YMMV / Morrissey

• Americans Hate Tingle: Morrissey zig-zags around this trope in America. In the early 90s, he was one of the biggest cult acts in music there, with his fans swarming him wherever he went. It got to the point where TV news stations began to run stories about his appearences and Johnny Carson was drowned out by screaming fans while introducing Moz for his first American live TV performance. However, all that attention did not translate to chart success: He had plenty of alt-rock radio hits, but just one Hot 100 chart appearance. After 1995, his American popularity significantly cooled and he only had a resurgence in popularity when he released 2004's You Are the Quarry. Nowadays, he's more Overshadowed by Controversy due to his extremely polarizing public comments and political stances than he is for his actual music.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: He has a large Latino fanbase, mostly due to his hammy, melodramatic lyricism and singing style unintentionally evoking the Ranchera style of Mexican music. Morrissey loves this fanbase as much as they love him: he frequently tours in southern California and Mexico. He even said: "I wish I was born Mexican." Even better, his popularity among Latinos comes into play briefly in Marvel Studios' Ant-Man and the Wasp thanks to that movie's Latino character Luis:
  Oh, my abuelita had a jukebox in her restaurant! Yeah, only played Morrissey. And if anybody ever complained, she'd be like: "Oh, ¿no te gusta Moz?" - you know, chicanos, we call him Moz - "then, ¡adios!" What can I say, ya know, we relate to his melancholic ballads, ya know?
• Memetic Mutation: Asking him every time about whether or not The Smiths would ever reunite has become this for fans, mainly because Morrissey will say a Long List of reasons as to why the band won't reunite. It becomes insultingly hilarious.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: While allegations of racist/ethnonationalist views dogged him for years, they reached a tipping point after his response to the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017, in which he blamed the attacks on immigration (despite the bomber being British-born), mocked politicians for not condemning Islam, and expressed support for highly Islamophobic UKIP candidate Anne Marie Waters, who her own party saw as too extreme. Since then, it's difficult to bring Morrisey up without circling back to his views on immigration and Islam.
• Unintentional Period Piece: "America is Not the World" suggests that America would have to elect a black man, a woman, or an openly gay person as President to gain his respect. Certainly it must have sounded far-fetched back in 2004, but just one election cycle later the Democratic candidates would include two of the three, the former who would become the very next President.

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