfaq.info/get/bejne/eMCqlJOe29Otkok.html . It's just 5 minutes and a bit less repetition 😉

This is nostalgic for me. I listened to The Smiths in the early 90s with friends, and owned their Very Greatest Hits album. They have a few songs I really like much more than this one. From the same album, the song That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore is probably my favorite.

You've almost got a Zappa beard and moustache very nice. Zappa and Morrissey probably my two favourite musicians.

Hello Bryan, please react to The Cure Disintegration from Disintegration album, I want to know what you think!! thanks

grew up to this during my teenage years -80's were the best & GenX Respect

And to think that Morrissey and Marr always maintained that Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce only contributed 10% each. Rourke's basslines alone give him 25% credit. They carry a lot of the songs and allow Marr to float over top the way he does. And many times, Joyce is rock steady with some interesting choices.

You should listen to more of the Smiths. Such a remarkable orchestra.

Love The Smiths. Easily one of the best and most influential bands of the 80s, with Morissey's iconic, immediately identifiable voice and Johnny Marr's mastery of that beautiful, "jangle" guitar style. I love how despite being a "post-punk" band they so consistently looked back to the 50s-70s for influences. It gives them such an "out of time" quality. Even this track, while very much steeped in 80s production, is pure 70s funk-pop. While this is a fine song, it's far from my favorite from them; I would've nominated... well, just about anything from The Queen is Dead, which is easily one of the top 10 albums of the 80s. I always thought this was their weakest album despite having probably their biggest hit (How Soon Is Now?). EDIT: I'm not from the UK from myself, but I will say that corporal punishment was a big theme in British media for years; even in music you'd find snippets in works like Pink Floyd's The Wall (Another Brick in the Wall Part 2) and The Kinks's Schoolboys in Disgrace. There's also films like If... that imagined a rebellion in a boys' boarding school.

being Mexican, i'm genetically predisposed to be rather fond of the smiths and morrissey.

The Killers kind of swiped this bass riff on Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine.

The lyrics and sentiments of this song are interesting because they pre-date (by several years) a clutch of quite successful singles released in the late 1980s about child abuse -- "Whats the Matter Here?" by 10,000 Maniacs, "Luka" by Suzanne Vega, and that t-shirt Sinead O'Connor made famous which said "I Blame The Parents". A lot of this album is about the mistreatment of children both institutionally and within the family home, as well as the social violence Morrissey witnessed first hand growing up in a working class community in Manchester. And it was a running theme with him beginning with the first song he and Johnny Marr wrote together -- "Suffer Little Children" (look up the back-story to that song). Now I don't go with Morrissey's rather offensive belief that eating meat begets violence to other humans, which he does go on about quite a lot in interviews, but there were practically **no** songs about this subject matter (with maybe the exception of the Kate Bush song "The Infant Kiss") before or at the time and Morrissey took a lot of criticism for it. Also as per your comments about institutionalised violence towards children -- teachers using physical violence against children was outlawed in the UK in 1986 but I when went to school during the mid 80s and early 1990s in Ireland teachers still regularly used physical violence against "unruly boys" and "unruly girls."

Moz !! 😍

When you think about how long he spends singing "oh no ... Oh no ... Oh no etc" it really sinks in that this is the "reaction" to the Barbarism (at home) oh no! Oh no! Oh no! It's

Bigmouth Strikes Again and Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others are The Smiths at their musical best IMO

Morrissey has been blessed with the musicians he has worked with.

I think you'd get more views if you didn't make it known that you're a composer yourself. I'm more interested in what the average layman thinks of a song.

ugh why would someone pick this one for you. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Democracy simply doesn't work.

Not my cup of tea.