Morrissey

Morrissey is, at one and the same time, one of the most brilliant lyricists rock has produced and one of its most controversial figures.

The same person who made millions of lonely, sensitive people feel seen and understood ended up, decades later, saying things that drove many of those same followers away.

Remembering him properly means holding both things at once, without sweeping either one under the carpet.

What nobody disputes

Let's start with his genius.

Steven Patrick Morrissey was born in 1959 in Old Trafford, west of Manchester, the son of Irish immigrants. He grew up in the grey working-class England of the sixties and seventies: a bookish, solitary boy obsessed with Oscar Wilde.

In 1982 he met the guitarist Johnny Marr, and together they formed The Smiths, one of the great songwriting partnerships in history: Marr's luminous, melodic guitar, and Morrissey's lyrics —literary, witty, melancholy, sarcastic, sexually ambiguous.

In barely five years, between 1982 and 1987, they made an enormous body of work: "This Charming Man", "How Soon Is Now?", "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out", "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now", and albums like "The Queen Is Dead", which turns up routinely among the best records of all time.

The patron saint of those who didn't fit

And there is what turned him into a cult idol.

Morrissey gave a voice to those who didn't fit: the shy, the lonely, the depressed, the ones who didn't match the macho world, the ones who felt strange in their bodies and in their desire.

He turned sadness into something articulate, funny, even elegant. He gave melancholy words, just as others of his generation did from another corner of the same country.

A lifelong vegetarian and fierce defender of animals —"Meat Is Murder", the album, is a banner of the movement—, an anti-monarchist, an enemy of rock's tough-guy pose: for a whole generation of sensitive misfits, Morrissey was the one who finally named them.

The Smiths broke up in 1987, over tensions between him and Marr. And although Morrissey had a long solo career with high points —"Viva Hate" went to number one in Britain in 1988—, many feel he never again reached the magic of the partnership.

The second part

But Morrissey's story has a second part that cannot be left out, and that Rebobinados tells without handing down a verdict, because it is a genuinely contested subject and each person will have to draw their own conclusions.

Over the years, and above all since 2018, Morrissey made increasingly incendiary political statements.

He declared his support for For Britain, a small anti-Islam party led by Anne Marie Waters and described by anti-racist organisations as far right, and went as far as wearing its badge on American television, on Jimmy Fallon's show, in May 2019.

He made comments that many condemned as racist or Islamophobic, defended figures accused of sexual abuse and criticised the MeToo movement.

He has denied, over and over and vehemently, that he is a racist. "I despise racism. I despise fascism. I would do anything for my Muslim friends, and I know they would do anything for me", he said in 2018. And he has framed part of his support for that party within the cause of animal welfare.

The cost

The cost was enormous.

Record shops pulled his music, venues distanced themselves, and a great many of his old admirers felt betrayed.

The question many people asked themselves is a painful one: how could the poet of empathy for the marginalised line up with a party hostile to a minority?

Others, on the contrary, defend his right to say what he thinks and separate the artist from his opinions.

There is no agreement, and this profile does not come to impose one. It comes to put both truths on the table.

Both are true

Because both are true, and that has to be said without fear.

Holding a political position is his right, even if we don't share it. And being inconsistent with who he used to be is his right too, because nobody is obliged to agree forever with the self they were forty years ago.

People change: just as some grow with the years, others shrink.

We are not here to judge the person. We neither hide what he said, nor why it hurt so many people, but this profile is not a court. We are here to understand that all of it lives inside the same man: the one who wrote those songs and the one who later said what he said.

The work remains

And there is a point worth making very clear, because it changes everything: Morrissey is not setting his political ideology to chords.

His songs are not propaganda. The Smiths do not preach what Morrissey declares today.

"There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" is neither right-wing nor left-wing: it belongs to everyone who ever loved without being loved back.

That is why the work remains, to a large extent, safe from the man.

You can hold it all together: the art that meant the world to a generation of lonely people, and the disagreement or the anger at what the artist became.

Separating —or not— the work from its author is one of the hardest questions there is in music, and Morrissey is, perhaps, its sharpest example.

Rebobinados remembers the songs —"This Charming Man", "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out", "How Soon Is Now?"— for what they are: among the most beautiful and empathetic ever written.

What each person does with the rest, with the man and the road he took afterwards, is a conversation that by now every listener has to have with themselves.

Put on The Smiths, and you will hear a voice that once spoke for everyone who felt alone. The rest, you decide.

Sources

Steven Patrick Morrissey (Old Trafford, then Lancashire and today Greater Manchester, 22 May 1959), British singer and lyricist, the son of Irish immigrants. In 1982 he founded The Smiths with the guitarist Johnny Marr; the band (1982-1987), released by Rough Trade, is considered one of the most influential in British pop, with songs such as "This Charming Man", "How Soon Is Now?" and "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out", and albums such as "The Queen Is Dead" (1986). His literary, melancholy lyrics gave a voice to the marginalised and the sensitive; Morrissey is a vegetarian and a defender of animal rights ("Meat Is Murder", 1985) and an anti-monarchist. After The Smiths split up, over tensions with Marr, he developed a solo career with successes such as "Viva Hate" (March 1988, number one in the United Kingdom) and published an "Autobiography" (2013). From around 2018 he expressed support for the anti-Islam party For Britain, led by Anne Marie Waters and described as far right by anti-racist organisations; on 13 May 2019 he wore its badge on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon". That, together with comments considered racist or Islamophobic by his critics and with his defence of figures accused of abuse, drew strong rejection from part of his audience, from the media and from retailers. Morrissey has repeatedly denied being a racist; in June 2018 he stated: "I despise racism. I despise fascism. I would do anything for my Muslim friends, and I know they would do anything for me". The matter is the subject of opposing views; this text presents it even-handedly, without adhering to any position. Externally authored text, edited and verified for Rebobinados. Readings of the meaning of his work are offered as the author's interpretation. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, NME, Official Charts, Spin and other press coverage.