This story is now spinning up all kinds of press, like this piece in The Times by Will Hodgkinson. (Author of the AMAZING new book about Lawrence, from Felt.) As it's The Times, there's a paywall, but here the text of it all:
Morrissey says he is being censored. He isn’t
The former Smiths star has complained that his controversial album Bonfire of Teenagers has been unfairly suppressed. He should release it himself and stop playing the moaning martyr
Will Hodgkinson
Tuesday September 10 2024, 3.00pm BST, The Times
Every rock and pop critic in the country would like to persuade Morrissey to talk to them. Now that the most contrary star of them has talked (via email) to The Telegraph, I confess I’m a little jealous, but it’s a little rich to read that he thinks he is being gagged, bound and censored. Is that really the case when we’re all desperate to speak to him?
The interview focuses chiefly on Morrissey’s unreleased 2022 album Bonfire of Teenagers, which takes its name from the May 22, 2017, bombing by an Islamic fundamentalist at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, and the fact that it remains unreleased. The album is a victim, claims Morrissey, of “idiot culture” and the suppression of free speech.
Yet Morrissey does have free speech, which he uses regularly in messages sent out to the world via his website and picked up by the press everywhere. “There’s no arts media any more in England, therefore there’s no one to whom I can sit and talk about this,” he says in an interview in the arts pages of a newspaper. Morrissey’s dispute with Capitol Records blocked the release of the album, which featured a guest spot from Miley Cyrus until she backed off “for reasons unconnected to me”, he said. But as he stated earlier this year, he has bought back the rights to the album. He could release Bonfire of Teenagers himself today.
He says he won’t do that. Why not? Plenty of artists release their own albums in the streaming age and Morrissey is certainly a big enough name to garner big sales to his still loyal fanbase. I cannot help but suspect he likes to see himself as the outsider genius amid a confederacy of dunces, the lone voice of truth facing down the groupthink-infected hordes.
Besides, there is more than a bit of hypocrisy going on here. I remember asking Morrissey’s press officer (long gone; they change like the wind) for a ticket to review a concert, only to discover I was on some kind of naughty list for being less than effusive about a past performance. If you give it out, as every critic knows and as Morrissey does, you should be able to take it. And I would like, too, to ask him more about his support for the English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson (in 2018 he said his sentencing for contempt of court was “shocking treatment”) or for the far-right party For Britain, which he praised the same year.
Fair play to Morrissey for saying he won’t self-censor and remove the offending title song to his album. Artists have the right to express themselves and audiences have the right to agree or disagree with them. Yet all this protesting has the whiff of martyrdom and the former singer of the Smiths is no saint. In late August Morrissey whined that he and the guitarist Johnny Marr had been approached by a concert promoter with a very lucrative offer for a reunion tour but Marr wouldn’t play ball, so fans of the most revolutionary band of the 1980s were once more denied the chance to relive their youth. He went on to boast that he was selling out his US tour while Marr was reduced to playing special guest to New Order.
Yet I know which of the two men I have more sympathy for — Marr, who is one of the most liked and respected musicians out there, and who has shown integrity at refusing to reform the Smiths when to do so could afford him a handful of houses he doesn’t need. He responded to the reunion rumours by posting a photograph of Nigel Farage, seemingly a reference to the political beliefs of the singer he clearly has no desire to be in a room with ever again. Free speech does exist, and Marr has exercised his right to it by tacitly revealing why there will be no Smiths reunion.
Related item:
Morrissey says he is being censored. He isn’t
The former Smiths star has complained that his controversial album Bonfire of Teenagers has been unfairly suppressed. He should release it himself and stop playing the moaning martyr
Will Hodgkinson
Tuesday September 10 2024, 3.00pm BST, The Times
Every rock and pop critic in the country would like to persuade Morrissey to talk to them. Now that the most contrary star of them has talked (via email) to The Telegraph, I confess I’m a little jealous, but it’s a little rich to read that he thinks he is being gagged, bound and censored. Is that really the case when we’re all desperate to speak to him?
The interview focuses chiefly on Morrissey’s unreleased 2022 album Bonfire of Teenagers, which takes its name from the May 22, 2017, bombing by an Islamic fundamentalist at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, and the fact that it remains unreleased. The album is a victim, claims Morrissey, of “idiot culture” and the suppression of free speech.
Yet Morrissey does have free speech, which he uses regularly in messages sent out to the world via his website and picked up by the press everywhere. “There’s no arts media any more in England, therefore there’s no one to whom I can sit and talk about this,” he says in an interview in the arts pages of a newspaper. Morrissey’s dispute with Capitol Records blocked the release of the album, which featured a guest spot from Miley Cyrus until she backed off “for reasons unconnected to me”, he said. But as he stated earlier this year, he has bought back the rights to the album. He could release Bonfire of Teenagers himself today.
He says he won’t do that. Why not? Plenty of artists release their own albums in the streaming age and Morrissey is certainly a big enough name to garner big sales to his still loyal fanbase. I cannot help but suspect he likes to see himself as the outsider genius amid a confederacy of dunces, the lone voice of truth facing down the groupthink-infected hordes.
Besides, there is more than a bit of hypocrisy going on here. I remember asking Morrissey’s press officer (long gone; they change like the wind) for a ticket to review a concert, only to discover I was on some kind of naughty list for being less than effusive about a past performance. If you give it out, as every critic knows and as Morrissey does, you should be able to take it. And I would like, too, to ask him more about his support for the English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson (in 2018 he said his sentencing for contempt of court was “shocking treatment”) or for the far-right party For Britain, which he praised the same year.
Fair play to Morrissey for saying he won’t self-censor and remove the offending title song to his album. Artists have the right to express themselves and audiences have the right to agree or disagree with them. Yet all this protesting has the whiff of martyrdom and the former singer of the Smiths is no saint. In late August Morrissey whined that he and the guitarist Johnny Marr had been approached by a concert promoter with a very lucrative offer for a reunion tour but Marr wouldn’t play ball, so fans of the most revolutionary band of the 1980s were once more denied the chance to relive their youth. He went on to boast that he was selling out his US tour while Marr was reduced to playing special guest to New Order.
Yet I know which of the two men I have more sympathy for — Marr, who is one of the most liked and respected musicians out there, and who has shown integrity at refusing to reform the Smiths when to do so could afford him a handful of houses he doesn’t need. He responded to the reunion rumours by posting a photograph of Nigel Farage, seemingly a reference to the political beliefs of the singer he clearly has no desire to be in a room with ever again. Free speech does exist, and Marr has exercised his right to it by tacitly revealing why there will be no Smiths reunion.
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is his prerogative. It remains on the record. He expressed his right to free speech. In response many of us, whilst championing balls-deep free speech, also exercise our right to dissociate from a public figure who gave credibility to an explicitly intolerant political party that based its manifesto on numerous problematic positions including advocating for anti-Muslim bigotry.
