Johnny Marr The Age Of Everything: The Smiths guitarist releases his fifth album with an 81 Metacritic score, proving he’s moved far beyond the weight of his legacy.
Johnny Marr’s “The Age of Everything” just dropped, and the critical response lands at 81 on Metacritic, a respectable score that signals something deeper than typical legacy artist nostalgia. This is Marr’s fifth solo record, and by this point in any career, you’d expect the arc to flatten or the story to become about context rather than ambition. Instead, the album reads as his most assured work in years, a statement that moves beyond the inevitable shadow of The Smiths and into something genuinely present-tense.
What distinguishes this record from Marr’s previous solo outings isn’t a pivot toward reinvention for its own sake. Rather, it’s the confidence of someone who stopped trying to prove anything about his past and started writing from a place of genuine creative momentum. The Smiths dissolved decades ago, but Marr has spent his solo career rebuilding something on entirely different terms. By the time you reach album five, the narrative shifts from “where does this fit in the canon” to “what is he actually doing right now.” That’s the threshold “The Age of Everything” crosses.
By the time you reach album five, the narrative shifts from “where does this fit in the canon” to “what is he actually doing right now.” Johnny Marr’s ‘The Age of Everything’ is exactly that threshold moment, where a musician in his late fifties makes precisely the album he wants to make, and lands it without compromise or desperation.
