They say that one’s taste in music doesn’t really change after one’s teenage years. That the artists you were introduced to then will be the ones that you listen to for the rest of your life.
Certainly it seems to be the case that as I get older I am less influenced by new music, and I still return time and and to the same four or five bands I have always loved.
Of course, it is a cliche that older people say ‘music is rubbish these days. They don’t make ’em like they used to.’ And so on. Whether it is true that the music of 2018 is objectively worse than that of 25 years ago, across the board, I couldn’t really say. But one thing that does seem true is that mainstream pop (that is, the stuff that charts) is significantly more generic and safe than it was in the 80s and 90s.
Yes, there was pap then too (Jason Donovan? Milli Vanilli?). But you also had bands like The Smiths, Soft Cell, Depeche Mode, and later Suede, Blur and Pulp taking genuinely inventive material (both musically and lyrically) onto kids TV shows. I just don’t see that happening today.
Brett Anderson from Suede, when once discussing Morrissey, said something like ‘he’s not just one of the greatest lyricists: he might be the greatest lyricist of all time.’ And so he might. No one that I can think of in all of pop music has done with language what Morrissey has.
Take ‘I Know It’s Over’, a standout track from The Smiths’ 1986 album The Queen Is Dead. Is there anyone else who would sing a line like ‘Oh mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head’? You’d be hard-pressed even to think of another song that contains the word ‘soil’.
Morrissey has expanded the lexicon of popular music, and he remains a genius despite his increasingly unpopular views. And if you’re wondering how I roll on a quiet Saturday night when I’m not out and about then here’s a nugget from tonight’s playlist.
Yes, this song kicks every manosphere ‘man up ‘ sentiment in the crotch with its snivelling, abject desperation, but fuck it, I love it anyway. You know when Hemingway said ‘All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed’? Well this is what he fucking meant. No one else has the balls to bleed like Morrissey does on this song, to peel their skin off in front of their audience like this. This is a bedroom wail that no one else was supposed to hear, released for millions. It’s almost embarrassing but you can’t stop listening to it. This is ‘getting real’. It’s not pretty and it doesn’t make anyone look good, but hits like a knuckle duster in the face. This is writing.
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