I had very little opinion at all about Morrissey until very recently. He can't sing, but neither can a lot of the people I like and while
The Smiths always struck me as deathly dull they seem to have influenced a bunch of cool people and were probably more intelligent than most of their contemporaries in the music biz.
And yeah, he's an animal rights nut but it's not like anyone really listened to him so I didn't really care. On top of this, I don't read dross like NME so he rarely entered my mental landscape.
However, my girlfriend seems to have some obsession with Morrissey and I've now heard more of his droaning crap (accompanied with praise for him) than any man deserves to hear. As a result I now hate him with a fiery passion.
I think I might even be seeing him in concert at some point soon so look out for a "Morrissey stabbed by badly dressed gothy looking tramp" news story.
Not sure if it's been mentioned here before, but speaking of Morrissey does anyone else find the list of "Top Living Icons" the BBC were voting on kind of shit :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/livingicons/vote/ ? Although 4 of the 12 come from South London. \o/