Former The Smiths vocalist Morrissey recently gave his honest shoughts on the conversation around “diversity” in the arts and wider culture.
Morrissey opens up on the matter
He recently joined in for his first on-camera interview since 2015. When Morrissey was talking about “dumbing down” of culture in the UK, including the “insufferable” content on British TV adverts, he went on to claim that “not many people have faith in music anymore”.
The singer continued, saying that “bloodless” record labels now have a tendency to drop new acts that don’t generate near-instant success. He added that in the past labels allowed artists to have multiple “flops” before deciding to cut ties.
“They [record label heads] talk all about, ‘Oh we must have diversity, diversity, diversity,’ which is diversity of people that you don’t know,” Morrissey said. “And it just means – it’s just another word for conformity. It’s the new way of saying conformity, diversity. You don’t see anything diverse anyway, it’s all conformity.”
The interviewer then went on to note that the word (‘diversity’) is “having the opposite effect”, Morrissey agreed, saying:
“It is, because when people talk about diversity they don’t think about the great things that we don’t have in common. And those things are ignored. And they always made countries very interesting because you could travel to Germany, you could see the most incredible culture. You go to Italy, see the most incredible culture. Now, they just want everything to be the same.”
He continued:
“So diversity means conformity. It doesn’t mean let’s – it doesn’t mean avant-garde or, ‘Let’s make really interesting, strange art.’ It means box everybody [in]”
“Diversity, I think, is a dreadful word. Pin it to anything and that situation is finished. It’s a terrible word – terrible.”
Meanwhile, Morrissey confirmed in the same interview filmed at the London Palladium during his UK tour that he’s already written the follow-up to his forthcoming new album ‘Bonfire Of Teenagers’.
