Morrissey went on to explain, "'This Night Has Opened My Eyes' is A Taste Of Honey song–putting the entire play to words." And this slow, ache-y song about the scant, miserable choices available to a scared mother-to-be absolutely captures the descending helplessness of Jo's pregnancy. "And I'm not happy and I'm not sad," Morrissey sings, invoking the emotional dead end that Jo reaches through exhaustion. Paraphrasing a conversation between Geof and Jo, he recalls the depths of this desparation: "wrap her up in the news of the world, dump her on a doorstep, girl." The most poignant line of the song, marking the looming confrontation with reality, the terminal end of innocence-"The dream is gone but the baby is real"-is lifted exactly from the play.
The Smiths' first LP was full of references to Delaney, from "Reel Around the Fountain," which repeated Jimmie's line to Jo: "You're the bees knees, but so am I" to "You've Got Everything Now", which opens with a line from Delaney's second play, The Lion in Love: "As merry as the day is long." As he insists in that 1986 interview, Morrissey made no secret of his love for her. In 1983, while the debut LP was still only two-thirds recorded, the singer provided the NME with lists of his ten favorite movies, books, records, and symbolists. A Taste of Honey appears in the first list, The Lion in Love in the second, and Shelagh Delaney herself in the fourth. Not even Wilde made it into three categories.
In 1984, The Smiths released a single with vocals by one of Morrissey's heroes, Sandie Shaw. The sleeve featured a still of Jo, played by Rita Tushingham, from the film A Taste of Honey. In 1985, the program for the Meat is Murder tour lists Shelagh Delaney as one of Morrissey's heroes alongside Viv Nicholson and Parker Tyler. In a different 1986 interview, Morrissey reaffirmed his allegiance: "A Taste of Honey had a massive influence on me. I mean, it was virtually the only important British film in the 1960s, as far as I'm concerned." This from the same devoted moviegoer who once declared, "As my education virtually amounted to nothing-we were instilled with the fact that everything was hopeless-I completely immersed myself in films." And in 1987, the same year that The Smiths disbanded, he made his boldest references yet to Delaney.
First, in March of 1987, the 70 minute, 24-song singles collection Louder Than Bombs appeared, arguably the definitive Smiths release (Spin Magazine described it as "the ultimate Smiths statement" and "24 reasons to go on living"). The cover featured a candid photograph of Shelagh Delaney, taken from a 1961 Saturday Evening Post article about the writer. In August of 1987, two weeks after the band announced their split, they released the 12" for "Girlfriend in a Coma", which featured the same photo of Delaney as the front cover of the paperback edition of A Taste of Honey. The former stands as the commonest entry point for new Smiths fans, while the latter carries the often-mourned distinction of presenting the final Smiths recording session. The fact that Delaney graces two such immortal releases signals her importance to both casual and committed listeners. It was, in fact, during the same radio session that debuted "Girlfriend in a Coma" that The Smiths announced their end, on August 1, 1987.