If there was such a thing as bad PR, it would definitely be centred around claims of racism, the likes of which have finished political and pop music careers alike down the years.
But Morrissey seems to pop  up with what could be construed as racist comments every few years and appears to be the backbone of his PR strategy.
Taking nothing away from the man as a musician, I’m a big fan, but the famously reclusive patron saint of angst-ridden teens does seem to make far more headlines for the wrong reasons of late.
The most recent story is an apparent race row or storm over comments he made in an interview with The Guardian, branding the Chinese a ‘subspecies’ because of animal welfare issues.
I doubt whether he thought it would be a strategically significant thing to do in order to create more publicity around the interview, but I suspect it got more attention than it would otherwise have done.
Readers may remember that Morrissey was accused of racism during the 1980s and much of the 1990s, which in part was due to the ambiguous lyrics in songs such as “Bengali in Platforms,” “Asian Rut” and “The National Front Disco,” the latter containing the lyric “England for the English”.
And in a biography of the singer he apparently admitted that in his late teens, the singer wrote “I don’t hate Pakistanis, but I dislike them immensely.”
So, it does prompt the question, is Morrissey simply a daft racist, or is this some kind of highly explosive strategy to create masses of negative PR around making ludicrous and offensively racist comments in the media?
I would never recommend such a strategy and I would have thought Morrissey had more brains in his head, but whatever your opinion he has achieved a lot of coverage in the past couple of days.
Maybe that was the aim, but at what price?

simonp Uncategorized