The Listomania I make the lists, you shoot them down. Quid Pro Quo.

Back To It: 124. Morrissey – Irish Blood, English Heart

There are really three options here. You love Morrissey. Or you hate Morrissey. Or who the fuck is Morrissey? He was the lead singer of the Smiths and went on to have a successful if peak-and-valley solo career. I’m not going into anymore background here, this is 101. If you don’t know it, you should refer to the prerequisite for this blog, which is more of a 201 section. Or at least a hard 151. With the hot young professor who wears patches on the elbows of his sport jackets. Hot and bothered yet? Morrissey would be.

This was Moz’s first single in seven years, and pulled him from pariah back to cultural relevance. His Smiths back catalogue is cemented in the indie-verse as essential and his character (and yes, Morrissey is a character) is legendary for his celibacy and meat-celibacy. But as a solo artist, like I said, you love him or hate him. I tended to hate him. He was a little douchey, a lot weepy, and I found the music to just be a watered down version of everything he had done before.

Up until this song. A galloping, raging screed against the tense relationship between Britain and Ireland, Moz ratchets the melodrama up to an entirely new stratosphere, from personal terror and self-loathing to international warfare and self-loathing. Boo hoo. At just over 2:30, the song is an enraged blast of alarm from the King of Dread, and the music matches Morrissey step for step for the first time in more than a decade. That guitar bend and slide at 0:40 cracks open Morrissey’s anger and allows it to spew out over crashing guitars and terse, taut musical jabs. When the chorus floods in and he sings about spitting on Cromwell’s name, as people from this side of the pond, we just know that he’s PISSED. About SOMETHING. And not since the mid-‘80s has Morrissey been able to produce music that so closely mirrors the anger, pain, and dread of his over-the-top words. Maybe he never will again, but at least he got one more before being bugged again about a Smiths reunion. Now back to his talking points, celibacy and veganism and no he won't see Johnny Marr.