Morrissey’s ‘Isle of Dogs’ laments the loss of Olde England, the West, etc.
‘Go stand over there!” may be the wittiest political line Morrissey ever sang. Evoking the social-distancing of Covid-era political lockdowns (where politicians got a taste of tyranny and couldn’t get enough), he catches its awful banality. Matching political despair to facetious dismissal gives the new song “Isle of Dogs” its spunk. Morrissey releases it just in time for election season, when some people become temporarily politicized while others sink into cynical apathy.
The song’s jaunty rockabilly rhythm, courtesy of composer Alain Whyte, slyly portrays election season anxiety (a buzzing organ interlude spoofs one’s irritation). Most Millennial pop musicians neglect politics except when pandering for media attention, but Morrissey’s conscientiousness has been apparent throughout his career and is consistent in his art. “Isle of Dogs” follows a repertoire that includes social commentary as part of Morrissey’s personal expression.
Despite mainstream media attempts to cancel Morrissey in 2019 for wearing a “For Britain” button (in support of the For Britain political party) on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, “Isle of Dogs” continues his intractable defense of traditional Englishness. What makes “Isle of Dogs” relevant is the way Morrissey’s cultural recall resists current radical progressivism.
The sing-along humor of “Isle of Dogs” shows affection for British cultural heritage alongside such issues as free speech that sync with traditional longings felt in other parts of Western society that are now besieged by the aggression of socialist politics and mass illegal immigration and rioting.
Morrissey tempers the onslaught with ironic humor. The opening lines, “You can’t go back to the Isle of Dogs / It’s all been taken away,” refer to that section of East London (the Thames peninsula of Tower Hamlets, not an island yet commonly known as “Isle of Dogs”) now facing revolutionary social change. The song combines scruffy working-class pride with the resentment of Brits who feel displaced by gentrification and other fashionable maladies. Morrissey says so with the self-deprecating confidence that also complicates the slogan “Make America Great Again” — not merely referencing the past or the loss of Olde England, or hailing the West’s former glory and identity.
“Isle of Dogs” doesn’t pretend that the past was ever utopian but emphasizes the sense of displacement engendered by the invasion once misstated as “caravans,” the spiritual deracination threatened by revolutionaries and the unassimilated. This defiance surely stems from the Covid lockdowns, thus Morrissey shares the conservative observation that politicians despise their constituents: “Election time comes around again / and everybody chases your vote / You still believe they’ll look out for you / when they only want to slit your throat.”
In these lyrics, eternal punk artiste Morrissey speaks the demoralization that sheepish pop stars dare not acknowledge (although it is implicit when pundits complain about media distrust).
This defiance is buttressed by the song’s chorus: “You’re poor / And nobody likes you / You’re poor / You’re just a pain in the neck / You’re poor/ The first sign of a cough / The NHS will bump you off.”
Alluding to both the indifference of England’s socialized National Health Service and adverse effects of the Covid inoculation, this is the pithiest and wiriest statement on government humiliation since Morrissey’s 1990 “Interesting Drug” took aim at dependence on social welfare (the word “poor” meaning disenfranchised).
Never overstating facts of economic displacement or class tensions, or making explicit partisan endorsements, Morrissey makes poetry of the uncertainties that affect political consciousness. (It’s worth noting how filmmaker Wes Anderson purloined “Isle of Dogs” for his most maddening, alienated animated film, while two fan-fiction music videos for “Isle of Dogs” unearth the fascinating cult films Innocent Sinners by teen-movie auteur Philip Leacock and a trove of documentary footage about the Kray brothers, gangsters of England’s 1960s clubland subculture.)
Pop stars who helped promote the lockdown and who join mendacious partisan campaigns ignore the global political reality that Morrissey relates to working-class misery: “And as a reminder / Your job is in China / And that’s where it’s gonna stay.” (He sings “China” exactly as President Trump sarcastically pronounced it when signaling the origin of the coronavirus.)
By scrutinizing ambivalent national identity (also the subject of “National Front Disco,” “Nobody Loves Us,” and “Irish Blood, English Heart”), Morrissey has found his own way to sing the blues that spares him the approval of leftist scoundrels that Nobel-winner Bob Dylan often suffers. “Isle of Dogs” reveals the truest attitudes about voter participation during this strained, exasperating, brainwashed era. “Go stand over there!” is a pip. How’s that for an October surprise?