Morrissey Rants About Brit Awards: "The Elite Decide What It Is That The People Want"

Morrissey has posted a rant about the Brit Awards on true-to-you.net, in which he calls the annual award ceremony "bogus" and suggests that the awards "are unfairly given to singers who, it is hoped, might be encouraged enough by the award to actually write a good song". He also claims that "just as the Mercury Prize lands like a voodoo doll in the hands of the unlucky recipient....a Brit Award generally goes to a lot of shriveled young souls who have not earned it."

He wrote:

The object of the Brit Awards is to create the impression of national consensus as they award pop artists of untested stature or value with bogus awards that, it is slyly implied, have been dictated by you, the objective listener. The Brit Awards do not ask the public who they would like to see receive awards - for that would be to risk too much, yet the fierce insistence is that artists are rewarded for their prominence in the previous twelve months because, after all, "it's what everybody wants." Thus, for 2015, we have MacDonna, who had a quiet 2014 (but who is quite usefully about to release her new album!), yet here she is again promoting her frightening career on the Brit Awards even though her music has not ever said anything at all about British life.

Before adding:

....it really is your own fault if you believe that this Awards show has any connection to anything other than the junk propaganda of the strongest labels gathering to share out awards for their own artists whom they plan to heavily promote in 2015. At its most honest, the Brit Awards are unfairly given to singers who, it is hoped, might be encouraged enough by the award to actually write a good song.

And continuing:

In the guise of serving the public, the Brit Awards have hi-jacked modern music in order to kill off the heritage that produced so many interesting people, to such a degree that we could not imagine anyone who has ever truly affected the course of British music to be on stage at the 02 collecting a deserved award. The maximum trimmings divert your attention from the fact that Taylor Swift has nothing to do with Coventry or Wrexham. To pull off rank fraud in tellyland is not a difficult undertaking, especially if you have the entire population of Peru dancing around you as you mime your song. With solemn cathedral hush, we are asked to watch and to believe, and not to question our empty satisfaction, and certainly, with this year's line-up, the likelihood is that the audience at the London 02 will pay to get OUT. The larger truth may be that any singer or band of any dignity would not join the fantasy pudgery of the Brit Awards.

Read the entire thing here.

Listen to Morrissey's "Everyday Is Like Sunday":

via Molly Beauchemin