Stewart Lee explains why he can no longer listen to Morrissey
Beloved English comedian Stewart Lee, who was once described as “the comedian’s comedian”, recently crafted an ‘honest playlist’ and detailed a selection of songs that he holds dearly.
Lee, who has always been an avid music fan, once described his 16-year-old self as doing “a lot of reading, going to gigs, buying records, and listening to the John Peel show.” As a student at Oxford University, Lee began writing and performing comedy and, eventually, started writing comedic musicals and operas. He wrote Jerry Springer: The Opera in 2005, which was successful despite a number of Christian protest groups claiming it to be highly offensive.
Lee has also been a regular music critic for The Guardian for years, and in 2003 revealed his favourite bands as The Fall, Calexico, and Giant Sand, stating that he listens to a “lot of jazz, ’60s and folk music but I really like Ms. Dynamite, and The Streets.”
Furthermore, Lee also wrote the feature-length documentary King Rocker about The Nightingales’ lead singer Robert Lloyd, which was recently screened at the Blue Dot Festival and features the likes of John Taylor and Marc Riley.
Lee’s interest in music has accompanied his career endeavours, whether that be through music journalism or comedy, so it is of no surprise that Lee has an eclectic taste and expansive musical knowledge. In his interview with The Guardian, the comedian discusses everything from the song he first remembers hearing to his favourite sex song.
According to Lee, the first single he bought was ‘Sugar Baby Love’ by the Rubettes, which he purchased from Woolworths aged six after hearing it on Top of the Pops, and his chosen karaoke song is ‘King of the Road’ by Roger Miller.
However, Lee was also asked which song he can no longer listen to, which led him to discuss his feelings on the controversial Smiths lead singer Morrissey: “Sadly, Morrissey. Loads of artists end up doing terrible things, but the Smiths meant such a lot to my generation, to have him drift to the far right doesn’t sit. I remember hearing ‘How Soon Is Now’ when I went to see the Smiths at Birmingham Hippodrome and dancing to it at a disco in Tucson, Arizona, in 1995. It’s hard to let go of my childhood attachment to the Smiths, but I don’t know how to square Morrissey’s solo stuff with what he’s become.”
The Smiths were one of the most important indie bands of the 1980s, and at the forefront was lead singer Morrissey, the Oscar Wilde obsessive who was almost always seen performing with a bunch of daffodils hanging out of his back pocket. Despite his dedication to animal welfare, going as far as to name a whole album Meat is Murder, Morrissey, unfortunately, does not seem to have the same compassion for human beings.
Some of Morrissey’s offensive behaviour includes the release of his questionable merchandising, which featured a T-shirt with an image of civil rights activist James Baldwin surrounded by lyrics from the song ‘Unlovable’, “I wear black on the outside ’cause black is how I feel on the inside…”, as well as his outright racist comments such as “the Chinese are a subspecies”.
Morrissey has also been quoted saying that “the modern Loony Left seem to forget that Hitler was Left wing! But of course, we are all called racist now, and the word is actually meaningless.” As well as, “I don’t have very cast iron opinions on black music other than black modern music which I detest […] I think they’re vile in the extreme.”
That only scrapes the surface of the right-winger’s heinous behaviour and comments, which has pained Smiths fans all around the world, and Lee is no exception.
