Well, I really like all 3 songs released thus far, plus Chain Gang & I thought you were dead. So on recent(ish) output, I’m pretty pleased with Moz.
I’m a Bowie fan and I love Pin-ups. I’m expecting to enjoy CS just as much. For me it was somewhat inevitable that Morrissey would end up doing a covers album, and the song choices would always be somewhat obscure.
As for calling it karaoke, that is overly disparaging. Morrissey and the Smiths did cover versions and whilst not always solid choices/songs occasionally they hit the mark. By way of example, I’d say the Satellite of Love didn’t really work, however, his version of Back on The Chain Gang is a marvellous success.
As a singer myself there are times when I really connect with a song and the words become my own (after a fashion). This can come about by a belief in, and love of a song, the emotion comes across, and is palpable and relatable.
I’d suggest that there is an argument that his choice of songs and their lyrics, is him expressing ‘himself’. Why MUST the words be his own? Most of us have favourite actors, all will likely agree that it is the way those lines are delivered that can move us. Yet film-to-film, these words are hardly unique to and of the actor, they are written by different people.
Down the years, Morrissey has lifted many, many lines from sources other than his own head, some of them great and memorable others throw-away. Of his own lyrics I’d say they are among the best I’ve listened to in my life, but even in early Smiths songs there are some lyrics that are cheesy and cringeworthy. And, maybe we’d forgive some of his more recent lyrical offerings, those deemed clumsy and crass if they had been couched in more inspiring, creative and entertaining musical material.
Maybe, just maybe, opening himself to other collaborators and their ways of working will give Morrissey a spur to create yet more classic, powerful and relevant songs.
