The key question here is whether Morrissey is still creating works of beauty beyond anything most of us can barely imagine. Is he even creating works of beauty at all? He has 2.3 million monthly listeners on Spotify \u2014 not top tier but showing a significant fan base. I\u2019ve listened to his new album, Make-Up Is a Lie, about 20 times now. I\u2019m not a music critic, so it\u2019s not my place to review it or pass judgment. I will say that those expecting the great mea culpa will be disappointed. <\/p>\n
Musically it\u2019s nowhere near the heights of the triumphant early albums (Vauxhall and I, from 1994, remains the brand leader) and it too often exposes Morrissey\u2019s late-career habit of writing witty phrases and probing one-liners in search of actual songs (see 2020\u2019s I Am Not a Dog on a Chain). There are 12 tracks on Make-Up Is a Lie. Two of them are catchy. One of them is soothing. Nine of them are patchy. <\/p>\n
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The midpoint torch song Boulevard is close to harrowing: in it, the man who once rattled through \u201cere thrice the sun done salutation to the dawn\u201d (in Cemetery Gates on The Queen Is Dead) vainly attempts to pad out almost an entire track from the needless and painful warbling of a single word: \u201cSomewhere off the booooo-laaay-vaaarrd, the booooooo-eh-oooooh-eh-ooooo-laaaaaeeeaay-vaaard!!\u201d There\u2019s also the creepy Notre-Dame, which includes lyrics about uncovering who really tried to \u201ckill\u201d Notre-Dame with the 2019 fire, and seems to nudge the listener towards conspiracy theories about anti-Christian arsonists and, yes, them again, bloody immigrants! <\/p>\n
I met Morrissey in March 1994 in HMV on Oxford Street. I was researching at the BFI library for my master\u2019s degree in film studies, and I spotted a poster announcing a day of album signing at the London megastore. And so I went along, almost first in the queue. I was tongue-tied when I got to him, led there by security. I nervously held out my copy of Vauxhall and I and said nothing. In return, he did all the work. Where was I from, why was I here, how long was I staying, and did I know this part and that part of Dublin that he knew well? He then lightly made fun of my accent (hint of things to come?), smiled softly and shook my hand. <\/p>\n
\u2022 Mike Joyce of the Smiths: \u2018To call Morrissey complex is an understatement\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n I was all a-wobble after that, akin to those hysterical girls on the verge of collapse after meeting Harry Styles, Justin Bieber or Jimin from BTS. It was like encountering God, or certainly a numinous presence who had filled my teenage years with sacred hymns of loss and yearning, and had hammered home a central spiritual credo about (to quote a famous Morrissey lyric) how it \u201ctakes guts to be gentle and kind\u201d. <\/p>\n In the 32 years since then Morrissey basically flushed that sanctity down the lavatory. Defending him went from being tricky to being a nightmare to being utterly pointless. One minute he\u2019s decrying the treatment of Tommy Robinson<\/a>, the next he\u2019s saying that the victims of Harvey Weinstein<\/a> were probably just \u201cdisappointed\u201d that there were no career benefits from their brutal encounters with the producer and convicted sex offender. Was Morrissey making this up? Was it one giant prank? Was he going to suddenly emerge with an ingenious album called Had You Fooled, Didn\u2019t I? Don\u2019t Worry, I\u2019m Still a Sweetie! <\/p>\n On stage in 2023<\/p>\n GEOFFREY CLOWES<\/p>\n In the early days, of course, Morrissey used to say: \u201cIt\u2019s very easy to be controversial in pop music because nobody ever is.\u201d It\u2019s possible that this very Wildean penchant for quippy provocation eventually superseded his capacity for rational thought. That\u2019s one excuse that former Morrissey fans deploy. The other is that he is supported by huge swathes of the Latino community, especially from Mexico, and therefore he can\u2019t be a bigot. And the other, similarly, is that his oft-discussed sexuality, apparently a somewhat fluid thing, sometimes called celibate or \u201cnonpractising bisexual\u201d, demonstrates his outsider status and his allegiance with the \u201cother\u201d, which, again, means that he can\u2019t really be a wrong \u2019un. As I say, utterly pointless. <\/p>\n![\"Morrissey](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/\/6c0933ea-b9be-498d-9bbc-a3321c83b134.jpg\")
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