A look back at Damon Albarn’s poem for Morrissey
In 1992, one of the era’s most popular music magazines, Select, marked the release of Morrissey’s third studio album, Your Arsenal, with a six-page feature that saw various famous faces review the album. The record received critical acclaim and reached number four on the UK Albums Chart — but you wouldn’t know it after reading this issue of Select. First in line to pick apart the project was Damon Albarn, who had a tongue-in-cheek poem to share titled ‘Arsenal Retentive’.
In the handwritten poem, Damon writes: “Morrissee, Morrissee, Glam granny of twee, if London’s dead then so are thee.” This could be a nod to the time Albarn saw The Smiths perform at The South Bank Show in 1987, wherein Morrissey declared that his band were the “last of the greats”. The story goes that this comment annoyed Albarn so greatly that he set out to prove him wrong.
The Blur man continues: “From Rossitter to Roussos flee, Def Leppard to Eric Satie, Suicidal Jean Jeannie. The last of England eats cream tea, not as clever as it should be,” taking aim at Morrissey’s lofty ineffectual ideals. Morrissey has always had a reputation for nursing a mild obsession with literary figures like Oscar Wilde and John Keats, but Albarn is quick to dismiss his attempts at intelligence with the final line: “You’re a spaz the same as me.”
Billy Bragg offered a similarly scathing review, saying: “If we could erase from our collective memory the chilling honesty and understated flippancy of The Smiths, then it might be possible to take these songs at face value – a lightweight collection of quirky observations whose contents never quite match the promise of their titles.”
Bragg continues: “It grieves me to give more fuel to the Told You So brigade who could never stand the sound of his voice, but this album does little but confirm Morrissey’s continued loss of direction, right down to the by now familiar clumsy attempt to articulate ant/-racist sentiments – this one’s called ‘National Front Disco’.”
Morrissey’s more recent attitudes have continued to cause controversy. Albarn weighed in again in 2019 when Morrissey appeared to support the nationalist party For Britain by wearing their pin for a string of US tour dates, as well as sporting it on a performance on Jimmy Fallon.
Speaking to the NME, Albarn said Morrissey didn’t deserve an opinion on British politics because he was living in California at the time. “If you don’t live in the country,” said Albarn, “Then you shouldn’t be dabbling in its politics because to have the sensitivity to understand, you have to live amongst the emotional world of the people as well, not just the idea of something. That’s a long way from reality”.
He concluded: “I think if you want to be miserable and English, you’ve gotta be miserable and English. You know – really be it.”
For now, see Albarn’s poem below.
