A Morrissey Concert: The Magnification of Pain with Age

A reflection on the meaning behind the performance of an artist whose prime ended almost forty years ago.

First image: Dingman, Olivia Scout. 11-09-2024. Morrissey Concert. Second image: “The Smiths” Sire Publicity Photo, 1985, Picryl, Public Domain.

“I am human and I need to be loved,” Morrissey sang, recalling his song with The Smiths, “How Soon Is Now?” His concert in Durham, North Carolina on November 9th filled the performing arts center with rememberers of who he used to be. In their prime in the 1980s, many of The Smiths’ singles hit top 20 on the United Kingdom’s Singles Chart. Morrissey began touring on his own just a year after the band broke up in 1987. Thirty seven years later and at age sixty-five, he is still performing with intense energy and passion. Watching the show, I overwhelmingly felt that I was seeing through Morrissey and into his youth. The culmination of his experiences bringing him to this stage for one of two reasons: to confront the pain-ridden outcome of his life or to bask in his peaceful understanding of why it all happened.

In his twenties, Morrissey was about the age that I am now when The Smiths formed. There was something devastatingly resigned in his voice as he put on his setlist. It felt as if he knew how life should be valued and was wounded by the regret that he had failed to do so for so many years. 

In his song “Life Is a Pigsty,” he sang,

“Can you please stop time?

Can you stop the pain?

I feel too cold

And now I feel too warm again

Can you stop this pain?

Can you stop this pain?

Even now in the final hour of my life

I'm falling in love again

Again”

(Morrissey, singer. “Life Is a Pigsty.” Ringleader of the Tormentors, by Morrissey. 2024. Live.)

These words infected my mind with this man’s endless desire to be saved only to find that time is beginning to waste away, pulling from him the hope that love will ever come. As he stood on stage, looking out at a row of dedicated followers, some of which ran up on stage to hug him, his eyes searched for something. Whether it was for confirmation that he had truly impacted people or for the salvation that his songs beg of life, I do not know. From the audience, at least those who were the same age as Morrissey, a similar feeling bled out. The sense that they understood him. A common language forged in the air of the theater, bleeding into the smoke that leaked from the stage, recalling the time when The Smiths reigned. I feel that there was a sense of comfort gifted to those who spoke the tongue. Comfort in knowing that someone else understood what their hearts ached for: the past. 

Morrissey stood, looking up at the crowd, and exclaimed, “I am sick of information I am sick of opinions I am sick.” He said this after ranting about his frustration with politics, fitting, considering this concert occurred only three days after the results of the 2024 United States presidential election were announced. In his declaration, however, he echoed back to The Smiths monumental release of the album Meat Is Murder. In his Uncut article, Michael Bonner (2015) writes, “Meat Is Murder helped establish The Smiths as a radical force.” The album was explicitly political and screamed out ideas that were agitated in the climate of a Thatcher-led United Kingdom. Morrissey’s anti-politics divulgence at his concert this week ironically promoted a message opposed to The Smith’s earlier decision to express their opinions. Though, his delivery was strong and felt quite opinionated in itself. Perhaps his youth has stayed with him in more ways than one.

The understanding of what it was like to listen to The Smiths in their heyday will never bless my mind. However, in feeling Morrissey and the crowd’s devastating desire to return to that time, I think my skin may have been lightly graced by it. When chills ran up my arms as Morrissey reached out to the audience and they stretched forward, I saw what it all might have been, just for a moment. 

External Sources:

Reynolds, Simon C.W.. "The Smiths". Encyclopedia Britannica, 20 Sep. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/the-Smiths. Accessed 10 November 2024.

Bonner, Michael. “The Smiths: The Making of Meat Is Murder.” UNCUT, 11 Nov. 2019, www.uncut.co.uk/features/the-smiths-the-making-of-meat-is-murder-70835/.