Morrissey is renowned for creating bucket loads of controversy through out his whole career and since this albums release on July 15th there has been no change. Perhaps this is because Morrissey’s fans and lots of critics are saying this is his best album since his 1988 solo debut “Viva Hate”. This always seems to be the case with his more successful works. Morrissey’s anti-fans (of which their seems to be many) have never been as vocal on the lesser successful albums. So maybe this album will bring Morrissey back to the forefront of the music scene once again for a while. So here is our insight into the album.
Instead of a typical top five (from best to worst) this will be a little different. More like a ‘five things you need to know about’ article. So here it is, 5 songs off of the new 18 song deluxe album:
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World Peace Is None Of Your Business: This is the title track of the album. Now by personal opinion it isn’t the best but it is probably the most relevant of our times. This track addresses the troubles between the public and government/parliament and tells us that voting is a ‘support [of the] process’. He goes on to mention a few countries that we have been shown almost everyday for the past few months on the news and the internet, two mainly being Ukraine and Brazil.
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The Bullfighter Dies: This song is somewhat hard-hitting to most first listeners but on further absorption this song makes perfect sense. Morrissey is basically fighting for animal rights in the name of the defenceless bull against the vicious bullfighter. This is a pretty simple concept to grasp and that is the sole basis of the song. Because in our modern world should these acts of vicious and cruel animal based “sports” exist?
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I’m Not A Man: This song holds person relevance for me as a Vegan, but that shouldn’t deter you from ever listening to this lyrics of this beautifully composed piece of musical poetry. From start to finish, Morrissey delivers hit after hit at anyone around the world that either eats the deceased or kills them themselves. He his though, predominantly talking about the male/masculine need to kill or destroy and ruin things E.g. killing/hunting and motor sport/crash derby’s for instance ruining the planet. And how these types of things are seen as a sign of power in a mans eye’s. And this prompts him to say “[he’s] not a man, I’m something much bigger and better than…!”
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Neal Cassady Drops Dead: This song deserves to be in the rock 100 charts. It’s very hard hitting and in your face from both a lyrical and musical standpoint. Rocking from start to finish with some excellent guitar work. And this is most definitely a track for all you ‘Beat Generation’ literature fans without a doubt. This draws to works from Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Whom are the masters of the ‘Beat Generation’ many (and I) say.
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Earth Is The Loneliest Planet: This song seems to bring to mind the general loneliness of the single human on a planet of nothing but dispair and turmoil, with only a faint hope and implication of a better world, somewhere.
There it is then. Morrissey’s new album. No matter your love or hatred of this man (however strong either way), there will definitely be at least one song out of the 18 that you will relate to on a personal level. Lyrically Morrissey is at the forefront of his generation (regardless of what the NME says). And if the 18 track album wasn’t enough he has released a spoken word renditions of the first singles off the album with accompanying videos.
As the famous Noel Gallagher once said about the Mozz:
“No matter what you do. He’ll do one better.”
Though the brilliance of this album is visible from the fans responses, the record label didn’t seem to think so. As only a few weeks after it’s release, the record label Capitol dropped Morrissey’s contract. It’s speculated that his happened after a small spat between label and artist about the lack of promotion on the labels part of the album.
This article was originally going to be an article praising the brilliance of Morrissey’s lyrics and it ended up being an attack on the cowardliness nature of the music industry. And this is justified because it really feels that if a singer or a band flexes a muscle in the music business; a muscle that needed to be flexed too, but doesn’t make the billions like the puppets from MR COWELL and the boss’ at the terrible excuses of record companies like Virgin or Warner makes then you’re destined for failure regardless of your talent.
If you really think about it you can see it in the charts, daily.
Morrissey’s track record with record labels is terrible from a business standpoint but, how popular is he? Very! In hip hop, A$AP ROCKY did it himself in POP, Katy Perry did it her self at first and in Indie music/rock and perhaps more popular; one of the most popular bands of all times, OASIS did it themselves! And now recently there has been an influx of bands and artists creating their own labels and producing their own music (Blink 182 and Motley Crue to name a couple); completely taking out the middle money man.
So maybe this is one route that Morrissey should consider.
By Liam Anthony
evidenceoftime 