Morrissey Fights Back With a Rude Gesture to the Establishment

“The fact that I’m on this stage is an incredible accomplishment in itself, because as you all know, the jealous bitches tried to get rid of me,” Morrissey told a 20,000-strong crowd at the O2 arena in London on Saturday, declaring victory over the industry gatekeepers.Today, the former Smiths frontman — real name Stephen Morrissey, known as “Moz” to his fans — releases his fourteenth solo studio album, “Make-up Is a Lie,” after six years spent in record label purgatory, when no one would release the two albums he had finished. It’s hard to call this a Moz comeback, since he never really went away, but many are calling Morrissey’s sold out shows across Europe and his new record deal with Sire proof that cancel culture is dead.The 66-year-old crooner, who was voted in 2006 by the BBC’s “Culture Show” as the second-greatest living British cultural icon, has gotten in trouble with the liberal establishment in recent years for decrying mass Muslim immigration to Europe and criticizing the cult of diversity. The oldest record store in Britain stopped stocking his albums. Most reviews of his shows start with an obligatory throat clearing about the 1980s post-punk icon’s political views.In London, Morrissey described these “gagged” years as like being stuck in the 10th month of pregnancy, ready to burst. He parted ways with Capitol Records in 2022 after the label shelved “Bonfire of Teenagers,” an album he recorded in 2021 with collaborations from Iggy Pop, Miley Cyrus, and Flea, because the title track criticizes the milquetoast “don’t look back in anger” response to the 2017 suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester. That album remains shelved for now.“But miraculously, a breech birth will take place on March the 6th,” Morrissey said to screams at the sold out O2 Arena. “Out will pop a new album.”That day is here. “Make-up Is a Lie” is not a make-up album; Morrissey is not offering reconciliation to critics or the industry that calls him problematic or racist. The inclusion of the track “Notre Dame,” first debuted live in 2023 and which questions the official narrative that the 2019 cathedral fire was an accident and not terrorism — “We know who tried to kill you” — is more a middle finger to the establishment than musical masterpiece, though it does have some catchy synth.The album’s title track, centered around a melancholic, orchestral pop riff, is about the illusory nature of makeup and fame, but also about free speech, the importance of speaking out, and mortality. The singer visits an older female in Paris living in “mournful silence” and “blank reclusion” until she explodes “like a cloudburst” with the words, “Make-up is a lie, All make-up is a lie” over and over.The song is likely about Brigitte Bardot, who, like Morrissey, was a staunch animal rights activist and critic of Muslim immigration to the west. She spent her later years in reclusion and eschewed heavy makeup. At the O2 arena, two large images of Bardot were projected behind the band on stage during the song. The vague details of the song could also reference Oscar Wilde, whom Moz frequently cites in his lyrics, and who was banished to Paris after his conviction for homosexuality. Wilde’s body was later reinterred in Paris, where the poet in the song is buried, but a posthumous reconciliation is futile or, according to the song, a lie. The comparisons to Morrissey are obvious.The new album contains 12 songs, one a cover of Roxy Music’s “Amazona.” Morrissey contemplates mortality, fame, and animal rights with his signature theatrical baritone voice as strong as ever. “Zoom Zoom the Little Boy,” a play on a lullaby about saving animals, is the one track I could live without. The final track, “The Monsters of Pig Alley” has a haunting melody and depicts a conversation between a young musician who’s making it and his parents who want him to come back home. Part of the pleasure of listening to Morrissey is decoding his lyrics, which are often peppered with quotes from old films, literary references, and double meanings. “When you’ve tasted fame nothing else will do,” Moz sings.Morrissey performing live with his former band The Smiths in 1984. Photo by Pete Cronin/RedfernsBut nothing from the new album lands like The Smiths’ “Reel Around the Fountain” or “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out.” Part of this is nostalgia — it’s hard to create new material with the same connection many listeners, myself included, felt as teenagers hearing Morrissey sing about loneliness, social isolation, and unrequited love. Press accounts of Moz in recent years tend to describe him as awash in grievance, self-pity, and criticism of the music industry for trying to silence him. Have these critics listened to The Smiths? This has been Morrissey’s schtick since the 1980s (“Bigmouth Strikes Again,” “Cemetry Gates,” “The Boy with the Thorn in His Side,” “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now,” to name a few). Only then he was railing against Margaret Thatcher, the banality of work, and killing animals.Now Morrissey is skewering liberal shibboleths, and the tenor of the external coverage has shifted dramatically. Much to the right’s chagrin, though — they’d love to call him their own — the label “rightwing” doesn’t quite fit Moz. If anything, the excommunication of Morrissey from the ranks of press darling is a case study in the shifting priorities of the liberal elite from a focus on labor politics and class struggle to an embrace of immigration and open borders.Moz doesn’t help himself either with his phrasing and penchant for hyperbole. Accusations of racism against Morrissey often mention a comment he made to the Guardian that the Chinese are “a subspecies.” Notably absent is usually the context. He was talking about their record on animal rights, and fact check: it’s dismal (wet markets anyone?). The Smiths released “Meat Is Murder” in 1985. This isn’t a new issue for Moz.At the O2 Arena, though, fans didn’t seem to care about these controversies. “I’m very concerned about the safety of all communities. But the one that’s mostly at risk now is my own community,” Morrissey exclaimed before launching into “Irish Blood, English Heart.” The lyrics pine for a “time when to be English is not to be baneful/ To be standing by the flag not feeling shameful, racist or partial.”The fan standing behind me proudly declared to me she was Puerto Rican and seemed unfazed by Morrissey’s English pride, belting out the words: “are you sick to death of Labour and Tories?” To be fair, she was quite drunk. Indie rock and punk musicians used to be transgressive. Sid Vicious and Siouxsie Sioux wore swastika armbands to shock. That’s all changed now. Tattoos and piercing have become an unremarkable uniform. Flouting gender norms and embracing ambiguous sexual personae, which Morrissey helped pioneer, are now mainstream. Besides Morrissey and The Sex Pistols’ John Lydon, who wore a MAGA hat in 2020, it’s hard to find musicians willing to defy the industry’s political orthodoxies. Morrissey’s new record deal and sold-out shows may not be a sign that cancel culture is dead, but the patient is on life support. I brought my 13-year-old niece to the gig. All her friends were jealous. There is hope.

Morrissey Fights Back With a Rude Gesture to the Establishment

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