The 1975 Joni Mitchell album that inspired Morrissey’s songwriting: “Completely captivated me”
By the time The Smiths rolled around the music scene, the bright creative optimism of the previous decade had long gone, so there was a charm to Morrissey‘s pessimism that made him the perfect lyricist for the 1980s.
No longer was music existing in the colourful haze of The Beatles, and cashing in on the wildly lucrative lifestyles of ‘70s classic rock. Instead, they were falling behind an increasingly capitalist society, led by the neo-liberal duo of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
In Britain, and more specifically, Manchester, the hometown of The Smiths, the consequences of that change were somewhat bleak. Rapid deindustrialisation sparked mass unemployment, and economic advantages were stripped away from Britain’s forgotten cities, as they watched London and the rest of the world hurtle into an unattainable future.
Naturally, the strife brought with it vitally important art that changed the course of rock music forever. But the lyrics were confronting and desolate, painting an appropriately grey picture for this new brand of industrial rock that felt a far cry from the kaleidoscopic optimism of the ‘60s and, more importantly, The Beatles. It made Morrissey a surprising breath of fresh air. I will never willingly describe him as that again, but in the decade of The Smiths’ emergence, it was entirely true, for his gloomy pessimism spoke to the heart of the everyday music listener whose life wasn’t wrapped up in the pretence of neo-liberalism.
He sparked a sort of realist movement in music that moved away from studio idealism and thus challenged the sun-kissed worlds of Los Angeles and its myriad of successful inhabitants. But the sheer fact that those artists represented the very polar opposite of him intrigued him somewhat, with Joni Mitchell inspiring him to new songwriting levels.
“I must say that The Hissing of Summer Lawns was the first album that completely captivated me,” Morrissey said while interviewing Mitchell for Rolling Stone in 1997, “You have an extraordinary balance with words,” even adding a lofty point of praise that was entirely un-Morrissey-like, “I think you’re the greatest lyricist that has ever lived.”
Mitchell was of the Californian community, that’s for sure. And in that, she represented something completely different to Morrissey, whose best work was concerned with the brutalist ruins of a broken Britain, whereas she approached her world with a similar sense of nuance to uncover the beauty, troubles and tribulations of the human spirit.
Whether it was The Hissing of Summer Lawns that viewed femininity through the lens of suburban wealth, Blue that uncovered the deep-running wounds of romantic heartbreak, or the longing for freedom and how it intersects with modernity in Song to a Seagull, she never looked at life through a one-dimensional lens, understanding nuance and would have, in turn, understood Morrissey as an artist.
However, the difference was that Mitchell had an ability to pivot melancholia out of the desperate worlds that Morrissey wallowed in and instead inject her suffering with a sense of hope, and to do that, she had to understand and empathise with people around her, a trait Morrissey has become increasingly alienated from in recent years.
