Momus

Nick Currie (born 11 February 1960 in Paisley, Scotland), more popularly known under the artist name Momus (after the Greek god of mockery), is a songwriter, blogger and former journalist for Wired. Most of his songs are self-referential and many could be classified as postmodern.
For more than twenty five years he has been releasing, to marginal commercial and critical success, albums on labels in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan. In his lyrics and his other writing he makes seemingly random use of decontextualized pieces of continental (mostly French) philosophy, and has built up a personal world he says is «dominated by values like diversity, orientalism, and a respect for otherness.» He is fascinated by identity, Japan, Rome, the avant-garde, time travel and sex.

Momus began by recording post-punk material with various ex-members of Josef K in a group called The Happy Family in the early ’80s, and was associated with the musicians around Postcard Records (although he never recorded for that label). His debut solo album Circus Maximus (1986, él Records) explored biblical themes in dark, almost Gothic acoustic style, and his debt to the influence of Gallic pop was clear from a subsequent, sardonically self-referencing cover of Jacques Brel’s «Jacky» and portraits of himself in the style of early 60s Serge Gainsbourg.
In 1987, by which time he lived in London, he signed to Creation Records, and began to record the hyper-literate, quirky pop songs for which he is best known. A trio of albums, The Poison Boyfriend, Tender Pervert and Don’t Stop The Night blended accessible dance-pop with such heavy lyrical themes as paedophilia, necrophilia and adultery. The latter album almost yielded a hit in the UK with «The Hairstyle of the Devil». Subsequent albums on Creation included Hippopotamomus, a scatological tribute to Gainsbourg, as Momus continued to push boundaries of acceptability within accessible pop structures. By 1994, however, when Creation signed Oasis, his music started to sound out of place on the newer, more ‘laddish’ and commercial sounds Creation then started to produce, and he moved to Paris and signed to Cherry Red records. Since then he has lived in various countries and, whilst less popular in Britain, has had a reasonable level of commercial success in a number of countries, especially Japan, where he wrote and produced records for successful singer Kahimi Karie, including the hit single «Good Morning World».
He has been sued twice. The first time was from Michelin UK, for the song «Michelin Man», which compared the mascot to a blow-up doll, on Hippopotamomus (1991). He was also sued by Wendy Carlos for the song «Walter Carlos» (which postulated that the post-sexual reassignment surgery Wendy could travel back in time to marry her pre-surgery self, Walter) on The Little Red Songbook (1998). The case was settled out of court for a fee of $30,000, withdrawal of the song, agreement not to use Carlos’s name for any purpose whatsoever and payment of damages and attorney’s fees to Carlos. To pay off the debt, Momus wrote thirty songs, one about each person or group who commissioned a song at the price of $1,000, compiling Stars Forever (1999). Patrons included artist Jeff Koons, Japanese musician Cornelius, and three-year-old animator/superhero Noah Brill. Stars Forever also features the winners of a karaoke contest started on The Little Red Songbook (1998).