Morrissey at the 3Arena Review: A Gael Day Out

After almost two long years since his last appearance in Dublin, Morrissey returned to his parents’ home city to perform at the 3 Arena on Saturday, 31st May 2025.

As expected with a Morrissey gig, he had crews of fans from all around the world follow him to Dublin. One crew in particular decided to camp outside the 3 Arena for a non-sold-out show (sorry Morrissey) just to secure places at the front of the crowd. Obviously, nobody researched the venue as if they did, they would have found out how wide of a venue the 3 Arena is and thus, how easy it is to get to the front.

I’m not sure what’s worse, this or when Morrissey played Vicar Street in 2023, and after he finished his performance, he threw a piece of his clothing into the crowd, which several men latched onto. A security guard had to get involved, sourcing scissors to cut the fabric into tiny pieces for these Disney-adults. 

Prior to entering the 3 Arena, Pangur Bán agus mise visited the National Museum to check out the new exhibition titled “Words on the Wave: Ireland and St. Gallen in Early Medieval Europe”.

Lanklet Dev and Pangur Bán on the day

As part of the exhibition, over the past academic year, students from Ireland and Switzerland teamed up to create artwork inspired by medieval manuscripts. In the images below, we can see the students chose some rather eyebrow-raising symbolism:

Feeling rather famished after absorbing so much historical knowledge (and also because Pangur Bán was 45 minutes late), we headed to [redacted] where we ate and drank like Kings, devouring le beef cheek for our main course in between a starter of succulent stouts followed by a dessert of… succulent stouts.

We then met up with @GaelOgDathuil, and after digesting a few more starters/desserts, off we went to see Morrissey. Upon entering, we caught the end of the support act, Brigitte Calls Me Baby, who were quite good and are clearly inspired by Morrissey, going by the enormous quiff on their lead singer.

While awaiting the main act to appear, we decided to acquire some merch as seen below: (can you guess which one is me?)

It was around 9 pm when Morrissey graced us with his presence, starting his set with The Smiths classic “Hand in Glove”. He went on to play a further three The Smiths songs including “I Know It’s Over” for the chuds, while the rest of his set was a mix of some of his most listened to solo work including crowd pleaser “Irish Blood, English Heart”, plus some of his yet to be released music.

As far as I can remember (although the double voddy and cokes don’t allow me to remember too well) Morrissey didn’t say anything too controversial, unlike his gig in Vicar Street, where he took aim at RTÉ and advised his loyal fans to throw der tellies ou’ de windah!

I suppose it can be refreshing to attend a concert and not be subjected to any political takes, regardless of whether or not you agree with them.