Steven Patrick Morrissey (born 22 May 1959), known mononymously as Morrissey, is an English singer, songwriter, and author.
He came to prominence as the frontman of the rock band the Smiths, which was 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 recurring themes of emotional isolation, sexual longing, self-deprecating and black humour, and anti-establishment stances.
Born to working-class Irish immigrants in Davyhulme, Lancashire, Morrissey grew up in nearby Manchester.
As a child, he developed a love of literature, kitchen sink realism, and pop music.
In the late 1970s, he fronted punk rock band the Nosebleeds with little success before beginning a career in music journalism and writing several books on music and film in the early 1980s.
He formed the Smiths with 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, The Queen Is Dead, and Strangeways, Here We Come—and had a string of hit singles.
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.
In 1988 Morrissey launched his solo career with Viva Hate.
This album and its follow-ups—Kill Uncle, Your Arsenal, and Vauxhall and I—all did well on the UK Albums Chart and spawned multiple hit singles.
Replacing Marr, he took on Alain Whyte and Boz Boorer as his main co-writers.
During this time, his image began to shift into that of a burlier figure who toyed with patriotic imagery and working-class masculinity.
In the mid-to-late 1990s, his albums Southpaw Grammar and Maladjusted also charted but were less well received.
Relocating to Los Angeles, 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 albums Ringleader of the Tormentors, Years of Refusal, World Peace Is None of Your Business, Low in High School, California Son, and I Am Not a Dog on a Chain, as well as his autobiography and his debut novel, List of the Lost.
Highly influential, Morrissey has been credited as a seminal figure in the emergence of indie rock and Britpop.
He is regarded as one of the greatest lyricists in British history and his work has been the subject of academic study.
He has been a controversial figure throughout his music career due to his forthright opinions and outspoken nature—endorsing vegetarianism and animal rights, criticising royalty and prominent politicians, and defending a particular vision of English national identity while critiquing the impact of immigration on the UK.
In a 2006 poll for the BBC’s Culture Show, Morrissey was voted the second-greatest living British cultural icon.
Performance style
As a solo performer, Morrissey typically featured older imagery as his stage backdrop, as seen here at a 2011 performance in Berlin
Morrissey’s vocals have been cited as having a particularly distinctive quality. Simpson believed that Morrissey’s work embodied and personified that of the “Northern Women”, speaking in styles of vernacular language that would be common to many women living in northern England.
In this he was strongly influenced by the Northern singer Cilla Black, who had a successful career as a pop music singer in the 1960s, as well as Viv Nicholson, who similarly earned fame during that decade.
Other female singers from that decade who have been cited as an influence on Morrissey have been the Scottish Lulu, and the Essexer Sandie Shaw.
However, Stringer noted that rather than expressly singing in a Mancunian working-class accent, Morrissey adopted a “very clipped, precise enunciation” and sang in “clear English diction”.
He is also noted for his unusual baritone vocal style (though he sometimes uses falsetto).
When performing onstage, he often whips his microphone cord about, particularly during his up-tempo tracks. Simpson believed that Morrissey often gave “slyly aggressive gestures” while onstage; he cited two instances from Top of the Pops, one in which Morrissey used hand gestures in order to pretend shooting at the audience during “Shoplifters of the World Unite” and another in which he turned his microphone cord into a hangman’s noose while repeating the lyrics “Hang the DJ, hang the DJ” in the song “Panic”.
Rogan claimed that Morrissey exhibited “a power onstage which I have seldom seen from any other artiste of his generation”, and that while performing he “oozes charisma, offering that peculiar combination of gauche vulnerability and athleticism”.
On various occasions, Morrissey has expressed anger when he believes that bouncers and the security teams at his concerts have treated the audience poorly. For instance, at his San Antonio concert as part of the Your Arsenal tour he stopped his performance to rebuke bouncers for hitting fans.
Tracklist
A1 Please Help The Cause Against Loneliness
A2 Springheeled Jim
A3 Reader Meet Author
A4 Born To Hang
A5 Sonny
B1 Oh Phoney
B2 Why Don’t You Find Out For Yourself
B3 Interlude
B4 Striptease With A Difference
B5 Billy Budd
Rare outtakes & demo recordings.
Current members
Boz Boorer – guitar (1991–present)
Jesse Tobias – guitar (2005–present)
Matt Walker – drums (2007–present)
Gustavo Manzur – keyboards (2012–present)
Mando Lopez – bass guitar (2014–present)
Morrissey discography (Solo):
Viva Hate (1988)
Kill Uncle (1991)
Your Arsenal (1992)
Vauxhall and I (1994)
Southpaw Grammar (1995)
Maladjusted (1997)
You Are the Quarry (2004)
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)
Associated acts
The Smiths
Slaughter & the Dogs
The Nosebleeds
The Smiths were an English rock band formed in Manchester in 1982.
Consisting of vocalist Morrissey, guitarist Johnny Marr, bassist Andy Rourke, and drummer Mike Joyce, critics consider the band one of the most important to emerge from the British independent music scene of the 1980’s.
Internal tensions led to their break up in 1987 and subsequent offers to reunite have been refused.
In 2012, all four Smiths’ studio albums (and a compilation) appeared on Rolling Stone’s list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”, while “William, It Was Really Nothing” and “How Soon Is Now?” were included in the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” list.
Based on the songwriting partnership of Morrissey and Marr, the Smiths’ focus on a guitar, bass, and drum sound, and fusion of 1960’s rock and post-punk, were a rejection of the synthesiser-based dance-pop of the time.
Marr’s Rickenbacker guitar work was reminiscent of the jangle pop sound of Roger McGuinn from the Byrds.
Morrissey’s complex, literate lyrics combined themes of ordinary lives with mordant humor.
The Smiths were signed to the independent label Rough Trade Records.
Several Smiths singles reached the top 20 of the UK Singles Chart and all of their studio albums reached the top five of the UK Albums Chart, including the number-one album Meat Is Murder (1985).
They achieved mainstream success in Europe with The Queen Is Dead (1986) and Strangeways, Here We Come (1987), both of which entered the top twenty of the European Albums Chart.
Their live album Rank (1988) reached the top 10 in Europe.
Principal members
Morrissey – lead vocals (1982–1987)
Johnny Marr – guitars, piano, harmonica, keyboards (1982–1987); backing vocals (1982–1983)
Andy Rourke – bass (1982–1986, 1986–1987)
Mike Joyce – drums (1982–1987)
Other members
Steven Pomfret – guitars (1982)
Dale Hibbert – bass (1982)
Craig Gannon – bass (1986); guitars (1986)
Ivor Perry – guitars (1987)
Discography (The Smiths discography and List of songs recorded by the Smiths)
The Smiths (1984)
Meat Is Murder (1985)
The Queen Is Dead (1986)
Strange-ways, Here We Come (1987)
