As frontman of the Smiths , Morrissey — described as " lanky , soft-spoken , bequiffed and bespectacled " — subverted many of the norms that were associated with pop and rock music . The band 's aesthetic simplicity was a reaction to the excess personified by the New Romantics , and while Morrissey adopted an androgynous appearance like the New Romantics or earlier glam rockers , his was far more subtle and understated . According to one commentator , " he was bookish ; he wore NHS spectacles and a hearing aid on stage ; he was celibate . Worst of all , he was sincere " , with his music being " so intoxicatingly melancholic , so dangerously thoughtful , so seductively funny that it lured its listeners ... into a relationship with him and his music instead of the world . " In an academic paper on the band , Julian Stringer characterised the Smiths as " one of Britain 's most overtly political groups " , while in his study of their work , Andrew Warns termed them " this most anti-capitalist of bands " . Morrissey had been particularly vocal in his criticism of then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher ; after the October 1984 Brighton hotel bombing , he commented that " the only sorrow " of it was " that Thatcher escaped unscathed " . In 1988 he stated that Section 28 " embodies Thatcher 's very nature and her quite natural hatred "
Brighton hotel bombing
Brighton hotel bombing
Morrissey