The Smiths song Morrissey compared to Duran Duran: “Mildly embarrassing”
Having given the press untold opportunities to use the headline ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’ over the years, Morrissey is never far away from controversy.
Since the early years of his career, the former Smiths singer has been an incredibly divisive figure when speaking his mind in public. Whether in the lyrics to early solo songs like ‘Bengali in Platforms’, his alienating and questionable discussions around race in interviews, or his public support for far-right politicians and political figures Nigel Farage, Anne Marie Waters, and Tommy Robinson, Morrissey has never shied away from offering his true feelings and thoughts on any given subject.
Another of his favourite topics to unleash his opinions on and find himself in the firing line for is his opinion on other singers. Over the years, he has taken aim at everyone from Robert Smith and David Bowie to Kylie Minogue and Michael Buble. In 1987, he said that “nobody’s interested” in Elton John, adding that the Rocketman singer should “just go away”.
His sharpest barb was directed at Madonna when he said in 1997 that she “reinforces everything absurd and offensive. Desperate womanhood. Madonna is closer to organised prostitution than anything else”. Even pre-fame, his tone was the same, as he wrote of Kate Bush that “the nicest thing I could say about her is that she’s unbearable. That voice! Such trash!”.
Usually, he takes a much kinder stance regarding the topic of his own music. When discussing his (still) unreleased album Bonfire of Teenagers in 2022, Morrissey said that it “isn’t possible, really” to pick out a favourite track on the album because “it’s all great, it’s all wonderful”. When promoting his recent albums, Morrissey often takes the stance that whatever album he is promoting at the time is his new greatest work.
But it’s not only his recent work that he’s fond of. In a 2008 interview, Morrissey admitted that he likes most of his songs and that there are only a handful that he doesn’t get on with. While he didn’t give any names at the time, saying, “Why dwell on the snags?” elsewhere, he has been a little more forthcoming with which songs he was not as happy with.
Speaking to the blog Follow the Mozziah, Morrissey singled out his lyrics from The Smiths’ 1984 song ‘What Difference Does It Make?’ as some that he is less than proud of, saying that “‘What Difference Does It Make’ is musically interesting but lyrically it is very…Simon Le Bon [lead vocalist and lyricist of Duran Duran]. I find the lyrics facile and mildly embarrassing. Otherwise, it’s a majestic pop melody by Johnny”.
Of course, even in this rare moment of modesty and humility, Morrissey still found the time to fire off a pot-shot at a fellow artist, though strangely, he then added, “had the lyrics indeed been penned by Simon Le Bon, I would probably cover it! As it is I’d feel too ashamed”.
And it does seem that Morrissey really is too embarrassed and ashamed by the lyrics to play the song by himself in concert. While he has sung over 1,000 different songs at his solo shows over the years, he hasn’t played ‘What Difference Does It Make?’ at any of them and hasn’t performed the song live since December 1st, 1984 when it was the first song in The Smiths’ encore at their concert at the Parc des Expositions de la Porte de Versailles in Paris.
