Morrissey Solo's Lyrics - Where Do You Stand?

[King Leer]

The topic of the decline in quality of Morrissey's lyrics comes up again, and again. And again. It's really starting to grate but talking about the music and words is why we're here so I thought I'd get a current reflection of what people thought. I tried to include quite a bit of gradation in the poll options but if your feelings fall outside (e.g. "Morrissey is as brilliant a wordsmith as ever. It's HIM that's changed!"), etch a postcard.

I see an unbroken line between The Smiths and Morrissey when it comes to the Man's words and worldview but I decided to limit the poll to Morrissey solo as the complaints seemed to really take hold with Quarry and have continued to gain momentum right up until the latest new songs. My memory is hazy but being on this site when Maladjusted came out, I can't remember many (any?) fans taking issues with the words in particular except for perhaps Roy's Keen (which as a single had stunners Lost and The Edges among its B-sides).

 

[the_kaz]

I actually think that Quarry has some cracking lyrics, up their with some of Morrissey's best (Irish Blood and Crashing Bores spring to mind, but there are others). Some of the b-sides from this album have equally strong lyrics too. Before I started visiting this website, I couldn't imagine any Morrissey fans having major grievances with this album (musically or lyrically). I love it!

However, I really do believe that Ringleader presents the point where Morrissey's lyrics started going downhill. Don't get me wrong, I still think that there are some excellent lyrics to be had, but there are just more examples of bland and uninteresting lyrics. Some of the lyrics are even pretty embarrassing, I must say (although Ringleader isn't the first time Morrissey wrote bad lyrics). Unfortunately, Refusal doesn't have a single stand-out track for me, lyrically.

 

[Amy]

Quarry was a great album - far better than the original editions of Southpaw and Maladjusted. The lyrics to "Camden", "Irish Blood", "I'm Not Sorry" and "I Like You" ranged from enjoyable to epic, and the music was mostly strong. Ringleader was a musical and lyrical disaster with one or two better tracks - "I'll Never Be Anybody's Hero Now", and the b-side "Ganglord" - but he improved again with Refusal. Overall a mixed bag, I think. He always surprises at the moment you least expect it. The new 'songs' are hideous in all respects, but I'm not ready to write him off yet.

 

[Amy]

I actually think that Quarry has some cracking lyrics, up their with some of Morrissey's best (Irish Blood and Crashing Bores spring to mind, but there are others). Some of the b-sides from this album have equally strong lyrics too. Before I started visiting this website, I couldn't imagine any Morrissey fans having major grievances with this album (musically or lyrically). I love it!

However, I really do believe that Ringleader presents the point where Morrissey's lyrics started going downhill. Don't get me wrong, I still think that there are some excellent lyrics to be had, but there are just more examples of bland and uninteresting lyrics. Some of the lyrics are even pretty embarrassing, I must say (although Ringleader isn't the first time Morrissey wrote bad lyrics). Unfortunately, Refusal doesn't have a single stand-out track for me, lyrically.

Not even "Carol"..?

 

[the_kaz]

Not even "Carol"..?

Certainly one of the better tracks (I'm Okay By Myself is another lyrical favourite), but it's not something I'd listen to obsessively, like some of Morrissey's earlier songs (including some of those from Quarry and one or two from Ringleader).

 

[Irregular Regular]

The lyrics aren't as good as the old days (i.e. Vauxhall) but I ENJOY them just as much is the closest to how I feel.
A more accurate description would be the lyrics aren't as good as the old days but I ENJOY listening to Morrissey just as much.

 

[King Leer]

Fair play. I wrote the below option for myself to vote on.

Good points above on Quarry, but I remember some real hate-ons for How Can Anybody's "15 miles of shit" and America's "hamburger" lyrics, among others. It was first time I can remember fans actually getting angry over the issue.

The lyrics aren't as good as the old days (i.e. Vauxhall) but I ENJOY them just as much is the closest to how I feel.
A more accurate description would be the lyrics aren't as good as the old days but I ENJOY listening to Morrissey just as much.

 

[Worm]

Is "The Sun Also Rises" less of a classic than "Ulysses"?

 

[Anaesthesine]

^^ Nice try.

Morrissey's later, "simpler" lyrics are the symptom, not the "problem" itself. The "problem" is his source material.

That said, I stand by the greatest pop star of his generation, and the greatest singer I've ever heard. Where there's life, there's hope...

 

[Worm]

The "problem" is his source material.

What do you mean? The backing music? Or the wellspring of ideas and topics from which he draws his lyrics?

 

[Anaesthesine]

What do you mean? The backing music? Or the wellspring of ideas and topics from which he draws his lyrics?

I mean Morrissey, the man. Like every great artist, his earliest work told his story to that point, then he had to make it up as he went along. He managed a great and wondrous narrative until fairly recently, when he seems to have hit a bit of a wall. He is now in a place that seems less inspirational: he's an isolated icon. I think YOR is a wonderful album in its way, a document of a perceived decline. It is, however, very, very dark, and somewhat difficult to relate to (but I'm doing my best ).

His backing music is also lacking. It's been said a million times, but it's true: Alain was a wonderful songwriting partner, and now he's (apparently) gone. Boz and Jessie do their best, and sometimes it's pretty good, but it's not great.

Morrissey still has it in him, I'm sure, but he needs another story to tell.

 

[Orson Swells]

I like them. I liked them in 1988. I like them now.

 

[Worm]

I mean Morrissey, the man. Like every great artist, his earliest work told his story to that point, then he had to make it up as he went along. He managed a great and wondrous narrative until fairly recently, when he seems to have hit a bit of a wall. He is now in a place that seems less inspirational: he's an isolated icon. I think YOR is a wonderful album in its way, a document of a perceived decline. It is, however, very, very dark, and somewhat difficult to relate to (but I'm doing my best ).

His backing music is also lacking. It's been said a million times, but it's true: Alain was a wonderful songwriting partner, and now he's (apparently) gone. Boz and Jessie do their best, and sometimes it's pretty good, but it's not great.

Morrissey still has it in him, I'm sure, but he needs another story to tell.

I see what you're saying. I actually agree with your understanding of Morrissey being his primary source material. Over the years the lyrics chart the course of his gaze as it moved from the world to his own navel. But in my view that's not a problem at all. In fact, I think it's the opposite: the "walls" around him were Shelagh Delaney, Oscar Wilde, James Dean, and all of his other early inspirations. Today the walls are gone. Today he's found freedom. I think his lyrics reveal a middle-aged pop star who wants to treat his legacy as indelicately as possible as a way of asserting his freedom to escape his own legend. By which I mean Morrissey's freedom not to be Morrissey.

(Yes, I realize I'm grasping at straws, but it's thin gruel all around, to mix metaphors. I need to cling to something... )

 

[Librarian On Fire]

Good question King. For the record I do not think that Morrissey’s lyrics have dropped that much in quality. Although I do admit that there is a slight decrease compared to earlier compositions.

I put this down to a couple of factors. One is that the complexity of the musical arrangements for his songs has become simpler. Simpler arrangements attract simpler lyrics. The songs are shorter and there is less to say. The second would be that often the best works of many artists are borne from adversity. It’s a bit harder to write about how difficult it is dealing with the cards that you have been given, when you are now financially well off. A social life starts getting lived. Self-confidence has finally arrived and well, you feel good about yourself. There’s probably more ennui being comfortable that creativity. The last factor is that I believe for most writers they only have a limited number of novels within them. True, there are some writers who do continue to write well after their third or fourth novel. But for so many they have said everything that they can possible say. The creative well begins to run dry.

A couple of the songs on YRTQ had been hanging around for a couple of years. I personally feel that the lyrics on ROTT are very very good. There are not many artists who could come up with “Life Is a Pigsty” for a song title, or subject. The lyrics on YOR are slightly below his best. In true Morrissey style he then comes up with gold with “Scandinavia”. We don’t know the full lyrics yet, but already it sees proof that Morrissey does have words inside of him. Wasn’t it once written by some reviewer that Morrissey is better when he starts writing about others than himself?

I harp back to my post last week under the thread of “What Was the Last Book You Read” and I noted that I remember Morrissey saying that he seldom reads these days. This can work in both his favour, as he remains untouched by others influence. The down side is that Morrissey is such a magpie picking up pieces of others work and them incorporating it into his own and without him pecking at the scraps; he’s finding it a bit harder to come up with the former quality of the past.

 

[Irregular Regular]

From difficult child to spectral hand to Claude Brasseur, oh blah blah blah...

 

[Worm]

I harp back to my post last week under the thread of “What Was the Last Book You Read” and I noted that I remember Morrissey saying that he seldom reads these days. This can work in both his favour, as he remains untouched by others influence. The down side is that Morrissey is such a magpie picking up pieces of others work and them incorporating it into his own and without him pecking at the scraps; he’s finding it a bit harder to come up with the former quality of the past.

I remember him saying he didn't read much anymore, too. That's a big clue about his relationship to books. As you wrote, he was a magpie, for many years, picking up scraps from books to write his songs. But I think it was about more than writing songs. It was also about how he defined himself, not only after he was famous but also during his formative years, in his Manchester bedroom. His personality was made up of the art from which he took his inspiration. Importantly, he didn't use this art to reflect his true self, he simply was the aggregation of hundreds of songs, books, films, and other works of art. What many critics missed, when they knocked him for ripping off "A Taste of Honey" for "This Night Has Opened My Eyes", is that he wasn't "borrowing" at all but simply expressing a part of himself which could not be distinguished from the play. In the strict sense, he identified with what he loved completely: he was what he loved. The early Smiths classics, far from being derivative, were as personal as pages torn from his diary.

In the course of his career, like a snake shedding a series of skins, he gradually replaced his outer skin, a layer made up of wholly absorbed outside influences, with a newer, different, more organic skin made up of elements from within. One Morrissey isn't "more authentic" than the other. They're the same. "All You Need Is Me" is as much Morrissey as "This Night Has Opened My Eyes". This is why I believe that his recent lyrics are just as good, in a way-- they force the listener to think about why the Morrissey of 1983 might be totally consistent with the Morrissey of 2012, despite many outward differences. Foremost among the many interesting insights arising from comparisons of the two is this: if the Morrissey of 2012 is the same as the Morrissey of 1983, at least in essence, then it proves that the whingeing brat of 1984 was capable of happiness. The main criticism about Morrissey has always been that he wallowed in misery by choice. Even Johnny echoed this criticism, by implication, when he said of his songwriting partner, "Sometimes I think he just needs a good shag". Well, he's had his shag, thanks, and now he's "better"-- the point being that the young Morrissey, whose very identity was a mass of fictions stolen from pop culture, was justified in his complaints and, all along, was a person capable of escaping books (or, better, bookishness). He was ill and he said he was ill. Not because he was faking it to cut an interesting figure. Not because he was a navel-gazing studenty-type. Not because he was a pretentious fop who kept tripping over his own ego. Not because he was a dork too afraid to ask out another person. Because he was well and truly ill. And the proof of his illness is that he is now healthy enough to stand on his own before the world without trotting out a cardboard figure.

Being the wit that he is, Morrissey has commemorated this achievement by selling cardboard figures of himself.

 

[Irregular Regular]

I remember him saying he didn't read much anymore, too. That's a big clue about his relationship to books. As you wrote, he was a magpie, for many years, picking up scraps from books to write his songs. But I think it was about more than writing songs. It was also about how he defined himself, not only after he was famous but also during his formative years, in his Manchester bedroom. His personality was made up of the art from which he took his inspiration. Importantly, he didn't use this art to reflect his true self, he simply was the aggregation of hundreds of songs, books, films, and other works of art. What many critics missed, when they knocked him for ripping off "A Taste of Honey" for "This Night Has Opened My Eyes", is that he wasn't "borrowing" at all but simply expressing a part of himself which could not be distinguished from the play. In the strict sense, he identified with what he loved completely: he was what he loved. The early Smiths classics, far from being derivative, were as personal as pages torn from his diary.

In the course of his career, like a snake shedding a series of skins, he gradually replaced his outer skin, a layer made up of wholly absorbed outside influences, with a newer, different, more organic skin made up of elements from within. One Morrissey isn't "more authentic" than the other. They're the same. "All You Need Is Me" is as much Morrissey as "This Night Has Opened My Eyes". This is why I believe that his recent lyrics are just as good, in a way-- they force the listener to think about why the Morrissey of 1983 might be totally consistent with the Morrissey of 2012, despite many outward differences. Foremost among the many interesting insights arising from comparisons of the two is this: if the Morrissey of 2012 is the same as the Morrissey of 1983, at least in essence, then it proves that the whingeing brat of 1984 was capable of happiness. The main criticism about Morrissey has always been that he wallowed in misery by choice. Even Johnny echoed this criticism, by implication, when he said of his songwriting partner, "Sometimes I think he just needs a good shag". Well, he's had his shag, thanks, and now he's "better"-- the point being that the young Morrissey, whose very identity was a mass of fictions stolen from pop culture, was justified in his complaints and, all along, was a person capable of escaping books (or, better, bookishness). He was ill and he said he was ill. Not because he was faking it to cut an interesting figure. Not because he was a navel-gazing studenty-type. Not because he was a pretentious fop who kept tripping over his own ego. Not because he was a dork too afraid to ask out another person. Because he was well and truly ill. And the proof of his illness is that he is now healthy enough to stand on his own before the world without trotting out a cardboard figure.

Being the wit that he is, Morrissey has commemorated this achievement by selling cardboard figures of himself.

Very eloquently put.
Still...a lot of poppycock.

 

[the raytownian]

I ended up settling with option 3, though I might end up changing my mind. I'm not sure if any of the options really express my exact feelings.

I think Moz has more than made up for the abundance of ghastly-shit lyrics (and annoying digital synth squelches) on YATQ with his subsequent releases....... so I have forgiven him for those.

 

[Orson Swells]

Very eloquently put.
Still...a lot of poppycock.

Poppycocteau, surely.

 

[Irregular Regular]

Poppycocteau, surely.

And as I handed them my trousers ...
(Well, you've got to make the most of life, haven't you?)