Morrissey - Suedehead In Manchester, in the early '80s, someone was spending his days shut away in a room lined with books by Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde and full of records by female bands from the '60s.
He was a young unemployed man, plagued by pathological shyness but with a sharp wit.
One fine day in 1982, guitarist John Martin Maher, aka Johnny Marr, knocked on his door and met not just a lyricist, but someone who was just waiting for an excuse to give voice to the melancholy of the British working class.
With the "Smiths," that someone broke down the macho rock aesthetic of the time.
Showing up on stage with bouquets of flowers sticking out of the back pockets of his jeans, singing about loneliness and unrequited love, with a unique baritone timbre.
His writing, cultured and soaked in a typically English black humor, transformed songs like "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" into anthems for those who felt out of place.
His nonconformity, combined with his militant vegetarianism—openly declared even in "Meat Is Murder"—created around him a sort of cult of personality that didn’t let up even after the "Smiths" broke up in 1987.
His solo career, launched with the success of "Viva Hate," confirmed his status as an enigmatic pop icon.
Songs like "Everyday Is Like Sunday" became snapshots of a decadent, provincial Britain, painted with a nostalgia full of both disdain and love.
He became the voice of the marginalized everywhere, gaining a huge following who saw in him an artist capable of giving poetic dignity to social isolation and depression.
Over the years, his figure became more and more divisive because of his political stances and provocative public statements, which alienated part of the specialized press and his longtime audience.
Despite the controversies and boycotts, he has continued to maintain his unwavering aesthetic coherence, even refusing to compromise with the record industry. Performing in front of the many fans who continue to venerate him with almost religious devotion, he remains the solitary dandy of rock, an artist who built a career on the elegance of lament, convinced that vulnerability is an authentically real form of power.
This is the story of someone who turned his inability to adapt to the world into a permanent work of art, and that someone is Steven Patrick Morrissey.
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