By singing, by following the paths of his idols David Johansen and Cilla Black and Billy Fury, Morrissey chose a much different path than Osborne to fulfilling this obligation. Morrissey is very clear about how deliberate this decision was. In 1985, an interviewer pressed him on the legitimacy of a singer's right to make political statements. Morrissey didn't allow the reporter to even complete the question before he burst out in sincerity: "I feel that, if popular singers don't say these things, who does? We can't have any faith in playwrights any more, we can't have any faith in filmstars, young people don't care about those things, they're dying out." It's telling that Morrissey even suggested looking to playwrights in the 1980s, a decade that saw more VCRs sold than theater tickets. But the message is definite: the stages for voicing dissent are endangered, and pop songs could very well be the last stand.
Morrissey had a second explanation for the value of the pop song. In 1984, he explained the unique platform that music gives to a population largely passed over: "To me, popular music is still the voice of the working class... it does really seem like the one sole opportunity for someone from a working-class background to step forward and have their say. It's really the last refuge for articulate but penniless humans." And Morrissey, constantly self-identified as penniless and so clearly articulate, seemingly had no choice but to sing, to have his own say.
This opportunity to step forward from a working class background is something Morrissey could share with only a few of his large host of idols. As the son of a surgeon and a poet, Wilde never felt the muffling oppression of the poor. Sandie Shaw, employed by the Dagenham Ford auto plant when she began her recording career, was closer to the type of working class truth-teller that Morrissey imaged, but Shelagh Delaney is the ideal model. In the Saturday Evening Post photo used for the sleeve of Louder Than Bombs, Delaney's character is plainly visible. Resting her head upon her hand, the playwright carelessly holds a cigarette between her fingers and stares directly into the camera. In the original photo, a ragged row of clotheslines stretches out behind her. On the LP's jacket, the drying laundry frames the track listing on the back cover. The gray Manchester sky, the candid, underwhelmed cast to Delaney's expression, and the domestic drudgery of wet laundry fully conjures the impression of Delaney as working class playwright.
A large part of the press frenzy that accompanied A Taste of Honey revolved around Delaney's origins. There's an obvious glee to reports of the young woman "wolfing down a meal of sausage, cabbage, beetroot and weak tea" (Daily Mail) as if she were a construction worker, and writers clung to the rumor that she started smoking at the age of six. This portrait of the working class playwright was both celebrated and derided, depending on the critic's political stance. Regardless of these differing opinions, every critic seemed to agree that Delaney's roots have everything to do with her work, and that these roots are the force that drives her to write such truths.
But Osborne's roots are the same, and again the question presents itself, why Delaney? Why not Osborne? One of the more disapproving reviews of A Taste of Honey said of Delaney, "if there is anything worse than an Angry Young Man it's an Angry Young Woman," reminding readers of one of the key distinctions between the two playwrights: gender. Joan Littlewood, who produced the original staging of A Taste of Honey, responded to this slight by describing Delaney as "the antithesis of London's Angry Young Men. She knows what she is angry about," suggesting an even stronger distinction.