Great thread - I'm really interested in what's been said over the past few pages.
I want to jump in with something more specific, which I hope won't open, at this point, any cans of worms (the "incident" phase of this seems to be over, so I feel a bit safer). Bottom line, I think the window's about to close on any talk, anywhere, of Morrissey and Young as a unit and I want to get these thoughts out somehow.
The thing about the two of them was that they had an uncomfortable number of things in common, and just the right kind of differences - and I suspect that was part of the initial appeal, as well as related to their split (whose nature, however, I now strongly feel was related to the pattern of both of their lives - and not so much to anything said or unsaid).
-Moz' trademark phrase is "I am human and I need to be loved, just like everybody else does" - Kristeen's, as repeated literally twice in her work and less-directly elsewhere, is "You don't know what you are dealing with." These lines are really sides of the same coin, I think; they're both admonishments that the obvious signs (which Young even lists for us: "clenched fists, introverted stance, inappropriately loud and mechanical, tense laugh..." - and we can add apparent involvement with a successful record producer, though this line precedes him) should not always be read with an eye to immediate dismissal - that the singer may well be a type, and an obvious type, but there's always more.
Only while Morrissey cajoles, Young threatens; he pleads for love, while she aggressively informs the listener that, no matter how clear the case may seem, he is "stupidly mistaken." And yet I believe both of them wish to be loved; it's just that Young has an intense urge to make sure everyone is completely informed before they make their decision.
-Both of them are iconoclasts and contrarians. I've read about Kristeen's early career in St. Louis, when she was also a figure of mockery, but this time because she was seen as a resistor to the final throes of grunge - playing flannel-filled venues in a minidress made of bread bags (and playing a synth in 1997). This is Linder all over again, and young Moz filling the Hacienda with flowers - just in a less-cute position, Dada in the Age of Sincerity.
(I'm less certain as to what her role is today, when the pop-cultural trend is slightly more in her camp - perhaps it's more about being raggedy.)
Anyway, when you have the iconoclastic instinct, no matter how great your respect and how complete your disinterest in toppling this particular icon and how small (and perhaps even untargeted) the eventual manifestation, its chances of getting you into trouble with Morrissey approach one.
-Especially when one's iconoclastic instincts often run in the specific direction of pointed ungratefulness - Young has never been shy about shooting her allies, provided their intentions do not lead to a positive end (and might be construed as selfish). Which, again, is a similarity more than anything else. "Frankly Mr. Shankly" is much like "You Ruined Everything," though (presumably) with less sex.
This is not to say that she's never written a kind song, or even a kind song (apparently) about the same people she assaults elsewhere; it's just that she doesn't seem terribly good at disguising either delight or frustration.
-They are both, at root, artists who combine the brilliant with the painful- Kristeen applying a four-octave range to baby-voiced rants about robots and lying; Moz with his bathos, his animal sounds and his kegs. This is part of the reason I still respect them both immensely.
