May 2022
I’m wearing a Radiohead t-shirt today.
I’ve had it for about 5 years, worn it to see them live, worn it to impress strangers, worn it to bed as the cotton is nice and soft.
I thought that maybe I should stop wearing it after the band made a stand and broke the cultural apartheid in Occupied Palestine, because it went against my staunch political beliefs I hold to feel morally superior to the plebeians. But I still wear it. I like the band. In Rainbows and Ok Computer had more influence on my life than most pieces of art, why shouldn’t I wear my shirt?
If I pin my ‘Palestinian Lives Matter’ badge, (that I got after donating to the man running the Socialist Appeal stand in the High Street; aren’t I good?), to the shirt, does it cancel out the bad? Or is that just licking your finger and wiping the scratch left from an Arab child’s pebble on your American-made tank? I think a fresh paint job may be in order.
However, in this hyper-reactionary, overly-sensitive, snowflake-offended, daily-mandatory-pronoun-inspection world there’s one band t-shirt like no other. A shirt that strikes the fear of God into the hearts of, not only, the metropolitan liberal elite, the ‘le bacon is epic’ Redditors, the old school 80s homophobes, but above all of these, the fan itself.
The Smiths: Meat is Murder.
Morrissey was my hero. In Year 8 I had to write a piece for a competition on who I thought was the most important person in history. I picked Morrissey (I was beaten by a girl who wrote about Emily Davison. Morrissey could jump in front of a horse, but I struggle to imagine Davison making an album as good as Viva Hate). I cared for that man, like countless Smiths fanatics. And then he went and spoiled it all by saying something stupid like the Chinese are a “sub-species”.
Now, it’s impossible to see a piece of Smiths iconography without seeing the fat, racist, xenophobic demon that lives inside the body of our once true King. At least when it comes to wearing a Radiohead t-shirt people just think you’re a virgin, and not a racist virgin.
Remember that elevator scene from (500) Days of Summer? That one you fawned over during your Tumblr phase, cringed at during your Twitter days, but feel somewhat indifferent towards now that you’re a twenty-something alcoholic? That scene simply could not happen today.
Conventionally attractive white girl gets into an elevator and hears conventionally attractive white boy listening to There Is A Light That Never Goes Out and strikes up a conversation saying she likes The Smiths. I take issue with this scene in a few ways.
- Had the writer of this film ever seen a Smiths fan in real life? They’re either ugly, smelly, bearded mansplainers in their 40s, overweight white rockabilly women, or oddly toned Mexican men.
- Why was he listening to There Is A Light…, when he could be listening to Rubber Ring?
- The most important of all: why on earth would you admit to liking The Smiths?
When I wear my Smiths t-shirt, I genuinely hope those around me think I’m a poser who has no idea that the design is even an album cover. I’d rather be Kendall Jenner in Slayer merch than David Duke in a hood. All I can hope is that the Pakistani sweat shop worker became curious stitching the tee and listened to Meat is Murder. I imagine they appreciated the production value compared to their earlier output, it’s hard not to.
So why do I insist on still wearing my Smiths t-shirt? Well, I still love the music, I still love Marr and I, sort of, still love Morrissey. Only slightly less than I used to, my love.
