Happy Birthday Mr Morrissey
Morrissey is sixty today.
Sixty. That's properly old. That's not middle-aged, that's the foothills of a frail dotage. He's six years off being a pensioner and the hearing aid is no longer a prop. He rips open his shirt and has "Bury Me" written on his chest.
I wonder what it means to be Morrissey at sixty.
I think of a dead Morrissey quite a lot. A while back Joe and I did a podcast on the notion of "The Old School" and what that expression actually means, and in the strange and freewheeling way of a Stalemates podcast I ended up speculating that Morrissey would probably go out like Tony Hancock - cut off from everyone, deep in his cups, a lonely suicide in the sun. I didn't expect to end up there and that conclusion, in both senses, has haunted me ever since.
Ultimately Morrissey will end. In some ways we already live in a post-Morrissey world: his career is behind him, though I would suggest that's through no fault of his own. He has outlasted pop music. The world into which he was born no longer exists and I don't mean the one he would clearly like to live in: a monochrome Grampian matriarchy with polished cobbles and milk stout in the snug and with the only black people singing on the radio from somewhere far, far away.
Morrissey was born into a world of pop. In fact he is almost contemporaneous with it: Russ Conway's "Side Saddle" was number one when he was born - which seems ill-starred - but by the time he starts school Beatlemania is well under-way. He claims he bought his first single - Marianne Faithfull's "Come and Stay With Me" - when he was five, so he was an early adapter of this brand new cultural phenomenon. He saw it all: Beatlemania, the British Invasion, Soul, Psychedelia, Prog, Glam, Ska, Reggae, Krautrock, Funk, Disco, Punk, Electro. What a lucky fella! You'd think he'd be a bit more positive. All I had growing up was Morrissey!
But popular music as a cultural force is over now. You are no longer defined by what you listen to. There used to be three TV channels and "On The Buses" in the cinemas: music was your badge then, it told people who you were and what you valued. The Rolling Stones exist because they were self-consciously walking about with blues records tucked under their arms. The same is true of Charles and Eddie. (Would I lie to you?) Now you don't even have to like music to be cool. And Cosplay is a thing.
Morrissey's latest record is a covers album. He's adopted the Bryan Ferry pattern of making records solely because that is just what he does. Every couple of years they will wander into a recording studio with a crack team of musicians and make a record that sounds quite a lot like the sort of record they usually make. It's like getting their flu jab. Bryan covers his own songs, usually in a Hot Club De France style. Morrissey is covering Jobriath and Joni Mitchell on his new record. I'm probably not ever going to listen to this. Maybe the Jobriath one.
What's he thinking, sixty year old Morrissey? What's in his head, apart from Shelagh Delaney's stolen words? Why has he turned into this strange, depressing awful thing. Ten years ago he was voted the second greatest English icon after David Attenborough (which no doubt made him bristle) and he has spent that decade poisoning the reservoir of good will that the nation had for him. It must be strange to spend time in that big ol' Easter Island head, so draughty and lonely. Living in his big house in the sunshine with his blithe American fans and his millions in the bank. And still he broods. He broods with the intensity of an old man in exile who is very concerned about the amount of brown people in a country he no longer lives in. He is a man who must always be right, with no tolerance for people telling him he's wrong. If you call him a racist he tells you that racist doesn't mean racist. If you ask him to explain himself he tells you he has no responsibility to do so. If he gets bad reviews for his awful books it is because people are jealous of him. Critics are mere knockers who have achieved nothing in their lives. Ex-members of his bands or his endless succession of managers are thieves who have betrayed him. He is never wrong. He appears on American television wearing the badge of a far right group and there is the usual muted outrage. Morrissey, of course, says nothing. He doesn't have to explain himself: he is Morrissey. Fuck you.
I like a lot of Morrissey's records. Not "Kill Uncle". He's occasionally a brilliant lyricist. He's always a brilliant singer. You can argue with me if you like but, at the risk of sounding like Morrissey, I'm right. He has a sureness of touch and peculiar melodic gift. He's not a natural singer: he has a slight lisp, he sings through his nose and his pitch was initially very wayward but he's turned all of those things into strengths. He now has a rich, handsome and powerful croon. He sounds like no one else and actually no one sounds like him. The Smiths have descendants of a sort but none of them ape Morrissey. He's too singular, too odd, too obvious. He caricatures himself in the manner of self-deprecating remark - he does it so you don't get to do it.
I like a lot of Morrissey's songs but I no longer wish to listen to them. With other artists I think you can say that you love the art while hating the artist. I'm not sure you can say that about Morrissey. He is his songs. There is no distance or at least he would kid you that there is no distance. Increasingly he seems tired and confused, filling up finger-pointing middle-eights with his muddled historical nonsense and diatribes against newspapers, judges and people that he used to know. This new album seems like a stop gap, but perhaps its the death knell of a career. His famous wit has finally abandoned him. He is spent.
He's clearly had an good innings. Its a slow walk back to the pavilion for Mr Morrissey.
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| Thangyewvurrymuch |
Sixty. That's properly old. That's not middle-aged, that's the foothills of a frail dotage. He's six years off being a pensioner and the hearing aid is no longer a prop. He rips open his shirt and has "Bury Me" written on his chest.
I wonder what it means to be Morrissey at sixty.
I think of a dead Morrissey quite a lot. A while back Joe and I did a podcast on the notion of "The Old School" and what that expression actually means, and in the strange and freewheeling way of a Stalemates podcast I ended up speculating that Morrissey would probably go out like Tony Hancock - cut off from everyone, deep in his cups, a lonely suicide in the sun. I didn't expect to end up there and that conclusion, in both senses, has haunted me ever since.
Ultimately Morrissey will end. In some ways we already live in a post-Morrissey world: his career is behind him, though I would suggest that's through no fault of his own. He has outlasted pop music. The world into which he was born no longer exists and I don't mean the one he would clearly like to live in: a monochrome Grampian matriarchy with polished cobbles and milk stout in the snug and with the only black people singing on the radio from somewhere far, far away.
Morrissey was born into a world of pop. In fact he is almost contemporaneous with it: Russ Conway's "Side Saddle" was number one when he was born - which seems ill-starred - but by the time he starts school Beatlemania is well under-way. He claims he bought his first single - Marianne Faithfull's "Come and Stay With Me" - when he was five, so he was an early adapter of this brand new cultural phenomenon. He saw it all: Beatlemania, the British Invasion, Soul, Psychedelia, Prog, Glam, Ska, Reggae, Krautrock, Funk, Disco, Punk, Electro. What a lucky fella! You'd think he'd be a bit more positive. All I had growing up was Morrissey!
But popular music as a cultural force is over now. You are no longer defined by what you listen to. There used to be three TV channels and "On The Buses" in the cinemas: music was your badge then, it told people who you were and what you valued. The Rolling Stones exist because they were self-consciously walking about with blues records tucked under their arms. The same is true of Charles and Eddie. (Would I lie to you?) Now you don't even have to like music to be cool. And Cosplay is a thing.
Morrissey's latest record is a covers album. He's adopted the Bryan Ferry pattern of making records solely because that is just what he does. Every couple of years they will wander into a recording studio with a crack team of musicians and make a record that sounds quite a lot like the sort of record they usually make. It's like getting their flu jab. Bryan covers his own songs, usually in a Hot Club De France style. Morrissey is covering Jobriath and Joni Mitchell on his new record. I'm probably not ever going to listen to this. Maybe the Jobriath one.
What's he thinking, sixty year old Morrissey? What's in his head, apart from Shelagh Delaney's stolen words? Why has he turned into this strange, depressing awful thing. Ten years ago he was voted the second greatest English icon after David Attenborough (which no doubt made him bristle) and he has spent that decade poisoning the reservoir of good will that the nation had for him. It must be strange to spend time in that big ol' Easter Island head, so draughty and lonely. Living in his big house in the sunshine with his blithe American fans and his millions in the bank. And still he broods. He broods with the intensity of an old man in exile who is very concerned about the amount of brown people in a country he no longer lives in. He is a man who must always be right, with no tolerance for people telling him he's wrong. If you call him a racist he tells you that racist doesn't mean racist. If you ask him to explain himself he tells you he has no responsibility to do so. If he gets bad reviews for his awful books it is because people are jealous of him. Critics are mere knockers who have achieved nothing in their lives. Ex-members of his bands or his endless succession of managers are thieves who have betrayed him. He is never wrong. He appears on American television wearing the badge of a far right group and there is the usual muted outrage. Morrissey, of course, says nothing. He doesn't have to explain himself: he is Morrissey. Fuck you.
I like a lot of Morrissey's records. Not "Kill Uncle". He's occasionally a brilliant lyricist. He's always a brilliant singer. You can argue with me if you like but, at the risk of sounding like Morrissey, I'm right. He has a sureness of touch and peculiar melodic gift. He's not a natural singer: he has a slight lisp, he sings through his nose and his pitch was initially very wayward but he's turned all of those things into strengths. He now has a rich, handsome and powerful croon. He sounds like no one else and actually no one sounds like him. The Smiths have descendants of a sort but none of them ape Morrissey. He's too singular, too odd, too obvious. He caricatures himself in the manner of self-deprecating remark - he does it so you don't get to do it.
I like a lot of Morrissey's songs but I no longer wish to listen to them. With other artists I think you can say that you love the art while hating the artist. I'm not sure you can say that about Morrissey. He is his songs. There is no distance or at least he would kid you that there is no distance. Increasingly he seems tired and confused, filling up finger-pointing middle-eights with his muddled historical nonsense and diatribes against newspapers, judges and people that he used to know. This new album seems like a stop gap, but perhaps its the death knell of a career. His famous wit has finally abandoned him. He is spent.
He's clearly had an good innings. Its a slow walk back to the pavilion for Mr Morrissey.
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