Worst Morrissey Full Length Studio Album

voted years of refusal btw. something is SQUEEZING MY SSSOUUUUL indeed.

His career-spanning anthology should be called 'Years of Refuse'.

I would've included Bona Drag, despite it technically being a compilation, because it was kind of a wrap-up of a year's worth of singles/sides (not unlike Panda Bear's new album).

Since it's not here, though, I'll vote for Vauxhall.

Oh crap, this is a WORST poll. I should learn to read.

I was going to say, even if I did include it, it's not going to get any votes.

don't learn to read, it is a conspiracy, it will lead to nothing but trouble and confusion.

All of Morrissey's solo albs are better than the fucking Smiths btw

Years Of Refusal definitely worst. Then maybe Maladjusted or Ringleader. Then Quarry.

Southpaw Grammar is ACE.

This is going to be a mad fun thread, I can feel it.

Years of Refusal is EASILY the worst, followed by Maladjusted.

The only people who hate Southpaw Grammar are the Morrissey extremists because drum solos and 10-minute-long title tracks are an affront to their beliefs.

Haven't heard Years Of Refusal, but I hate Kill Uncle so deeply that it gets my vote. Like to love every other one.

YOR is the best of the comeback trilogy, knaves.

I loved Kill Uncle at the time -- all that echo and those elongated vowels, like Moz thinks he's Bryan Ferry. Now it sounds underwritten.

The only people who hate Southpaw Grammar are the Morrissey extremists because drum solos and 10-minute-long title tracks are an affront to their beliefs.

Me! Me!

^^me too. Southpaw gets my vote.

I will not hear a bad word about the song "Southpaw", guys.

KILL UNCLE is the answer.

Years Of Refusal is great.

hahaha I came on intending to post "the one that starts with a drum solo"

first four are all great. i was a big defender of southpaw at the time but that was a combo of denial and contrarianism that i quickly got over. and it's not just the big bookend tracks, the songs in between are mostly crappy. it has just been varying shades of pointless and terrible since then. i really tried with every one except years of refusal. of the rest, maladjusted was just so so horrible. definitely my least favourite.

^^^^

Maladjusted is awful.

maladjusted is so bad I don't remember anything about it. southpaw: actually I think this is alright, it's not great but it definitely doesn't reach the depths of his most shitty output. refusal = terrible. Tormenters, also very very bad. I think Quarry is good. Kll Uncle: hated it when it came out, then liked it, then was conditioned to think it was very very bad, now I think it sounds good, particularly compared to his last few albums.

I love "Reader Meets Author" and "Boy Racer," while Maladjusted has vague songs signifying little beyond petulance, not to mention anger at life as a balding man.

Oh c'mon it's Kill Uncle FFS.

have you actually listened to maladjusted and years of refusal?

bring back "I Hate Music" for polls like these they area a downer imo

Oh c'mon it's Kill Uncle FFS.

― Kent Burt, Monday, April 25, 2011 9:32 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

Two of my favorite Morrissey songs are on Kill Uncle so I can't hate.

kill uncle is great. i like kill uncle more than, say, viva hate. it is his most sad sack record, so i guess you have to be on board with that.

years of refusal

Man, so much hate for Years of Refusal. Bummin' me out. I rather like that record. :(

years of refusal. it's just awful.

yes, kill uncle is great.

ringleader isn't very good either

Love Kill Uncle!! Moody and indulgent and quirky and funny and fun, doesn't ever seem labored or contrived.

Haven't bothered to listen to the last 3 LPs, but I like that song "Life is a Pigsty"

All of Morrissey's solo albs are better than the fucking Smiths btw

so much RONG concentrated into one sentence

registered sockpuppets and voted for all of these

i think viva hate and bona drag are p on par with the smiths

i think both of them are better than Strangeways, actually.

Yeah, seriously. The only Smiths album as much fun as Bona Drag is....Louder Than Bombs (also a comp).

Viva Hate and Bona Drag are both better than The Smiths and Meat is Murder.

er, no

they sure are!

Viva Hate - too many great songs to be worst, too many shit songs to be best

Kill Uncle - good sound, arrangements, singing, but songs mostly about nothing - i.e. still pretty enjoyable

Your Arsenal - too many good songs to be worst, in fact only two bad songs (We Hate It..., Tomorrow). However, first album where he stopped doing funny bits with his voice. From here until Quarry he'd sound like he had a cold.

Vauxhall and I - Quite a few good songs here. His cold is worse than ever on Billy Budd.

Southpaw Grammar - Candidate for worst. Dagenham Dave, Southpaw, just shitty songs. Good songs are the one with the drum solo and the one about teachers.

Maladjusted - very tiring to listen to this junk.

You Are the Quarry - his cold's cleared up.

Ringleader of the Tormentors - You Have Killed Me is ace and sort of thematically links killing/maleness/stabbing/gay sex in quite a cool way & is followed by Youngest Was Most Loved which talks about a young guy who "turned into a killer" which on first listen sounds like more of Morrissey's usual gangster stuff (about as authentic as Michael Jackson's), except for the previous song hinting that for Morrissey killing=bumsex i.e. very very thrilling, so I always wish he had sung "he turned into a homo" instead of "he turned into a killer" - which in the context of the kids singing along and all that "no such thing as normal" stuff and the fact that for once it is actually a great tune would make it one of Morrissey's best ever songs no joke. But I wasn't there to tell him this so it just sounds like First of the Gang part 2 or whatever.

Years of Refusal - pretty bad, in fact the worst.

Nice analysis. I don't agree with most of it, but you're right about his voice becoming thick and ponderous after 1993.

in fact only two bad songs (We Hate It..., Tomorrow)

lol wut

i don't think that album really has any bad songs on it, but I don't like how most of the record actually sounds, too pumped up and too something. dunno. but the songwriting makes up for it. yes even national front disco.

In 1992 I couldn't admit to my loving YA for a long time -- months, really. The production was a betrayal or something. I really loved the reverb-drenched KU; every Moz album should emulate it, I thought. It also galled me that YA was his first big US seller as a solo artist and was extraordinarily well-received.

By the end of the year I realized I'd been playing "We'll Let You Know," "Glamorous Glue," and "Tomorrow" repeatedly since August, and cried uncle.

how could anybody not like "We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful," that is a classic jam

Top five solo moments fer sure

Ah-ha, ha-ha-ha-ha!

It's a laughable lie

Wow, in my memory Years of Refusal seems ok. I know I listened to it at least 5 or 6 times when it came out. However, i just looked at the track list and realized I DON'T REMEMBER A SINGLE SONG! Years of Refusal, then.

It's more than ok. It's in my top 4 or 5 Moz solos.

All the Years Of Refusal hatred on here reads like utter madness

"We Hate It" is, precisely, the solo equivalent of "You Just Haven't Earned it Yet Baby". YJHEIYB (kind of annoying how you have to abbreviate 99% of Morrissey songs or die typing) although having nice guitar tune is among top 10 worst Smiths. Verse beginning "And if they're Northern, that makes it even worse..." is relatively early example of Moz making pretty tedious point over four lines and a much-too-long song title where once he'd do it in two words - an art he'd perfect in coming years. The melody is shit. "Ha ha ha ha". This was the first single off the record and was therefore the first song where he had the cold that would last for a decade.

When Your Arsenal came out, Select magazine had a bunch of indie celebs review it. I can't remember who it was, but somebody made the observation that if Morrissey had come up with "The Headmaster Ritual" then (1992), it would be called "Belligerent Ghouls Run Manchester Schools". This tendency would get much much worse, but at the time "We Hate It" was annoying for its clumsy, unambigious, try-hard literalism - and still is to me.

Dr. C OTM about the production on Quarry

I'd probably rank the ones I know YA/SG/Vaux/Kill/Mal/Quarry with Viva disqualifed since I just listen to Bona (which would be right behind YA on my list)

just song for song i'd take bona drag over all of them

I've missed 21st-century Morrissey, so I'm catching up now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxr8ELV8p-Y

Viva Hate is fantastic, what are you on about

too many late nights on maudlin street on VH.

bona drag >>> everything else >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> kill uncle

I was never that big on rockabilly/skinhead fetish - era mozzer, tho I def get the love for Arsenal & Vauxhall. I like them too, but they aren't my favorites. I love some of his 00s-era singles and tracks (esp. First of the Gang to Die), but not any one of the albums front-to-back. YATQ comes close, tho.

for me, it will always come back around to the early singles. An embarrassment of riches almost on par w/ Smiths career highs. voted VH.

o shit. WORST mozzer.. lol, did not see that

gotta be Kill Uncle - the absolute dregs

I wish there had been more Vini Reilly on Viva Hate. His little touches of guitar on Late Night Maudlin Street are beautiful.

Reilly apparently hated what Stephen Street did to his guitars.

"Stop throwing paper aeroplanes at my guitars!"

Yeah, the feud between Reilly and Street is really interesting.

Any links to that story?

I read the Reilly interview in that booklength song by song overview.

there are interviews with both of them on youtube discussing it. i can't remember what clips though

Good timing, bros:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/apr/22/morrissey-autobiography-finished

in other worlds..

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2010/oct/12/smiths-covers-project-janice-whaley?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

this thread made me go back to 'kill uncle' and i kinda really like it. it's much better than the last one. and that 'viva hate' and 'vauxhall and i' received any votes is a travesty.

yes kill uncle did not deserve this when there are so many other shitty albums. but I think it won because more people have actually heard kill uncle and have an opinion on it.

I think it's probably because, for a lot of people, Kill Uncle was the "okay no, I'm off the train" moment

I happen to really like Kill Uncle.

I liked "Our Frank", found the rest hard to get into, & got rid of it pretty quickly. But "Pregnant For The Last Time" and (especially) "Our Love Life", also from 1991, were terrific singles.

"Our Frank" was the song that burned all of my lingering Smiths goodwill, lol

Pregnant For The Last Time + My Love Life are great. So is The Loop.

I don't actually hate all solo Morrissey, I realize; I had a mostly positive experience with Viva Hate due to "Late Night, Maudlin Street", "Hairdresser on Fire", "Alsatian Cousin", "Little Man, What Now?", "I Don't Mind If You Forget Me" and "Dial-A-Cliche" but the sinister-in-retrospect "Suedehead" and the outright gross "Bengali In Platforms" mean I'll never actually own the album.

I Don't Mind and Little Man, What Now are the unsung heroes of that album. Late Night, Maudlin Street has the most Vini Reilly sounding stuff on it, therefore it's great.

4 votes for Viva Hate and 0 votes for Ringleaders = proof this poll is fucked

"Our Frank" was the one that put me in mind of too many morrisseyettes singing along "oh give me a dwinnnk and make it quiiiick, or I wll be wiolentwy siiiick..."

"Preg" was silly, but good silly.

why is suedehead sinister?????

vini reilly is the shit

durutti gang

I have a bunch of Smiths 7"s but Our Frank is the only Moz 7" I have. Not sure where I got it but it's in my collection. Wish I had bought the etched Interesting Drug 12"

why is suedehead sinister?????

Take Moz's flirtation/fascination with the National Front from around this time period, think about what it looks like when a skinhead needs a haircut, then reread the lyrics.

Pregnant For The Last Time + My Love Life are great

They're not great, but they're the first NEW Moz singles I bought at the time after discovering the Smiths and thus played them to death; and I love "I've Changed My Plea to Guilty" and "Skin Storm."

I'm shocked YOR is second and Ringleader got 0 votes when I'm sure more people heard the latter.

My favorite tracks on VH besides the singles are "Break Up The Family" (lovely vocal, nice subtle drum programming) and "The Ordinary Boys."

Suedehead is about as sinister as King Leer played by the Mike Flowers' Pops

Yeah, I looked over the "Suedehead" lyrics just in case I'd missed something & no, I don't see anything sinister, unless fucking is sinister (which in Moz's case it might be!)

the kill uncle show that I saw was one of the worst nights in my life because he seemed so uninspired and there was phranc. but he turned it around dramatically on the next record so i am more forgiving of the record now 20 years on.

If Moz is singing as the titular suedehead, lines like "Why do you come here when you know it makes things hard for you?" take on a whole new meaning. If he's singing about the titular suedehead, it turns into a wistful sing about someone feeling sympathy for someone who has written in their diary about how detestable they find the narrator, which isn't as gross but still kind of eek in light of some of the shit Moz was saying around that time.

i absolutely never ever ever read those meanings into the opening lines. I suppose you could but nothing else in the song bears it out.

I thought it was about an 'inappropriate' teacher/pupil relationship.

I've got a lot of affection for poor old Kill Uncle. It's the one that really stands out on its own, nothing else quite sounds anything like it. It is very understated, and just kinda fades away towards the end, but it has some unique sounding pop songs on it. Ringleader of the Tormentors is also underrated.

I would have voted for either You Are The Quarry or Years of Refusal. They both just sound really ugly and overblown, and Morrissey's voice is stretched thin trying to shout above the din.

As for Maladusted, I think the title song is terrific, not up their with his best but not far off, while "Trouble Loves Me" and "Ammunition" aren't too bad either.

Looking forward to his book, and if it's anything like his liner notes for his Under the Influence compilation it'll be great. Just hoping it won't be peppered with too much "killing a stag is like killing a child" style tubthumping.

Gonna trip over myself to try and misinterpret every Morrissey song as well dodgy now, sounds like it's a laugh

If Moz is singing as the titular suedehead, lines like "Why do you come here when you know it makes things hard for you?" take on a whole new meaning.

it's "hard for me," fyi.

it's about a guy who doesn't like it when you come around, when you send him silly notes, when you telephone, and when you read his diary to see what he wrote about you. the name is pulled from UK skinhead subculture but trying to find anything in the lyrics beyond a guy complaining that you're all up in his grill romantically is pretty hard.

the 'come here' and 'hard for me' combo seem more like Ortoneque dbl entendres than anything else, really

And thanks to the video, I can't help but feel this song is about playing bongos in a cattle ranch.

3 new songs

http://www.nme.com/news/morrissey/57331

woah you must really hate them to tack them on this thread.

WE HAVE A NEW CONTENDER, FOLKS