Morrissey is rock and roll’s biggest flake and there’s data to prove it

I cancel plans all the time. Thankfully I don’t have any fans, which means I don’t have a website dedicated to just how often I cancel my plans. I can’t say the same for Morrissey, though. Recently, the singer had to shelve gigs in Rancho Mirage and San Diego because of an “adverse reaction to a prescription medication.” Upon seeing the news I thought, “Huh, he sure does do this a lot, doesn’t he?” But of course, you only ever hear about the shows he doesn’t play, not the shows he completes. So, surely my perception has been skewed all these years, yeah? Well, thanks to the folks behind the Morrissey-Solo fansite, there are stats to prove that Morrissey is, indeed, rock and roll’s greatest flake. Publicly available data on the site reveals that, out of his 639 announced concerts since 2012, Moz has only played 449 of them. 111 were cancelled, another 100 postponed. A 70% completion rate. Rookie numbers, I say, as I look at a calendar full of plans and a dozen friends just a text away.

In 2013 specifically, Morrissey played only 16 of a promised 64 dates, barely getting over the Mendoza Line. One of those postponements came after he contracted “corrosively toxic food poisoning” from penne pasta and tomato in Peru, which is incredibly funny to type out. “Sorrow replaces joy, and in every dream home a heartache,” he wrote in a statement back then, quoting Roxy Music because of course he would. “It could only be me.” Just last November, he called off his South American tour, citing “extreme exhaustion” less than a week after cancelling two Mexico shows with the same excuse. Out of his last 100 concerts, only 49 of them actually happened. But this trend isn’t new for Moz. Since his time with The Smiths, he’s cancelled, postponed, or shortened a total of 402 gigs, according to WeHeartM. While the first two shows of his current tour were put on ice, he has a scheduled appearance in San Antonio on January 10.

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