To be honest, looking back at some of the old interviews the persona Morrissey created, I don't think he's really changed all that much. He's gotten more bitter (I miss the "hope at the end of the tunnel" that used to permeate through much of his music), more detached from reality... but he's always been a frustrating narcissist. It's just that, as a teenager and a young man in the early '00s, I found his frustrating ways endearing and I thought he was a legitimate genius. One of the things I find painful in witnessing his downward spiral is realising that this man I thought was so clever isn't very clever after all and, outside of his songwriting brilliance, he never really was.
At this point, the only reason I continue to visit this website is a morbid curiosity to see what stupid thing my former hero will do next and, of course, out of habit. But I must say that I was pleasantly surprised with Dog on a Chain, the first Morrissey studio album of original material I've genuinely liked in a long time. It deserved glowing reviews, A-list radio play, and all the rest. But the "mixed" reviews and poor sales were entirely his fault, though it had nothing to do with the quality of the product.
www.morrisseycentral.com
