There is something fascinating about Morrissey that I have always found impossible to ignore. The guy is 65 years old, still a mythic figure in rock, and yet every move he makes sparks controversy or anticipation. He just released Make-Up Is a Lie, an album that is honestly quite mediocre, full of naive nostalgia and conspiracy ideas floating around the internet. A record that sounds like totally uninspired boomer rock. But here’s the interesting part: Morrissey releasing a bad album shouldn’t matter to us. No one expected him to come out with another Viva Hate, another Vauxhall and I, or a You Are the Quarry at this point. Those were milestones, reference points of a career that was already extraordinary. However, when Morrissey does something, people pay attention. That’s what defines him.

In 2025, he canceled about 50 percent of his shows. Including the one in Buenos Aires, which was a second chance after a previous cancellation. It’s not what you’d expect from an artist of his stature, but there’s something almost admirable about someone simply deciding not to do something because they don’t feel like it. Morrissey wakes up one morning and cancels a concert with excuses about his health that sound almost funny. Noel Gallagher of Oasis was surprised to say he ran into him at a bar the same night he canceled a show supposedly due to angina. The guy has that legend’s privilege: he can do almost anything and still be treated as a hero.

What intrigues me is how Morrissey navigates his own contradictions. The author of Irish Blood, English Heart, and First of the Gang to Die has always had that mysterious side, that misunderstood sensitivity that people admired. But in recent years, he’s entered complicated territory. At the end of 2024, he revealed he had received a huge offer to reunite The Smiths in 2025, but Johnny Marr simply ignored it. Later, it was revealed to be a lie, that Morrissey had invented it to stir up a long-dormant internal conflict. Marr made it clear that his current political stances kept him from any reunion.

And here’s where things get strange. Morrissey built his prestige by attacking capitalism during the Thatcher era. He dedicated Margaret on the Guillotine on his first solo album. The British police raided his house under the Explosive Substances Act because they considered him a threat to the Prime Minister. The Queen Is Dead was a direct attack on the monarchy. Meat Is Murder talked about vegetarianism, but Morrissey used it to criticize the lack of humanity of the conservative government. When Margaret Thatcher died in 2013, he published an incendiary open letter called Thatcher Was a Terrorist, with not an atom of humanity.

But now Morrissey talks about the dictatorship of thought control, constantly attacks media outlets like The Guardian, accusing them of a hate campaign against him, describes himself as apolitical, warns about the destruction of British culture. In April 2025, he even sued an internet user who allegedly fabricated an image of him as a racist. It’s a strange turn for someone who built his entire career on political critique.

I don’t know if Morrissey is a fascist, as some would say with such trivial terms. Moz’s universe doesn’t operate with a single logic. Maybe we shouldn’t try to understand him, justify him, or condemn him. Just listen to him. But damn, here’s Make-Up Is a Lie, and you don’t know what to do with that. A rambling, wrinkled record, nothing exciting. Maybe the best thing is to let it pass, pretend nothing happened. But it’s impossible to ignore Morrissey, even when he gives us reasons to do so.