Momus
Currie in 2005
Born	Nicholas John Currie[1] (1960-02-11)11 February 1960 (age 66) Paisley,Renfrewshire, Scotland
Other names	Momus
Occupations	Songwriter author journalist
Years active	1981–present
Musical career
Genres	Indie pop avant-pop electronic
Labels	él Creation Richmond Cherry Red Analog Baroque
Musical artist
Website	imomus.com

Nicholas John Currie (born 11 February 1960), more popularly known under theartist nameMomus (after theGreek god of mockery), is a Scottish musician and writer.

For over forty years he has been releasing albums on labels in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan. In his lyrics and his other writing he makes use ofcontinental philosophy, and has built up a personal world he says is "dominated by values like diversity,orientalism, and a respect for otherness".^[2]

Nicholas Currie's musical career began in 1981, with his bandThe Happy Family, featuring ex-members ofJosef K, who made a single and a concept albumThe Man on Your Street: Songs of the Dictator Hall on hip UK indie label 4AD.^[3][4]

In 1986 Momus recorded an E.P. of his translations of Jacques Brel songs, "Nicky", and wrote a lengthy article on Brel for theNew Statesman.^[5] On 22 October 2009 he performed at the Barbican alongside fellow Brel enthusiastsMarc Almond andCamille O'Sullivan at a celebration of Brel's careerCarousel: The Songs of Jacques Brel.^[6]

His albumDon't Stop The Night included the single, "The Hairstyle of the Devil", which peaked at No. 94 in theUK Singles Chart in May 1989,^[7] and was also a local hit at San Francisco'sKITS Live 105 radio station.^[8]

Momus' 1980s albums were a great influence onJarvis Cocker, who wrote to Currie asking him to produce futurePulp albums.^[9][10] Those same albums were a huge influence onBrett Anderson,^[11] Currie's championing ofSuede following his friendship with Anderson and particularly rhythm guitar playerJustine Frischmann got them early attention, before she left to formElastica. Momus also features inBad Vibes the memoir ofLuke Haines's whom Currie dubbed 'The Hitler of Britpop'.^[12][13]

In the early 1990s, Momus struck up a working relationship with a number of J-Pop stars.^[14] A cult audience for Momus and the indie labels he had released his early records on - particularly el records - led to the formation community of musicians inShibuya,Tokyo, and the founding of Cru-el records, and the emergence ofShibuya-kei artists such asCornelius and The Poison Girlfriend - who performed Momus songs. Currie began writing specifically for nOrikO (aka the Poison Girlfriend) andKahimi Karie.^[15] In 1995 Kahimi Karie's Momus-penned song "Good Morning World" went to number one and was featured in a heavily syndicated advert, giving Currie his first real hit and financial stability for the first time.^{[citation needed]}

Momus has continued to release music regularly. His 2020 album,Vivid, which documented theCOVID-19 pandemic and Momus' own suspected case of the virus, earned some coverage in the mainstream media.^[16]

He has been the subject of a number of documentaries including Hannu Puttonen'sMan of Letters.^[17]

Momus has published a book of lyrics,^[18] and has written texts or introductions for several books on art and culture.^{[citation needed]}

Momus has published six novels.^[19]The Book of Jokes andThe Book of Scotlands received positive reviews in theLA Times^[20] and theGuardian.^[15]The Book of Scotlands (Sternberg Press) was shortlisted for the Scottish Arts Council's First Book prize. He publishedThe Book of Japans in 2011, also on Sternberg Press,^[21] andUnAmerica^[22] in 2014, as well as several ebooks.

2020 saw the publication ofNiche: a memoir in pastiche in which Momus tells the story of his creative life through fictional eyewitness statements from famous historic figures.^[23]

Momus said in 1991 that "In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen people", which has evolved into ameme, "On the web, everyone will be famous to fifteen people".^[24] The quip parodiesAndy Warhol's famous prediction that,"In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes".

From 15 January 2004 to 10 February 2010, Momus wrote a blog on theLiveJournal platform calledClick Opera.^[25] Initially a collection of links,Click Opera evolved to become a substantial daily cultural essay. After announcing it unexpectedly in an interview with magazine calledChronic'art, Momus ended the blog on his fiftieth birthday because it had become too time-consuming and because Livejournal was being wound down.^[26] It is cited a high point of the blogging era^[27] and led to Momus becoming a columnist with theNew York Times andWired.^[26]

Since 2016, Momus has been releasing a series of improvised lectures and travel vlogs calledOpen University.^[28][29]

In 1991 following the release of the albumHippopotamomus Momus was threatened with legal action by theMichelin tyre company for his song "Michelin Man" which imagined the company'sBibendum mascot as a metaphor for hypersexual rubber fetishism.^[30][31] Remaining copies of the album were destroyed, the track was withdrawn from subsequent pressings of the album, and the album's cover was amended to remove a hippo-headed pastiche of the Michelin Man character. The lyrics to the track were included in the lyric bookLusts of a Moron under the amended title "Made of Rubber". The 2018 box setRecreate restored both the track and title, with the accompanying booklet byAnthony ReynoldsSons of Pioneers, detailing the legal wrangle but not explaining the track's reinstatement.^[30]

In 1998, Momus was sued by the composer/musicianWendy Carlos for $22 million^[31] for his song "Walter Carlos" (from the albumThe Little Red Songbook, released that year), which postulated that the post–Gender-affirming surgery Wendy could travel back in time to marry her pre-surgery self. The case was settled out of court, with Momus agreeing to remove the song from subsequent editions of the CD and owing $30,000 in legal fees.^[32] Momus' following albumStars Forever consisted of commissioned biographical sketches in the style of the Wendy Carlos song, conceived as a crowdfunding exercise to pay Currie's legal fees.^[33][34]

Currie attendedboarding school at theEdinburgh Academy while his father taught English for theBritish Council inAthens.^[14]

Since 1984 Momus has lived in London, Paris, Tokyo, New York, Berlin and Osaka.^[14][35] He currently splits his time between Berlin and Paris.^[36] He is anatheist.^[37]

In 1994, at the age of 34, he married his 17-year-old girlfriend.^[38] She was 14 when they first corresponded byfan mail^[39][40]. They separated in 1997 and divorced amicably in 1999.^[41][42]

In December 1997, he contractedacanthamoeba keratitis in his right eye due to a contact lens mishap sustained while on holiday inGreece, causing loss of vision on that side.^[43][44] Although his sight subsequently improved following surgery,^[45] he has suffered lingering effects from the infection since, causing him to often be photographed in aneyepatch, wearing dark glasses, or squinting.

His cousin is musicianJustin Currie, the lead singer and songwriter ofDel Amitri.^[46] His brother-in-law isIrvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting, following Welsh's marriage to his sister, actress Emma Currie, in 2022.^[47][48]

• Momus' Official Site
• Momus atIMDb 

• 1960 births
• Living people
• Creation Records artists
• Folktronica musicians
• Writers from Paisley, Renfrewshire
• Alumni of the University of Aberdeen
• Scottish atheists
• Shibuya-kei musicians
• Avant-pop musicians
• Scottish bloggers
• Scottish expatriates in Germany
• Scottish expatriates in Japan
• Scottish male songwriters
• Journalists from Paisley, Renfrewshire
• Musicians from Paisley, Renfrewshire
• Cherry Red Records artists
• Eyepatch wearers
• People educated at Edinburgh Academy
• People with visual impairments

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