Make-Up Is a Lie Review
By Pavel Tolmachev (18 March 2026)
Morrissey, the famous British rock musician and former Smiths frontman, has released a new studio album on 6 March titled Make-Up Is a Lie.
This is the singer’s fourteenth solo album and the first to be released since the 2020 I Am Not a Dog on a Chain.
No one can deny Morrissey’s songwriting talent, but the new record fails to reflect it. This time, he presents listeners with 12 bleak, barely memorable alternative rock tracks. Do not fall for the album’s eccentric cover featuring a photo of an overexcited Morrissey – the songs have nothing in common with it. Slow or upbeat, the tracks are rather monotonous, lacking interesting melodies or emotional vividness. They are, at best, background music.
The album makes use of the standard set of instruments, common for an alternative rock recording – electric and acoustic guitars, bass, drums, keyboard and occasionally a piano. Despite the unquestionably good workdone by the musicians, their efforts are ultimately sabotaged by poor structure of the tracks and, more importantly, by the dull vocals.
On Make-Up Is a Lie, Morrissey, once famous for his somewhat unusual, emotionally expressive singing style, sounds completely bored. There is no joy nor anger, no real sadness, no genuine expression of any kind of emotions in his voice – well, if we do not count fatigue.
And if only the lack of musical vividness was the album’s sole problem.
Bigmouth strikes once again
Thematically, Make-Up Is a Lie is a patchwork of different topics, ranging from melancholic memories of lost love to critique of the modern western society. However, Morrissey can’t help but include a song promoting one weird, outrageous idea or other.
“We know who tried to kill you, we will not be silent,” he sings on “Notre-Dame”, suggesting his support of a conspiracy theory which claims that the Notre-Dame de Paris fire in 2019 was not a construction accident but arson, possibly organised by Islamist terrorists and covered up by the French government.
Lyrics that do not contain controversial political statements like the opening track “You’re Right, It’s Time” are simply too superficial to be considered an impactful social commentary. They go no further than expressing Morrissey’s wish to run away from the modern smartphone-obsessed society and its (presumably “left-wing”) censorship.
One of the album’s brighter moments is a track called ”Zoom Zoom the Little Boy,” which focuses on animal cruelty and the need to protect nature against “the arrogant man” - a theme first explored by Morrissey in The Smiths’ legendary vegetarian anthem ”Meat is Murder” back in 1985.
Overall, even compared to Morrissey’s previous record, I Am Not a Dog on a Chain, which was by no means a masterpiece, Make-Up Is a Lie, with its filler tracks, conspiracy theories, rather lazy lyrics, and dull musical content, is a very unsuccessful record.
It is even hard to call this album a damp squib, since the number of fans waiting for Morrissey’s comeback has somewhat shrunk in the recent years as a result of the singer’s public support of the far-right parties and his regular nationalist remarks.
Morrissey will be remembered as The Smiths’ witty lyricist whose songs offered consolation to the lonely and the miserable and played their part in promoting liberal ideas including vegetarianism and LGBTQ+ rights. And as such, they rightly deserve to remain in the annals of musical history.
It is unlikely that his later works will have a similar fate.
