"Meat may be murder, but empty-headed political criticism is crap."

I have to agree. There are some brilliant songs on YATQ, but 'America is not the world' is not one of them.

Morrissey should leave the political stuff to Bono.

The criticism here can clearly derives from an unfortunate inability to distinguish real art from contemporary pop drivel. But, what does a pauper know of cucumber sandwiches?

People are catching on about how over-rated YATQ is. Anyone who thinks this is one of Morrissey's best albums is living a lie.

Overated, Overated, Overated.

It's No Bona Drag. Need I Say More??

I Have Forgiven Jesus is brilliant! Sort of right about America..., but an overly simplistic review.

I always thought that part of the Morrissey experience is enjoying his bad jokes, his arbitrary rankings of writers and his passionate manifestos in favour of this or that... These things fit perfectly with the slightly clumsy post-teenage persona we all fell in love with in the beginning. I know it's twenty years on, but I'm glad THIS hasn't changed.
A pop song is not the place to put forward a sophisticated defense of your political views. There simply is not enough time; and nobody can be catchy and dialectically deep at the same time -if Morrisey can't. On the other hand, a pop song can very well be the place to hand over a good slogan, and Morrissey has done it superbly many times. Finally, America is indeed a pair of loveless blue eyes scanning the world.

The one thing that is undoubtedly true, though, is that YATQ has been hyped because of the seven-year wait. If Moz had continued releasing albums every 1-2 years, his career would have probably just slid away quietly.

The album's good but it's not THAT good to warrant such attention. It's only the fact that he's been MIA so long.

DeRogatis is a fat bastard with an even fatter chip on his shoulder. The guy hates everything, probably cos he thinks his crap band should be getting all the attention. I wrote him a nasty note when he gave Ryan Adams a bad review. I'm not even gonna bother with this one.

cheers.
m

I used to live in Chicago and I too remember this loser...He's such a fat pig that his suntimes coworker, roger ebert, once tried to eat him for lunch...Sorry YATQ didn't live up to his precious Blue Traveler albums he so much adores. Write him at jderogatis@suntimes.com

a couple of years back, and he seems to think a lot of himself.

                              -Racine & Taylor.

Almost every poor review I've read has quoted the lyrics from America is Not the World to back up their argument.

It's a badly written and clumsily sung track (I'm a vegetarian non-American, so you can safely take that as an unbiased opinion), and it's fodder for the Moz critics out there. Many of them would have made up their mind about Quarry and Morrissey's return after 2 minutes of listening.

If he'd opened this album with absolutely ANYTHING other than this song, YATQ would be getting a lot more five star reviews. It really is an excellent album, sans the rubbish "America..." opener.

I can't help but snigger when i read the comments of Morrissey fans keen to look cynically unimpressed in that superior fashion, as is the case on this thread.

"Oh, he's got it right"
"Oh, this album is so underwhelming"

It's really quite sad.

The journalist is probably an aerosmith fan or something. Isn't that standard fare in America?

broken

Everybody is critising 'America is not the World' for falling short of cutting edge political satire, but it wasn't meant to be so. From the lyrics it seems that it's not about getting America on the ropes, more about Morrissey living there now. The first half of the song goes though all the things we know about America - obesity, mysoginism etcetera - but it concludes with Moz saying 'but haven't you me with you now'. It's almost saying 'Yes America, you're boring idiots, but there's no need for that anymore because I live here now.' It's not a great track, but I can't help feeling people have go the wrong idea.