Post Millennial / Fiona Dodwell: "Morrissey and the misguided outrage of his critics" (August 29, 2021)

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Morrissey and the misguided outrage of his critics

This never-ending quest to undermine one of the most important singer/songwriters of our time tells us much more about the way society is shaping itself into spineless mediocrity.


You know the drill.
Regards,
FWD.


Update - August 30, 2021:
Now a Central post.
 
Exactly. I don't think his more divisive views are doing him any favours but no-one sells big units forever. There are much bigger artists, million sellers like the Manic Street Preachers, that barely sell much of anything now.
It's not about selling big units forever - it's about the almost complete withdrawal of UK radio support and sales suddenly going over a cliff edge. High School was critically derided but still shifted 50,000 units in the UK. Dog on a Chain was (relatively) acclaimed. Under 25,000 sales would have been a shock but it stalled around 7,000. Unprecedentedly, the album flew out of the top 100 in just one week. A lot of this is due to the almost complete lack of radio airplay (except in Scotland) which had never happened before for a new Morrissey album even in the Southpaw/Maladjusted era. People still don't seem to realise how much difference that makes. Hopefully, the previously Morrissey-friendly radio stations have realised they over-reacted in effectively boycotting his new stuff, but there's no reason to believe they have. So, yeah, acts tend to (but not always) sell fewer new albums further down the line, but the sudden Morrissey sales decline has gone far beyond that. It's also the case with his live audience (but to a lesser degree) whereas iconic groups/acts actually tend to attract bigger live audiences as the years go by.
 
While I am not a big fan of Fiona Dodwell's writing and was annoyed by the easily-avoidable factual mistake in the beginning of the article, I admire that she puts her name and face out there and stands for what she writes.

Moreover, I can understand why she felt the need to respond to the Distractify article, which I happened upon myself when a Life-long-Smiths-fan-who-has-seen-the-light-and-now-hates-Morrissey linked to it from Reddit as proof of why Morrissey is a horrible human being whose music cannot be enjoyed anymore unless you flog yourself for an hour or two afterwards.

Indeed, I was tempted to leave a comment myself, as the article is one of the most shameless copy-paste rewrites of all those other biased articles out there, but I couldn't find a comment box on the page and it doesn't appear on Distractify's Instagram or Twitter (I'm not touching Facebook). Moreover, unlike Fiona Dodwell, the article's author, Jamie Lerner, does not link to it from her personal Twitter page, almost as if she's afraid to directly deal with comments.

So who is this brave young journalist, I wondered, and what are her credentials? A quick search of her name in combination with Distractify brought me to her Linkedin page. No information on her educational background was visible to me, so I am not sure if she passed the course Ethics for Journalists. However, as a staff writer for Distractify, she "Pitches stores based on trending SEO". Regardless of whether she pitches stores or stories, the content of her article on Morrissey is obviously very much dictated by what search words are trending. Ultimately, it is saddening that people like the aforementioned Redditor let such a one-sided clickbaity article by someone with no ideas of her own taint their experience of the music they once loved.
 
While I am not a big fan of Fiona Dodwell's writing and was annoyed by the easily-avoidable factual mistake in the beginning of the article, I admire that she puts her name and face out there and stands for what she writes.

Moreover, I can understand why she felt the need to respond to the Distractify article, which I happened upon myself when a Life-long-Smiths-fan-who-has-seen-the-light-and-now-hates-Morrissey linked to it from Reddit as proof of why Morrissey is a horrible human being whose music cannot be enjoyed anymore unless you flog yourself for an hour or two afterwards.

Indeed, I was tempted to leave a comment myself, as the article is one of the most shameless copy-paste rewrites of all those other biased articles out there, but I couldn't find a comment box on the page and it doesn't appear on Distractify's Instagram or Twitter (I'm not touching Facebook). Moreover, unlike Fiona Dodwell, the article's author, Jamie Lerner, does not link to it from her personal Twitter page, almost as if she's afraid to directly deal with comments.

So who is this brave young journalist, I wondered, and what are her credentials? A quick search of her name in combination with Distractify brought me to her Linkedin page. No information on her educational background was visible to me, so I am not sure if she passed the course Ethics for Journalists. However, as a staff writer for Distractify, she "Pitches stores based on trending SEO". Regardless of whether she pitches stores or stories, the content of her article on Morrissey is obviously very much dictated by what search words are trending. Ultimately, it is saddening that people like the aforementioned Redditor let such a one-sided clickbaity article by someone with no ideas of her own taint their experience of the music they once loved.

Imagine getting your information from Distractify. 👀
 
Louder than bums. Morrissey self-deprecating again? He regards his self worth higher than a bum, but not much more.
 
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