Morrissey

By Arielle Castillo

published: November 08, 2007

No matter how much he shuns the public eye, no matter how many times he threatens to disappear, no matter how tired he might seem, Morrissey will always have fans who flock to him. When the Manchester-born Moz — an eloquent bard of countless slightly dark, bookish, often myopic misfits — trills his lovelorn tales, it's as if he is crooning only to you. He might be the only middle-age Englishman performing today to inspire legions of otherwise rational fans, female and male alike, to fling themselves continually at the stage.

This past July, the current tour brought him to Boca Raton's Mizner Park Amphitheater. Morrissey's performance was, as always, near-flawless, but the heat was miserable and the singer was visibly swooning, and not from being poetically overwhelmed. The tour was extended, with the announcement that it would be his last "for the foreseeable future." Sob! Morrissey, you have killed us! At least, mercifully, he decided to grace South Florida with his presence once more this year, this time in the much more aesthetically fitting — and indoor — Fillmore Miami Beach.

While Morrissey liberally sprinkles his set lists with tunes by his first band, the Smiths, he also notoriously rotates his biggest hits across time, refusing to play some songs for months. At the July concert in Boca, we got "How Soon Is Now?" after a moratorium on the track. So here's hoping this time in Miami we get "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out." Please, please, please, let me get what I want.