Morrissey

There are not enough pages in a book, let along this slim pamphlet, to tell you what really needs to be told about Morrissey. Let’s just say that he is not his songs, and he is not his public image, although both give clues to his rueful, reticent and tormented personality, in the sense that he has the personality of someone who would think up those songs, and therefore be the subject of such intense scrutiny, even as he uses the songs, and the fuss they cause, to create a welcome distance between himself, and the rest of the world, where he can hide, even as he shows himself off. He is not what he seems to be. He is more mundane and yet even more mysterious.

Moving on from the days when he sang for the Smiths, cataloguing a pungent psychohistory of early wounds, which both gave him his freedom, and trapped him inside a prison of expectation, and now he must move on each time he makes an album on his own. Even though he has made his musically traditionalist mind up what his songs will sound like – reminding him and us of the music he liked before he even started making music - and each song will reflect certain recurring even consoling patterns, none of them will come close to doing the same thing twice. Some songs will be deeper, sweeter, nastier, wiser than others, some not quite as definite and beautiful, some not as explosively devious, some more laconic, self conscious and glittering than ever, but ultimately he carries on, not by comparing new songs to old songs in the way critics and fans do, but simply – although it’s not that simple – by writing songs that reflect how he feels at the moment.