I’ve always loved Morrissey. The Smiths are probably my favorite group of all time. Johnny Marr’s brash guitar was the perfect complement to Morrissey’s melancholy pipes. I’ll never forget being pressed up against the stage at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago on June 7, 1985 for the Meat is Murder Tour as Morrissey’s angst-flavored sweat pelted the crowd of new-wave punks. I knew every lyric to every Smiths song and I had a hero in this man who was so fiercely poetic and independent.

That’s why there’s something just bloody wrong with Morrissey parading around Tinseltown in six of this season’s most stylish suits in April’s GQ. Although pre-release publicity is a necessity these days, I couldn’t help but be horrified as I turned each page and saw one more picture of the aging, uncomfortable, former anti-establishment rebel mugging for the camera. Leave that to Ashton Kutcher and Nick Lachey. Morrissey has a new album coming out, You Are The Quarry, his first in seven years. I would love it to be brilliant and filled with desperate ennui. It seems like Morrissey has changed quite a bit however, as people do. But a fashion-plate Morrissey in sunny L.A.? That joke isn’t funny anymore.

Morrissey recommends:

Smiths album: The Queen is Dead
Solo album: Viva Hate