Morrissey immediately commenced a solo career, issuing ten albums in ten years. Morrissey's earliest records reference the kind of stripped down, buzzing guitar rock that he always mentioned in interviews: Billy Fury, Cliff Richard, even David Bowie and the New York Dolls. This razor-edge rocknroll era peaked in 1992 with the release of Your Arsenal, produced by the legendary Bowie-collaborator Mick Ronson. However, the follow-up LP Vauxhall and I, released two years later, was a majestic, orchestral LP that drifted away from this glam-tinged swagger. Morrissey immediately declared it "the best record I've ever made." Critics and fans, enamored with the grand pop sweep of the LP, tended to agree.
The LP opened with "Now My Heart Is Full," a massive sounding ballad, all melodrama and despair and lost friendship. Morrissey was asked about the song by Select Magazine, who were perplexed by the rush of individuals named in the lyrics: "Dallow, Spicer, Pinkie, Cubitt"; characters from Graham Greene's Brighton Rock. During the song, Morrissey describes Greene's mob of working-class villains as his "friends" with absolute sincerity. He explained to the interviewer that the song was intended to clear out his obsession with history once and for all: "I have realized that the past is actually over, and it is a great relief to me." He referenced his "vast" record and video collection, and suggested that his lifelong impulse to carry around history had finally become a burden.
Vauxhall and I is often considered the breakthrough LP where Morrissey finally acknowledges that he's no longer a sore-lipped teenager with unsympathetic parents: "you might even be tempted to say he's aged" suggested Q Magazine. Not only does Morrissey confront his years, but he uses the songs to make this clean break with history. In his interview with Select, Morrissey signals the first track as a key location of this break, specifically marking his relationship with Delaney. "'Now My Heart is Full' has a sense of jubilant exhaustion with looking over one's shoulder all the time and draining one's reference points. I mean, even I-even I-went a little bit too far with A Taste of Honey. I have perhaps overtapped my sources and now all that is over."