When news broke of a new Morrissey single and album last week (both titled Make-Up is a Lie), one thing was assured: it was going to get people talking.

Perhaps the most “Marmite” artist of all time, it’s hard to find an artist who divides opinion as much as Morrissey. To some, he is so beloved that going to one of his concerts is a religious experience. To others, he is so detestable there are social media groups with names like “the Morrissey Hate Club”, with detractors dismayed by how his recent political positions on immigration and nationalism are so at odds with the socialist values his early work appeared to advocate.

Morrissey has consistently argued that his views are focused on British identity and freedom of speech, not racism, and has denied that his contemporary nationalist stance conflicts with the anti-establishment and socialist values of his early work with The Smiths. In a 2018 blog post, he wrote: “I despise racism. I despise fascism.”

Morrissey’s relationship with the media has been similarly complex. In 2007, for example, he wrote a piece on the Guardian’s music blog about how the NME had “deliberately tried to characterise” him as a racist. Then, in 2019, he was quoted in the NME for saying the Guardian was running a “hate campaign” against him for running an article that accused him of........

© The Conversation