film / tv / substack / social media / lists / web / celeb / pajiba love / misc / about / cbr
film / tv / substack / web / celeb

rick-astley-morrisey-glastonbury-header.jpg

Rick Astley Is Out Here Purging the Evil Spirit of Morrisey

By Petr Navovy | Celebrity | June 26, 2023 |

By Petr Navovy | Celebrity | June 26, 2023 |

rick-astley-morrisey-glastonbury-header.jpg

You have to hand it to Rick Astley. Being the fuel for any internet meme can be a challenging experience—let alone one of the biggest, most pervasive, and far-reaching memes of all time. You either—ahem—roll with it, or it can destroy you. It’s genuinely heartwarming to see, then, that the subject of one of the most significant memes of all time has managed to not only embrace it but to use it to turbocharge his career and to use that platform to cast powerful spells to help ward off an ancient evil.

Because, what’s the opposite of having to hand it to someone? Whatever that is, apply that to Morrissey. It takes a special kind of raw knobheadishness to squander the titanic amount of goodwill and affection gathered from being a key part of one of the most influential rock bands of all time, serving as the voice of the sensitive, dispossessed, and literate, and to curdle that legacy into a foul concoction of racism and bigotry.

It’s a real shame because the bangers by The Smiths remain bangers. If only they could be enjoyed live without the taint of Morrissey infecting them.

Enter Rick Astley!

Not content with Rickrolling stadium crowds with the help of the Foo Fighters or playing drums and singing ‘Highway To Hell’ live, the meme king of side quests has made it his mission to make The Smiths songs enjoyable live again, appearing at the UK’s Glastonbury Festival over the weekend to not only perform a set of his own, but to then put on a secret show with English group Blossoms, which consisted entirely of The Smiths covers. This isn’t the first time that Astley and Blossoms have gotten together onstage to perform the material, and judging by the reception it might not be the last. Morrissey is dead, long live New Morrissey.