When did M’s career go tits up?

[Amy]

You're on a Morrissey forum where you discuss Morrissey's life... this is not what the average person does.

I'm a fan. I discuss his music, career, thoughts, persona, etc and that's all.
The average fan doesn't use this forum to gather information on other users, Google their usernames and follow them around on different platforms, accuse them of making sockpuppet accounts, threaten to dox them and add everything into a dossier of "evidence" with which they are hoping to single-handedly save Morrissey's career.
Your latest piece of 'evidence' turned out to be an ancient troll post by @Born to Harangue, and you expect to be taken seriously? You're batshit insane. We've all got 'a date with an undertaker' and you're wasting your time peddling conspiracy nonsense about a faded 80s pop star, as if you can save him. Please.

 

[Thewlis]

Faded, really? You contradict yourself here.

 

[Amy]

Faded, really? You contradict yourself here.

Yes, faded. It's not 1985 anymore, he has to beg for record deals these days. What's your point?

 

[Thewlis]

Yes, faded. It's not 1985 anymore, he has to beg for record deals these days. What's your point?

He had to beg for a record deal 20-25 years ago.
He won’t settle for less.
If anything it shows that he has not faded.

 

[Amy]

He had to beg for a record deal 20-25 years ago.
He won’t settle for less.
If anything it shows that he has not faded.

He'll never fade in his own mind, he'll always be chasing No.1, but at some point you have to contend with reality.

 

[Thewlis]

He'll never fade in his own mind, he'll always be chasing No.1, but at some point you have to contend with reality.

Well top-3 will do nicely for him these days, I suppose.
And that’s great, most of his contemporaries won’t achieve that anymore.

 

[Amy]

Well top-3 will do nicely for him these days, I suppose.
And that’s great, most of his contemporaries won’t achieve that anymore.

An album that struggles to sell 10,000 copies and sinks without trace is hardly great.
Like I said, at some point you have to face reality and his current chart reality is closer to 73 than 3. That is faded by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[Thewlis]

An album that struggles to sell 10,000 copies and sinks without trace is hardly great.
Like I said, at some point you have to face reality and his current chart reality is closer to 73 than 3. That is faded by any stretch of the imagination.

Bonfire will definitely be another top-5 album.
He is as ‘faded’ now as he was in the late 90s.

And as I said all 80’s pop stars are faded by your definition, which renders the term useless to start with.

 

[Amy]

Bonfire will definitely be another top-5 album.
He is as ‘faded’ now as he was in the late 90s.

And as I said all 80’s pop stars are faded by your definition, which renders the term useless to start with.

For God's sake, give it a rest. I wasn't addressing you to begin with, you jumped into another conversation and now you're arguing about the colour of shit because you've taken issue with one word. Morrissey isn't 'faded' to you, fantastic. The disasters of the past five years have just been really good play-acting by all involved. Christ.

 

[Mike Rourke]

Bonfire will definitely be another top-5 album.
He is as ‘faded’ now as he was in the late 90s.

And as I said all 80’s pop stars are faded by your definition, which renders the term useless to start with.

A top 5 album for one week is a pretty meaningless achievement when it often only needs 3,000 sales.
Morrissey's contemporaries (e.g. the likes of Paul Heaton and Paul Weller) are still selling at least 30,000 to 50,000 in the UK, which is what Morrissey did up to and including Low in High School. It's only since then that they've tumbled right down to around 5,000-6,000, and it coincides with Radio 2 (and others) no longer playing his new singles from 2020.
In the late 90s, his sales were indeed down but not at this level and he was still getting songs played on the radio. Alma Matters was a (relative) radio hit including a Radio 1 a-list.
Some stations may well decide to start playing his new stuff again which would have a big impact, but this remains to be seen.

 

[Thewlis]

A top 5 album for one week is a pretty meaningless achievement when it often only needs 3,000 sales.
Morrissey's contemporaries (e.g. the likes of Paul Heaton and Paul Weller) are still selling at least 30,000 to 50,000 in the UK, which is what Morrissey did up to and including Low in High School. It's only since then that they've tumbled right down to around 5,000-6,000, and it coincides with Radio 2 (and others) no longer playing his new singles from 2020.
In the late 90s, his sales were indeed down but not at this level and he was still getting songs played on the radio. Alma Matters was a (relative) radio hit including a Radio 1 a-list.
Some stations may well decide to start playing his new stuff again which would have a big impact, but this remains to be seen.

We’ve been here before, but the world is bigger than the UK. What have Paul Weller or Paul Heaton been achieving lately outside of the UK? Vegas residency? Headlining a huge festival in California? Don’t think so.

And look at their appeal on Spotify. Not a fraction of Morrissey’s worldwide popularity.

 

[Gregor Samsa]

People forget that loads of artists that were big in the eighties are doing very well for themselves now. Nick Cave is in many respects more loved than ever before and his albums, books, films and tours generate massive interest from critics and the public. The Cure and Depeche Mode sell out stadiums around the world. a-ha still draw big crowds.

It’s silly to say that all eighties stars are struggling. If you play your cards right and avoid being a dunce, you could maintain success and your iconic status.

 

[Thewlis]

People forget that loads of artists that were big in the eighties are doing very well for themselves now. Nick Cave is in many respects more loved than ever before and his albums, books, films and tours generate massive interest from critics and the public. The Cure and Depeche Mode sell out stadiums around the world. a-ha still draw big crowds.

It’s silly to say that all eighties stars are struggling. If you play your cards right and avoid being a dunce, you could maintain success and your iconic status.

DM, U2 or The Cure sell because they play the game and play the hits. Bus ask their fans what they think of their last albums compared to what they released in the 90s and 80s and you will find very much the same reactions as to what you will find here.

 

[Johnnie Ray]

Sometime post Refusal. His demeanor changed, he had become nastier, colder, more bitter, misanthropic in a not so charming way. And something had happened to the music as well. He tried to make a comeback with The Kid’s a Looker for god’s sake. And when he finally did make a comeback, he did it with one of the worst albums of his career, an album full of that awful bitterness (WPINOYB). After that, it went even further downhill very fast, with an even worse album (LIHS) and an endless stream of stupid and career-killing statements and remarks. And we all know the rest… I do love him, though, and I always will, and I do think he can pull of a great comeback with a great new album (Without Music…).

Well written. World Peace was the first time where I really hated everything about one of his projects. The music, the album cover, the drama surrounding the pulling of the album. I had had enough of him at that point, which had never happened before. For the first time he looked and sounded like a bitter old man.

 

[Mike Rourke]

We’ve been here before, but the world is bigger than the UK. What have Paul Weller or Paul Heaton been achieving lately outside of the UK? Vegas residency? Headlining a huge festival in California? Don’t think so.

And look at their appeal on Spotify. Not a fraction of Morrissey’s worldwide popularity.

We have indeed and you'll see from my earlier post that I don't think Morrissey's current position is as bleak as many in this thread are suggesting.
But his UK popularity really did go off a cliff edge in the 2017-2019 period and I don't think that can be denied whether we look at album sales or concerts.
Historically, around a third of his total world sales were from the UK. I think his popularity will have held out a lot more strongly elsewhere as his support for right-wing politics will not have made their national news websites like it was 5 or 6 times over here, which was when all the damage was done.
It came as no surprise to me that he appeared to have worldwide minus the UK deal when it was announced a couple of months ago, although I don't know whether that's still the case.
Generally, I think things are pretty good. He's got a great team of songwriters (enhanced by the reappearance of Alain W), seems to have no problem putting a band together every few months, and Joe C is still on board.

 

[Surface]

We’ve been here before, but the world is bigger than the UK. What have Paul Weller or Paul Heaton been achieving lately outside of the UK? Vegas residency? Headlining a huge festival in California? Don’t think so.

And look at their appeal on Spotify. Not a fraction of Morrissey’s worldwide popularity.

James don't have a particularly big world wide following, yet they have more monthly listeners than Morrissey.

 

[Gregor Samsa]

DM, U2 or The Cure sell because they play the game and play the hits. Bus ask their fans what they think of their last albums compared to what they released in the 90s and 80s and you will find very much the same reactions as to what you will find here.

I think there might be a bit more to it than that. No one could accuse Robert Smith of “playing the game”. They haven’t released new material in nearly 15 years, he rarely does interviews or other media appearances, and their gigs are usually around three hours long and filled with deep cuts, even deeper cuts still and hit singles. But sure, most of The Cure’s best albums came out in the 80s. Nick Cave, however, is better than ever. Which most critics seem to agree with.

All of these bands have self-respect and they would never manhandle their careers the way Moz does, nor treat their fans as badly as M sometimes do.

I know that Morrissey is infallible in your eyes, but in reality he really isn’t. He’s not as successful as he once was, and he has himself to blame for some of that. This is not me being hateful, I love him, but what’s the point of being a yes-man?

 

[Thewlis]

James don't have a particularly big world wide following, yet they have more monthly listeners than Morrissey.

They are doing very well, yes.
I am a big fan too.
But if you look at their most popular songs they are all from decades ago and I don’t think their recent albums are even close to the quality of their prime albums.

 

[Uncleskinny]

We have indeed and you'll see from my earlier post that I don't think Morrissey's current position is as bleak as many in this thread are suggesting.
But his UK popularity really did go off a cliff edge in the 2017-2019 period and I don't think that can be denied whether we look at album sales or concerts.
Historically, around a third of his total world sales were from the UK. I think his popularity will have held out a lot more strongly elsewhere as his support for right-wing politics will not have made their national news websites like it was 5 or 6 times over here, which was when all the damage was done.
It came as no surprise to me that he appeared to have worldwide minus the UK deal when it was announced a couple of months ago, although I don't know whether that's still the case.
Generally, I think things are pretty good. He's got a great team of songwriters (enhanced by the reappearance of Alain W), seems to have no problem putting a band together every few months, and Joe C is still on board.

Absolute nonsense.

How do these crumbs get him what he wants?

 

[Mike Rourke]

DM, U2 or The Cure sell because they play the game and play the hits. Bus ask their fans what they think of their last albums compared to what they released in the 90s and 80s and you will find very much the same reactions as to what you will find here.

The 80s bands are indeed doing as well now as they ever were, if not better, even rubbish like Deacon Blue. And Morrissey's early 2018 UK tour was to his biggest ever audience (solo or Smiths) with close to 60,000 tickets sold. It was nothing to do with him playing the hits back then. There are as many 'hits' in the latest tour as there were in 2018 (setlist is here https://www.morrissey-solo.com/threads/london-brixton-academy-mar-1-2018-post-show.141949/).
His UK popularity nosedived after that tour and that really cannot be denied. However, it has stopped nosediving, now. It might even be consolidating. The more time passes since his last toxic comments/actions (2019) the more his reputation will heal. And if Radio 2 decide to playlist a new single of his, that will make a big old difference, but a fair number of the pre-For Britain era fans may well be gone for good.