Dear Morrissey,
In your latest excuse for cancelling yet another show, you ponder: “No label will release our music, no radio will play our music… and yet our ticket sales are sensational. What does this tell us about the state of Art in 2025?”
There are several answers to this question, and they’re all patently obvious to anyone who has spent any time awake on Earth in the 21st century.
And they all come down to the fact it’s no longer the 1990s. We cannot cling to those old dreams any more. No record company is going to give you a quarter-million dollar advance to do whatever you want. And when you realise it’s not the 1990s any more, you might also notice that you’re not 30 any more either, and perhaps consider not booking such an “exhausting” tour schedule.
You bemoan the lack of finance from record companies for you to tour, but why would they? Nobody buys physical albums any more, and they haven’t for 20 years. Had you not noticed? These days if an album has a physical release at all, it’s more likely to be on fancy vinyl aimed at a niche market and cost about $70. Singles aren’t even worth thinking about. The average consumer gets all their music from streaming now. Yes, even your fans.
Gone are the days when tours promoted record sales. Today, albums are a loss-leader to promote concerts. Personally, I don’t like this situation any more than you do, but it’s something every artist has had to adjust to, from the bedroom guitarist with high hopes right up to Bruce Springsteen.
What exactly do you think ticket sales have to do with having a record deal? To pick just three of your contemporaries, Echo and the Bunnymen, New Order, and Culture Club all continue to tour without any of them having released an album this decade. It doesn’t hurt that when they tour, they show up on time and treat their promoters, crew, and audience with respect.
You know who else is doing a massively profitable tour without a record company? Oasis!
Now sure, you’re not Oasis. But the people buying Oasis tickets are doing so for exactly the same reason people buy Morrissey tickets: Nostalgia!
No-one wants to see their favourite artists disappear up their own back catalogue, forsaking any relevance to today. But no-one wants to hear only the new album either. The people buying Morrissey tickets are not coming to hear unreleased songs from Bonfire of Teenagers. They are coming to hear How Soon Is Now?, Suedehead, Bigmouth Strikes Again, November Spawned a Monster, and Interesting Drug. I promise you, no-one standing through the tedious 40-minute YouTube playlist you present at the start of your show is turning to their friend and saying, “I hope he does Life is a Pigsty.”
They are there to see the Morrissey who reminded them that it takes strength to be gentle and kind, not the Morrissey whose world is shaken by hearing foreign accents in the high street. I know the latter attitude has made you something of a cause célèbre among freedom-fetishising alt-right podcasters and their fans, but I’ll bet you a Johnny Marr signature Martin none of them could hum two bars of any of your songs. They’re not the ones going to your concerts because they’re just as scared to leave the house as you are.
So let’s instead focus on the good aspects of the music industry in 2025. These days, anyone can release an album entirely on their own terms. They probably won’t become a millionaire from it, but artistic integrity is priceless, no? Bonfire of Teenagers could be out tomorrow if you wanted it to be. If Bandcamp is good enough for Peter Gabriel, it’s good enough for you Sonny Jim!
But that would mean taking responsibility for your own career and that’s not what you want, is it? What you want is plausible deniability. You want an evil record label, promoter, or management company to blame when you inevitably shit in the nest again.
And you’ve had a bad run with all of them, haven’t you? In an industry awash with opportunists and hangers-on, you have achieved what should be impossible. You have completely run out of people willing to work with you. Despite excellent brand recognition, your reputation for being devious, truculent and unreliable precedes you to the point where even the most desperate try-hard refuses to touch you. Being Morrissey’s manager is like being Donald Trump’s lawyer. The first sign of incompetence is taking on the client in the first place.
Having an ugly bust-up with one label or management company is to be expected. It’s virtually a rock and roll right of passage. To have it happen with every company you’ve ever dealt with is a different story.
It’s you, Steven. You’re the problem.
