Morrissey, Bona Drag
Featured Album
Morrissey's inimitable pop masterpieces — all in one place
For anyone looking to join the cult of Steven Patrick Morrissey, the line for the Kool-Aid forms here. Bona Drag is perhaps the best indoctrination into the former Smiths frontman's solo career; the compilation swipes the two best-known tracks from 1988 debut Viva Hate and adds a string of singles and b-sides that would define Morrissey's persona, sound and career for the next two decades. Bona Drag also prepared listeners for the onslaught of compilations and best-ofs to come as of this writing, a staggering six additional single-disc collections have been released — ensuring that diehard fans would end up purchasing “Everyday Is Like Sunday” five times over. (The many pitfalls of Morrissey fandom is a major digression, however.)
What makes Bona Drag such an optimal starting point is its near-complete survey of Morrissey's worldview, an outlook that can veer beyond maudlin and into abject self-pity on “Will Never Marry” and “Ouija Board, Ouija Board,” to name but two pat examples of the singer's lonely-hearted lyrics. But Morrissey's sadness is so much more well-rounded than that. “Interesting Drug” is a bubbly ode to the power of Prozac and the drudgery of middle-class life, while “Disappointed” — whose reverbed guitars eerily recall the Smiths hit “How Soon Is Now?” — ends Bona Drag with self-deprecating humor. Contrary to the popular notion that Morrissey is self-obsessed, here he takes particular delight in singing narratives about the physically afflicted, the criminally insane and hairdressers — and somehow makes each of them seem equally oppressed. This 1988-1990 post-Smiths period is the most interesting era of Morrissey's career; his music gets glossier in partnership with producer/guitarist Stephen Street, and his voice ripens to a deeper register. Bona Drag represents the years when Morrissey made a legitimate bid to be a pop star in the UK via catchy, provocatively titled singles (“The Last Of The Famous International Playboys”). You can sense a looming stardom in 1990 concert film/music-video collection Hulmerist, a snapshot of a highly stylized, out-of-time hero and his devoted followers that echoes D.A. Pennebaker's Ziggy Stardust — The Motion Picture. But major pop-chart success wasn't on the Ouija board for Morrissey, a twist of fate that only seemed cruel at the time.
