Morrissey may have canceled a lot of shows in the past few months, but it looks like an album is actually arriving. Make-Up Is A Lie, previously titled You're Right, It's Time, is slated to finally come about after being recorded back in 2023.
Releasing new music has been difficult for Moz. He was originally supposed to share an album called Bonfire Of Teenagers (recorded in 2020 and 2021) through Capitol in 2023, but instead he left the label and said the then-CEO was trying to “wreck” his career. Then he said that no label would put out the record because of its controversial title track and because free speech is “criminalized.”
So, who knows when Bonfire Of Teenagers will come out, but for now we will get Make-Up Is A Lie on Mar. 6 via Sire Records, Morrissey and his former band the Smiths' old US label. It'll be Sire's first release in over four years. The 12-track LP was produced with Joe Chiccarelli at La Fabrique Studios in St-Remy, France and includes a cover of "Amazona" by Roxy Music, whose For Your Pleasure is one of Moz's favorite albums. (He's also covered their "Street Life" in concert before.)
"The wait has sometimes felt like a tragedy, but the release today of Make-up is a Lie is like a reunion of lovers," Morrissey writes. "And after several plays it seems to have existed always. We can now place our faith in what is visible." He continues:
please sit in your favorite chair in your dark cabin with the lights out - or, get off your head and enjoy some impulsive self-humiliation - as I often do. I hope you consider Make-up is a Lie to be worth the attention that you give it. Many of us, here, and in France, Turkey, Poland, The Netherlands, Denmark, Greece, America, England … we have waited because our belief is unchallengeable: let the squawkers squawk. What survives beyond their grasp is love. I insist on being myself in spite of much discouragement, and this new music is a valid portrait of much more to come in 2026. Born, then born, and born again. I am your lover-to-be, MORRISSEY.
On Tuesday (Jan. 6) Morrissey apologized for canceling his shows in Rancho Mirage and San Diego and promised that tour will begin Saturday in San Antonio. Make-Up Is A Lie's title track is out today, and it's co-written with his bandmates Camila Grey Gutierrez and Jonathan Forrest Bates. Check it out below.
TRACKLIST:
01 "You're Right, It's Time"
02 "Make-Up Is A Lie"
03 "Notre-Dame"
04 "Amazona"
05 "Headache Boulevard"
06 "Zoom Zoom The Little Boy"
07 "The Night Pop Dropped"
08 "Kerching Kerching"
09 "Lester Bangs"
10 "Many Icebergs Ago"
11 "The Monsters Of Pig Alley"
Make-Up Is A Lie is out 3/6 via Sire/Warner. Pre-order it here.
