The Alternative Number Ones: Morrissey’s “Tomorrow”

In The Alternative Number Ones, I'm reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it's for members only. Thank you to everyone who's helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

Morrissey has bangers. This is inconvenient. In his later years, Morrissey has revealed himself to be a self-centered, fucked-up, exhausting public figure. Those qualities were never hidden, exactly, but they have become so loud and perhaps performative that they have essentially eaten up Morrissey's entire persona. He's the guy who goes public with all his resentments and perceived slights, who stokes irrelevant feuds with former collaborators, and who shows public support for at least one scarily right-wing British fringe party. Thanks to the way that internet discourse works, it is unfashionable to concede that such a man might be capable of writing and singing bangers. I don't know if Morrissey is currently capable of writing and singing bangers -- his most recent work remains unreleased, to his great consternation -- but the man certainly has bangers in his back catalog.

It would be so much easier for so many people if Morrissey did not have bangers. When a public figure does or says something terrible, there's always an impulse to dismiss that person completely, to grandstand about how you never liked this person's work and how you always sensed that this person was not to be trusted. Given that Morrissey's work with the Smiths is deeply woven into the fabric of alternative music and culture, this is not so easy. Still, I regularly see people insist that Johnny Marr was the real genius behind the Smiths and that Morrissey never amounted to much on his own. This is simply not the case. (Please don't ask me to cite any of those Smiths detractors. I am creating strawmen out of vibes here. Work with me.)