Morrissey has claimed that the release of his 14th solo album, Bonfire of Teenagers, has been “gagged” owing to the subject of its title track, the 2017 terrorist attack on an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester that killed 22 people.
Morrissey, 65, has been performing the song live since 2022. It features lyrics about a teenage girl being “vapourised”; about how “the silly people sing Don’t Look Back in Anger / And the morons swing and say Don’t Look Back in Anger / I can assure you I will look back in anger ’til the day I die,” a reference to the street singalongs of the Oasis track in the wake of the bombing. The song concludes with Morrissey singing “go easy on the killer”.
In a rare interview conducted by email, Morrissey told the Telegraph: “The Manchester Arena bombing was our 9/11. But, in this sad country of ours, to understand the full meaning of the attack is to be guilty, and this is why the ‘don’t look back in anger’ command always struck me as derisive and not at all words of social harmony.”
The former Smiths singer’s last album, I Am Not a Dog on a Chain, was released on BMG in March 2020. He was dropped that November and blamed the parting of ways on the label’s “new plans for ‘diversity’”. BMG declined to comment to Variety as to whether the decision had anything to do with the musician’s contentious historical statements about race and sexual assault.
Bonfire of Teenagers was completed in May 2021 and features Iggy Pop, Miley Cyrus and Chad Smith and Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and was produced by Andrew Watt (Rolling Stones). Morrissey subsequently signed to Capitol, which planned to release the album in February 2023. By the end of 2022, however, he wrote on his website that he had “voluntarily” split from the label and his management team. He claimed that Capitol were “holding on to” the album and that although he did not think that “Capitol Records in Los Angeles signed Bonfire of Teenagers in order to sabotage it, he is quickly coming around to that belief”.
In April, Morrissey told the Telegraph, he bought the album back from Capitol. Yet he said he would not consider self-releasing it, alleging that “every major label in London has refused [it] whilst also admitting that it is a masterpiece. And although there is nothing insulting or antagonistic in the title track, label bosses say they are worried that the Guardian would make their lives hell if they supported any such social awareness.”
Nor would he consider removing the song and renaming the album, he said. “Controversial means intelligent, doesn’t it? We are still in the grip of Idiot Culture, it’s everywhere you look. Naturally I’m one of the first to be gagged since my entire life has relied on free speech. No, I wouldn’t remove the title song because I wouldn’t abandon the murdered kids of Manchester. Their spirits cry out every single day for remembrance and recognition.”
He continued: “Once you edit yourself or self-censor then the idiots have won. There is no arts media any more in England, therefore there’s no one to whom I can sit and talk about this. The fact is, genuine artists in England are now being held hostage by people who object to any manner of alternative opinion. The biggest monsters are the #BeKind crew who will smash your face in if you disagree with them.”
He referred to Bonfire of Teenagers as “the best album of my life” and claimed that “the madly insane efforts to silence the album are somehow indications of its power. Otherwise, who would bother to get so overheated about an inconspicuous recluse?”
It is the latest inflammatory public proclamation from Morrissey, who last week claimed in the wake of the Oasis reunion that his former bandmate Johnny Marr had ignored a “lucrative” offer for the Smiths to reform for a 2025 world tour. Marr declined to comment on the matter to the Guardian.
Asked about the alleged reunion offer, Morrissey told the Telegraph: “I think I made my point without turning it into the war of the worlds … which, of course, I easily could.”
