Paul Morley
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Paul Morley (born March 26, 1957 in Stockport, Cheshire) is an English music journalist, who wrote for the New Musical Express from 1977 to 1983, during one of its most successful and relatively notorious periods, and has since written for a wide range of publications.
He was a co-founder, with Trevor Horn, of ZTT Records, and The Art of Noise. Although known for a somewhat dour public persona, Morley first came to wider attention with a brief appearance in the video for ABC's "The Look of Love". Morley is also credited with steering the marketing and promotion of the early success of Frankie Goes To Hollywood.
He was the first presenter of BBC2's The Late Show, and has appeared as a music pundit on a number of other programmes. For the shortlived Channel 4 arts strand Without Walls he wrote and presented a documentary on boredom.
He is the author of Words and Music: the history of pop in the shape of a city The book is an authoritative, scholarly and highly idiosyncratic journey through the history of pop; it seeks to trace the connection between Alvin Lucier's experimental audio recording, "I am sitting in a room" and Kylie Minogue's "Can't get you out of my head". A synthetic Kylie features as the central character of the book. The book was later turned into the hour-long epic musical track "Raiding the 20th Century" by DJ Food, which features Morley reading from his book and speculating on the cultural significance of the mashup amidst the sounds of those very mashups. His other books include Ask: The Chatter of Pop (a collection of his music journalism) and Nothing, a biographical book reflecting on his father's suicide and that of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis.
Morley has teamed up with The Auteurs' James Banbury to form the band Infantjoy and in 2005 released an Album entitled 'Where The Night Goes' on Sony BMG. A new album, With, featuring collaborations with Tunng, Isan and Populous amongst others, is released in October 2006 on Morley and Banbury's own label ServiceAV.
[edit] References
- Paul Morley: Words and Music: a history of pop in the shape of a city. Bloomsbury, 2003. ISBN 0-7475-5778-0
