One late afternoon in a ski hotel up in the Rocky Mountains, an hour almost vertical drive from Salt Lake City, Utah, I asked Morrissey if his music is something outgrow.
In so-so an hour or two before that, we had rather brought a very pleasant and satisfying conversation about politics, Margaret Thatcher, pop music and sub cultural sartorialism than perform a proper interview. But suddenly Steven Patrick Morrissey somewhat furious and defended himself tooth and nail. Of his eyes remained only two angry small crevices.
This was almost 20 years ago.
I have until just the other day thought that the issue has continued to be more than justified and relevant.
Only now, after having lived with "World peace is none of your business" as the only musical companion for a few days, I can say - and even cheerfully admit - it's not there anymore.
On the contrary.
Ever since The Smiths earliest singles in the early 1980s, I was convinced that no artist would age in pop music with such dignity and insightful willfulness just Morrissey. It was not really so.
Rather, he behaved too often instead as an amenity weight bitter parody of something he had once been. Predictable, even - words you who still periodically devoted mozolog never thought you would use if his art - uninteresting and boring.
"World peace is none of your business" is singer's tenth solo album and it has floated five years ago shrug 'Years of refusal ".
His places lovable autobiography exceptions have Moz career in the years since then punctuated by obscure ailments, longer hospital stays and all accelerating conservative statements in between.
Morrissey and I had long since been documented cope with each other, we wanted different things out of life and decided to go our separate ways. Somewhere around "Ringleader of the tormentors" I deleted definitively his fax number from the library on my desktop.
I was, as you might imagine, not at all prepared for this.
For the "World peace is none of your business" is, against all odds and preconceptions, simply top.
And it is expressed and written by an adult, a 55 year old poet who sings about prostate cancer and the fear of acting as just a man.
It is anything but "music man outgrow".
Morrissey's lyricism is misogyny pitch black again, just as genuine as patented entertaining, and the musical it shocks me most of the time with the arrangement and selection of instruments that I never thought could be incorporated into his - for each disc and talk show appearance that came and went - all the more retrograde meat and potatoes rock.
Take for example just an acoustic - and deeply Aztec Camera-sounding - flamenco solo in "Staircase at the university" and characteristic yodeling song by Morrissey whose microphone is far, far ahead of the music.
Personally, I just started laughing alone in my living room sofa.
It started as a smile already when I read the song titles.
Even the bundle songs that make up the now obligatory "deluxe version" is rather brilliant ("Julie in the weeds"!), Like his - and the Smiths - once so constantly brilliant b-sides of virtually every single.
In Morrissey joined the summer of 2014, I understand how the older generations feel when they shout to, say, Bob Dylan, Depeche Mode or Woody Allen in the unlikely has rediscovered the form of olden days. I usually do not of course believe them, but now I understand anyway just how they feel and reason.
Magnificent, produced by Joe Chiccarelli (My Morning Jacket, The Strokes), who seemingly unconcerned introduces, among other things, bladder sections, handclaps and a recurring soulful accordion. He forces effectively off Morrissey and his orchestra from the so muscular rock that characterized and ruined the past Morrissey decade for so many of us.
"World peace is none of your business" is Steven Patrick without a doubt the best album since 2004's "You are the quarry". Maybe even up there with "Vauxhall & I". And it turns on for a while that my enthusiasm has taken the upper hand and it may not be quite true in a longer perspective, so make it understood nothing. Nothing at all.
Getting to know this kind of spontaneous pop delight is a very sweet feeling that in no way can or should be belittled.
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