Morrissey Drags Madonna, Taylor Swift, Cheryl Cole And Ant & Dec In Epic Brit Awards Rant

Robbie Daw | February 11, 2015 8:31 am

Perhaps, given their outspoken nature, dissing of other music acts and mutual disdain for award shows, Morrissey and Kanye West should go bowling?

As he is wont to do, Morrissey took to the fan site True To You to dash out yet another fiery rant, this time about the upcoming Brit Awards…and Madonna…and Taylor Swift, Cheryl Cole and Brit Awards co-hosts Ant & Dec…not to mention the Mercury Prize, The X Factor and the music biz in general.

“Something suspicious is in the process for launch on February 25th, with which prewar primitives who remember the Smash Hits Awards will be familiar,” the 55-year-old singer, born in Manchester, England, begins. “It is one of those moments not unlike the hourly BBC News, where the elite decide what it is that the people want, and then slyly attempt to weave it into populist culture.”

While Morrissey himself has never won a Brit Awards (hmmmmm), his jagged essay on the topic is pretty amazing. Catch just a few of the gems below.

On the Brit Awards in general: “Now, we are trammeled once again by what is termed the British Phonographic Industry Awards, insultingly termed The Brit Awards in much the same way that The Yank Awards might describe an American music extravaganza. The object of the Brit Awards is to create the impression of national consensus as they award pop artists of untested stature or value with bogus awards that, it is slyly implied, have been dictated by you, the objective listener. The Brit Awards do not ask the public who they would like to see receive awards – for that would be to risk too much, yet the fierce insistence is that artists are rewarded for their prominence in the previous twelve months because, after all, ‘it’s what everybody wants’.”

On Madonna: “Thus, for 2015, we have MacDonna, who had a quiet 2014 (but who is quite usefully about to release her new album!), yet here she is again promoting her frightening career on the Brit Awards even though her music has not ever said anything at all about British life.”

On the Mercury Prize: “At its most honest, the Brit Awards are unfairly given to singers who, it is hoped, might be encouraged enough by the award to actually write a good song. Just as the Mercury Prize lands like a voodoo doll in the hands of the unlucky recipient (who is usually to be found selling mattresses ten months later), a Brit Award generally goes to a lot of shriveled young souls who have not earned it, yet none are likely to ask ‘are you sure I deserve it?’ – possibly because they know the reply.”

On Ant & Dec: “Fittingly, the Awards will be hosted by light entertainers Ant & Dec, neither of whom have anything to do with music, but their presence indicates the modern hold and control that telly-culture now dominates over the world of modern music, as it reminds us how success in modern music is fully shaped by the light entertainment establishment.”

On The X Factor: “The fine paste explosion of X-factory smash-and-grab plasticity as it exploits dreamers who dream of dreaming, leaves us with a trash culture unable to produce one genuine star, and with a flux of tantrum-need species all of whom make the same point in exactly the same way, whilst posing an urgent threat to public health.”

On Cheryl Cole: “Similarly, it seems unlikely that an end-of-the-world announcement would be believed nationally unless confirmed on BBC1 by Cheryl Cole whilst conditioning her hair.”

On Taylor Swift: “In the guise of serving the public, the Brit Awards have hi-jacked modern music in order to kill off the heritage that produced so many interesting people, to such a degree that we could not imagine anyone who has ever truly affected the course of British music to be on stage at the 02 collecting a deserved award. The maximum trimmings divert your attention from the fact that Taylor Swift has nothing to do with Coventry or Wrexham. To pull off rank fraud in tellyland is not a difficult undertaking, especially if you have the entire population of Peru dancing around you as you mime your song.”

That’s a lot of food for thought Moz is pouring out there, and his essay actually goes on even further. (You can read it in full here.) Isn’t it funny, though, how it’s kind of hard to argue with some of his points…?

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