Morrissey: ‘Music can’t get any worse than Sam Smith’
By Will Stroude
Morrissey has said that the music industry “can’t possibly get any worse” than artists like Sam Smith and Ed Sheeran.
The former Smiths frontman – who revealed last year that he had been through a series of cancer scares – accused record labels of ‘force-feeding’ the public with their music, and bemoaned the lack of “surprise success stories” in modern music.
Speaking to Boulder Weekly, the outspoken 56-year-old said: “There are no bands or singers who become successful without overwhelming marketing. There are no surprise success stories. Everything is stringently controlled, obvious and predictable and has exactly the same content.
“So, we are now in the era of marketed pop stars, which means that the labels fully control the charts, and consequently the public has lost interest. It’s very rare that a record label does something for the good of music.”
“Thus we are force-fed such as Ed Sheeran and Sam Smith, which at least means that things can’t possibly get any worse. It is sad, though. There’s no spontaneity now, and it all seems to be unsalvageable.”
Earlier this month it was revealed that Sam’s debut album In the Lonely Hour is the biggest-selling of 2015 in the UK so far, while Ed’s second album X is the third, behind George Ezra’s Wanted on the Voyage.
Sheeran has already called Morrissey’s comments “absolute bollocks”. Replying to an NME link to the story on Twitter, he wrote: “Even you guys should think this is absolute bollocks. Taking me out of the equation, Sam was the least predictable success story of the last year”.
Meanwhile, Sam recently revealed that he liked the idea that thousands of homophobes around the world might be listening to his record, which he wrote about his unrequited love for a man.
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