Did the same person write both stories?
No
Can you find similar stories in papers and magazines that are not The Guardian?
Yes
Therefore, maybe the reason this type of story seems familiar is because there is some validity to it. It's possible that people that have been following Morrissey a while, as well as people who never heard of him before but do a little research, might come to the conclusion that a typical Morrissey statement nowadays reads like something from the comments section of The Daily Mail.
Or do you find it more likely that newspaper editors have determined that their needs are best served by being hostile to Morrissey for no reason at all?
When you have a person who repeatedly trolls the press and his audience with statements using words like "subspecies" or comparing the deaths of young people to a typical lunch hour at McDonald's I think it is more likely that it's his fault that these sorts of articles are so easy to write.
I'm not saying they are great journalism but given that he won't actually sit down with anyone, most likely because he might start ranting about the floodgates having been opened and the country being destroyed by immigrants, and given that he manages to keep his name in the news, rarely for music, always for some insane provocation, why should they write some fawning article that an ever decreasing number of people would want to read? The fans won't like any story about Morrissey posted anywhere. Julie from "15 Minutes With You" writes these interesting, informative pieces and people here want to lynch her. But most of the public do not own a Morrissey record but know him as this comical sort of crackpot who pops up every once in a while to make some new outrageous statement and make them all clutch the pearls. Those people don't care to ever hear his music but he entertains them in a different way.
Do you know the real purpose of these articles? They are the space in between the advertisements. Hardly any newspaper makes a profit from sales and subscriptions. They make the money from advertising. Most are going broke anyway so they need to be increasingly troll-like, and Morrissey fits that purpose perfectly.
Now you're not going to read about him in the papers in the US unless he is on tour but in England where he is still famous, and where people have an even greater need to feign outrage, he's perfect. Say something about the Queen and people can read about it while they're having breakfast. It works for him because his real priority, no matter how many tantrums he throws about it, is not to sell more records. It is to have people talking about him. And it's just as rewarding to have the "wrong" people despise you as it is to have the right people love you. I think in his mind he's the Sex Pistols saying "f***" on television when he offends some old granny who still reads the paper.
So don't blame the journalists. What else are they supposed to say about him?
I detect from your post the Guardian and all other papers and magazines write stories to fill up the space between the advertorials.
But they are not very honest about it. In fact not honest at all.
Nothing wrong with the commercial aspect, but you can't at the same time hold on to your status as cultural important, influential and be a guide, a non-biased guide to all things cultural.
Two of the journalists from the same paper write 2 articles in a very short timespan about Morrissey and they both are the same.
I would have taken the Guardian more serious if those two articles had a completely different view and content.
And let the reader decide and form his own opinions.
Is that kind of weird now, to think like that? I guess so but I don't care.
The thing is, they can't touch or hurt him anymore. That is what bothers them apparently.
I agree Moz made a very stupid comment right after Breivik.
And there are more, but this one was the worst and very insensitive to the family and friends of the victims.
But in this case you can't say he was inconsequent. Insensitive yes,
Animals come first, wow what a surprise.
As I said before, all the fuss about his statements is secondary to the music. For me. And it would not surprise me if he holds on to the opinion, bad publicity is good publicity.
He doesn't care anymore what anybody, anywhere thinks about him.
His personality, and attitude is nonconformist and he can afford it apparently. Not a bad thing if you want to sing and write lyrics and do life-shows. He doesn't sing about what the public wants to hear.
He sings about things they don't want to hear. He challenges his audience..
And he has created more or less his own niche in the market of pop music.
If it was and always has been about money and money alone he would have sold his soul to the devil and reformed The Smiths.
I do blame the journalists. I want to know interesting stuff about Moz. Not the same old, same old. He laughs at them.
Lack of quality, interest, easily sidetracked and lazy. No wonder Moz does interviews by email. The last printed interviewer that challenged him was Paul Morley.
The last time I read something insightful of Moz, in this case young Moz was in the autobiography Autofellatio by James Maker.
But he is a writer. Not a journalist.
And the interest and almost obsessive love for his friend inspired him to make some great and insightful observations.
But he is an artist, just like Moz is.
But of course nobody from that movie had the idea, hey let's talk with James Maker. A great mistake. An omission.