The Pop Corporation

Look, we don’t like mentioning Morrissey on here because he sucks, his music stinks, and The Smiths were crap as well. However, he is eminently mockable, and not all music writing (don’t ever call this journalism, for the love of all that’s holy) should be sweetness and light. Often, we don’t even think it needs to be well researched – it’s either being enthusiastic in the moment, or taking the piss. With occasional longform pieces.

And so, to Morrissey who has finally turned into a Stewart Lee joke.

Morrissey has recorded an album called ‘Bonfire of Teenagers’ and he’s said it is the “best” album of his life. However, no-one has heard the album, and that’s because Morrissey presumably irritated everyone at Capitol Records – the group who were supposed to release it – so much that they simply couldn’t be arsed having to put up with him. See, at whatever level a working relationship is, when people are a pain in the hole, sometimes you just walk away to save you from the ear-ache.

Of course, people who find themselves perennially being walked away from usually have to go into conspiratorial mode, rather than showing any signs of self reflection. Like those people you mute on Instagram from being so unswervingly miserable in their Stories, you gently mute them until eventually, they’re talking to themselves like mad lords whispering to cobwebs in the bell tower.

Anyway, last year, Morrissey accused Capitol honcho Michelle Jubelirer of trying to ruin his career – it couldn’t possibly be a bunch of half-assed albums that are only hoovered up by a handful of sycophantic fans and make almost zero cultural impact, nor could it be anything to do with the fact that the daft things falling out of Morrissey’s ample mouth are just about the only headlines he can generate these days. No, no, it must be those blasted record companies who are so famously woke that they are still releasing albums from all manner of cancelled people and literal criminals.

The album title itself is a reference to the terrorist attack at the Ariana Grande concert, which everyone agrees was a terrible thing and has been widely spoken about from multiple angles and whatnot. However, it is only poor old Morrissey that is being policed by it, obviously. While talking between songs at a show at Newark’s New Jersey Performing Arts Center, he told the crowd that free speech has now been “criminalised.”

He said: “As you know, nobody will release my music anymore. As you know because I’m a chief exponent of free speech. In England at least, it’s now criminalised. You cannot speak freely in England. If you don’t believe me, go there. Express an opinion, you’ll be sent to prison. It’s very, very difficult.”

These days, if you say you’re Morrissey, they’ll literally arrest you…

Morrissey has finally completed the loop. He’s turned into the thing that his comedy equivalent was poking fun at. It is only natural that people think of Stewart Lee and Morrissey together. He looks like the archetypal Smiths fan, and he knows it. He loved them when he was younger. He does his hair like Morrissey. He’s probably aware that people think he’s a smart-arse.

That said, Lee has got things to say about Morrissey in the modern climate too.

He’s said: “Sadly, Morrissey – loads of artists end up doing terrible things, but the Smiths meant such a lot to my generation, to have him drift to the far right doesn’t sit. I remember hearing ‘How Soon Is Now’ when I went to see the Smiths at Birmingham Hippodrome and dancing to it at a disco in Tucson, Arizona, in 1995. It’s hard to let go of my childhood attachment to the Smiths, but I don’t know how to square Morrissey’s solo stuff with what he’s become.”

Elsewhere, while taking his Smiths CDs to the charity shops: “There was no great fanfare. I didn’t ceremonially smash Morrissey’s works or burn them in the street like entartete kunst. It all happened with a whimper, not with a bang, and with sadness for the sorry state of things, not erectile pride in my own virtuousness. Suddenly, I just didn’t want Morrissey in my home any more. And I couldn’t imagine any circumstances under which I would ever listen to him again.”

Whatever. This is in danger of turning itself into a serious piece when all we need to do is mock Morrissey – indie music’s reactionary old uncle spouting shite at the dinner table. Like most reactionary sorts, there’s no self reflection and the only target on his back is the one he carefully placed there himself.