‘Has any book in recent memory not actually about wizards provoked so much interest?’ Mark Simpson on the most eagerly-anticipated music biography ever. C4 News, 14 October, 2013 MORRISSEY HAS ALWAYS enjoyed the last laugh. His entire career has been based on it. Back in the 1980s, when he was in… Read More »Will Morrissey Have The Last Laugh – Again?
Morrissey is always going to disappoint those who want him to be some kind of ‘singing Stephen Fry with a quiff’, argues Mark Simpson Originally appeared on The Spectator Arts Blog Because the 80s is the decade that actually ended the 20th Century – the 90s was just an after-party clean-up operation… Read More »Morrissey Hasn’t Changed – We Have
Mark Simpson rubs glam boy band Suede up the wrong way (Originally appeared in Attitude, 1994 ) I have something to confess. When I listened to Suede’s eponymous debut album last year I was disappointed. Disappointed that it turned out to be as good as the hype had trumpeted it… Read More »The Persueders
“NO MORE F****** ABBA!!” So bellowed an ageing transsexual Terence Stamp in Priscilla Queen of the Desert, driven to distraction by his fey fellow bus passengers’ obsession with the silly Swedish 1970s super group. Some hope. We’re all trapped on a Day-Glo bus full of drag queens squawking along to… Read More »Welcome to AbbaWorld – Prepare to be Abbassimiliated
by Mark Simpson (Originally appeared on Salon.com, April 2003) It’s tough growing up British. Not just for all the obvious Austin Powers-esque reasons, such as our medieval dentistry, endemic mold problems and epidemic dandruff, but for something much more existential. The British are great and enthusiastic believers in Original Sin.… Read More »Why Doesn’t America Love Robbie Williams? When He Love-Hates Himself So?