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In 1992, Steven Patrick Morrissey, the lead singer of the seminal ’80s British band The Smiths, wrote a song called “We’ll Let You Know.” More than thirty years later, the sentiment gets the singer blacklisted and the message catches fire.
Last month, Morrissey had two concerts canceled due to credible death threats.
MORRISSEY CANCELS WEEKEND SHOWS AFTER RECEIVING ‘CREDIBLE THREAT’ TO HIS LIFE DURING WORLD TOUR
“We’ll let you know” is a lament. It begins with the words, “How sad are we, and how sad have we been?” And Morrissey is talking directly about the British.
What he complained about so long ago is the erasure of British culture, as the lyrics ‘and the songs we sing, they’re not supposed to mean anything’ make clear. Even in 1992, he saw his history and tradition not just lost, but destroyed.
MURCIA, SPAIN – MAY 01: Morrissey performs on stage at the 1st day of SOS4.8 on May 1, 2015 in Murcia, Spain. (Photo by Xavi Torrent/Redferns via Getty Images) (Xavi Torrent/Redferns via Getty Images)
Today, Morrissey fills homes around the world. I know because I’m going. He rocked Radio City Music Hall just last month, so why exactly can’t his latest album be distributed?
The latest controversy surrounding Moz, as he is known, is that he has a song called ‘Bonfire of Teenagers’, about the Islamic terror attack on a concert in Manchester in 2017, in which he says he will neither forgive nor forget the atrocity.
After the bombing of an Ariana Grande concert by Islamic extremists, Mancusians held a rally in which they sang the very cute Oasis song ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’, as if to forgive the atrocity.
Morrissey, like a later Lynyrd Skynyrd responding to Neil Young’s attack on the sweet home of Alabama, wrote in his song, “And the foolish people sing, don’t look back with anger… I can assure you, I’ll look back with anger until the day I die.”
That’s not the kind of sentiment that gets record deals these days.
But there is a central mistake that Morrissey’s detractors make. They think he’s talking about race when he’s talking about culture. They think he’s talking about biology when he talks about books.
LONDON, ENGLAND – MARCH 14: Morrissey performs at the SSE Arena, Wembley on March 14, 2020 in London, England. (Photo by Jo Hale/Redferns) (Jo Hale/Redferns)
Morrissey can be seen as the greatest lyricist of his generation. His songs are littered with references to Joyce, Shakespeare and Wilde. He longs to be a writer of the English language at a party with them, not a wake.
In an age when every musician or celebrity only understands the latest political trend, Morrissey won’t. It’s not even clear that he’s particularly conservative, he just wants freedom.
Many of Morrissey’s fans, and they exist all over the known world, including a contingent of Latinos that President Trump would envy, want him to just release his new album on his own.
Emergency services are speaking to people outside the Manchester Arena following reports of the explosion at the venue during the Ariana Grande concert. (Peter Byrne/PA via AP)
Beat the system, and yes, many people will buy it. But Morrissey is not a producer, he is an artist.
The real question is whether a record company will pick up someone who is selling out arenas around the world, now that the spell of woke may have been broken.
Can Morrissey be reintegrated into the group of normal, acceptable artists who get contracts? Like the professional gangbanger rap artists? I’m not holding my breath.
When I was 18, I heard Morrissey announce these words to me:
Sing your life
Walk straight up to the microphone and give a name
All the things you love
All things you hate
And that changed me. I’ve been trying to do that ever since. His message has always been that all our voices matter.
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I love Mark Twain and Jack Kerouac as much as Moz loves Yeats and Oscar Wilde, and for similar reasons. They write about what makes us who we are.
Morrissey, as another lyric suggests, won’t change, and he won’t be nice. But will the recording industry give the people what they want? Or will it remain a slave to wakefulness?
Morrissey is the winner in all this. Whether he gets a recording contract or not, he lives by the example of the great English writers he so admires.
It’s a goal every writer should strive for.
Morrissey ends ‘We’ll Let You Know’ singing:
We may seem cold, or we may even be the most depressing people you’ve ever known
What’s left, we sadly know, are the last true British people you’ve ever known.
Let’s hope that isn’t true.
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