Person · Male

Morrissey

English singer‐songwriter

From: Davyhulme, United Kingdom
Since: 1959–present
Rating: ★ 3.65 (8 votes)
Releases: 225

alternative rock
indie pop
indie rock
art pop
rock
britpop
jangle pop
post-britpop

About

Steven Patrick Morrissey (; born 22 May 1959), mononymously known as Morrissey, is an English singer and songwriter. He came to prominence as the frontman and lyricist of the rock band the Smiths, who were active from 1982 to 1987. Since then he has pursued a successful solo career. Morrissey's music is characterised by his baritone voice and distinctive lyrics with anti-establishment stances and recurring themes of emotional isolation, sexual longing, self-deprecation, and dark humour.

Morrissey was born to working-class Irish immigrants in Old Trafford, Lancashire, England; the family lived in Hulme but moved due to the 1960s demolitions of almost all the Victorian-era houses, known as "slum clearance", and he grew up in nearby Stretford. As a child, he developed a love of literature, kitchen sink realism and 1960s pop music. He began a career in music journalism and wrote several books on music and film in the early 1980s. He formed the Smiths with guitarist Johnny Marr in 1982 and the band soon attracted national recognition for their eponymous debut album. As the band's frontman, Morrissey attracted attention for his trademark quiff and witty and sardonic lyrics. Deliberately avoiding rock machismo, he cultivated the image of a sexually ambiguous social outsider who embraced celibacy. The Smiths released three further studio albums—Meat Is Murder (1985), The Queen Is Dead (1986) and Strangeways, Here We Come (1987)—and had a string of top twenty singles on the UK chart. The band were critically acclaimed and attracted a cult following. Personal differences between Morrissey and Marr resulted in the separation of the Smiths in 1987.
Morrissey launched his solo career with Viva Hate in 1988. This album and its follow-ups—Kill Uncle (1991), Your Arsenal (1992) and Vauxhall and I (1994)—all entered the top ten on the UK Albums Chart and spawned multiple top twenty singles on the UK chart. He took on Alain Whyte and Boz Boorer as his main co-writers to replace Marr. During this time, his image began to shift into that of a more robust figure who toyed with patriotic imagery and working-class masculinity. In the mid-to-late 1990s, his albums Southpaw Grammar (1995) and Maladjusted (1997) also charted but were less well received. Relocating to Los Angeles, United States, he took a musical hiatus from 1998 to 2003 before releasing a successful comeback album, You Are the Quarry, in 2004. Ensuing years saw the release of the albums Ringleader of the Tormentors (2006), Years of Refusal (2009), World Peace Is None of Your Business (2014), Low in High School (2017), California Son (2019), I Am Not a Dog on a Chain (2020) and Make-Up Is a Lie (2026), as well as his autobiography (2013) and his debut novel, List of the Lost (2015).
Highly influential, Morrissey has been credited as a seminal figure in the emergence of indie pop, indie rock and Britpop. In a 2006 poll for the BBC's Culture Show Morrissey was voted the second-greatest living British cultural icon. His work has been the subject of academic study. He has been a controversial and polarising figure throughout his music career due to his forthright opinions and outspoken nature, endorsing vegetarianism and animal rights, and criticising royalty and prominent politicians. He has also supported far-right activism with regard to British heritage and freedom of speech, and defended a particular vision of English national identity while critiquing the effects of immigration on the UK.

From Morrissey on Wikipedia, under CC BY-SA 4.0.