In the June/July Issue of Paste Magazine (Issue #22), Morrissey is included in their 100 Best Living Songwriters feature. The list was compiled by writers and musicians. He was listed at #57.

You can view the entire list here

Also included were remarks by writer William Bowers about Morrissey:

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#57 Morrissey

"Irish blood, English heart, this I'm made of / There is no one on earth I'm afraid of / And I will die with both of my hands untied"

Why bother attempting to separate Morrissey the lyricist from Morrissey the meme? Life is too nasty, brutish and short. Steven Patrick's whole super-idiom is based on reckless blendings: of Wildean wit with the melodrama of a Keats cultist; of humble, other-directed story singing with status-obsessed self-mythologizing; of James Dean/rockabilly style with blousey, glam foppery; of the timeless (Joan Of Arc) with the ephemeral (her Walkman); of soggy sensitivity toward animals and the meek with murderous aggression toward DJs and the powerful; of randy flamboyance with puritanical abstinence; of andro-pop advocacy (yay New York Dolls) with andro-pop dissuasion (boo Elton John); of sagacious subtlety with cretinous bluntness.

Prancing and athletic, his insistence on his own significance -- and his ability to pen couplets defined by universal desires -- make him appealing to the most machismo-driven Manes and Mexican-Americans, as well as the prissiest. (Unfrustrated, normative boys love him, too. Not to mention the ladies.) He's intellectual cheesecake, a reactionary libertine, a solitary populist, an effete aristocrat with the heart of a dole-bound vandal. He transcends gender differentials, and milks them for all that they're worth. He's an evergreen rake, and a bit of a dinosaur -- which is no diss: what other fossil inspires such immediate awe?

Even his physiognomy -- that famous jut jaw -- suggests invulnerable defiance and a weak spot ripe for cheap shots. Throngs of emotionally over-invested fans analyze his compositions like bankers divining a Federal Reserve Chair's prophecy, and yet a compilation disc could be filled with songs defaming him (though The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle has retracted his, and even inscribed a copy of his zine for me with, "William, it was really nothing").

Johnny Marr apologists may bemoan how much harder-to-dance to the solo career has been, as if The Smiths' legacy isn't unassailable, but the Morrissey freed up to sermonize can be just as interesting as the Morrissey shackled to impulse (which is to say that a pulpit in a salon is just as interesting as a "Vicar In A Tutu"). Homemade topical box sets could divide his songs into numerous fascinating categories -- Shaming The Prales, or Cryptically About VD -- and still only be scratching the surface of the work of this postmodern relic, who kicked off his first post-Smiths singles collection with the lines, "Off the rails I was, and / Off the rails I was happy to stay." Get out of his way!

GET: "Ask" (with Johnny Marr, 1986), ''There Is A Light That Never Goes Out" (with Johnny Marr, 1986), "Everyday is Like Sunday" (with Stephen Street, 1988).