[liamenator]

With our 12th selection, BF & the BFFs are excited to add some controversy and flair to our stable of talented musicians... In order to make room, we will be moving Lemmy to the bass player category, opening up the Male Singer category in order to select, from Madchester, UK, frontman from arguably the most important English band from the 80s... Always courting controversy, whether advocating that Meat is Murder or the destruction of Margaret Thatcher; the man dubbed by NME as "the most influential artist ever", lead singer and lyricist from The Smiths, the one, the only... Morrissey!

Steven Patrick Morrissey (IPA: /ˈmɒɹɪsiː/; born May 22, 1959), who goes by his surname Morrissey, is a British singer and lyricist. After a short stint in the punk rock band The Nosebleeds in the late 1970s, he rose to prominence in the 1980s as the lyricist and vocalist of the alternative rock band The Smiths. The UK music magazine NME called him the "most influential artist ever" for his role in the band. When the band broke up in 1987, Morrissey began a solo career, in which he continued the jangle pop sound of The Smiths. His solo albums have garnered ten Top 10 singles in the United Kingdom.
His sardonic, literate lyrics tend to be "dramatic...bleak, funny vignettes about doomed relationships, lonely nightclubs, the burden of the past and the prison of the home." [1] He sings with a baritone voice, occasionally using a high falsetto voice for emphasis. His "forthright, often contrary opinions" led to a number of media controversies, such as his criticism of the Band Aid hunger-relief effort and his statements against political leaders from 1980s-era Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to US President George W. Bush. As well, he has also attracted media attention from his advocacy of vegetarianism and animal rights.

As the lead singer of the Smiths, arguably the most important indie band in Britain during the '80s, Morrissey's theatrical crooning and literate, poetic lyrics -- filled with romantic angst, social alienation, and cutting wit -- connected powerfully with a legion of similarly sensitive, disaffected youth. These fans turned The Smiths into stars in Britain, exerting tremendous pull over much of the country's guitar-based music for many years after their breakup, and even if the group remained underground cult artists in the States, they had a fanbase that slowly, steadily grew larger over the years. Indeed, a few years after The Smiths's breakup in 1987, Morrissey's American cult had grown to the point where he became more popular in the U.S. than in his homeland, where he neverthless was never far from the music press headlines.