Here's a link and quote in an article from the Times (October 1, 1999) in the UK which mentions Morrissey and his lyrical strength.

...Far from all this self-serving bombast, the lyrics most worthy of being called poetry are the least self-consciously poetic; the ones where the writer steps outside the maelstrom of his own adolescent ego and imagines what another might feel like - Jimmy Webb's Wichita Lineman, for instance, or Elvis Costello's Shipbuilding, where a marriage and the Falklands war respectively are described in relation to the working routine of an ordinary man.

Pop lyricism boasts hardly anyone - maybe Morrissey or Jarvis Cocker - comparable to Simon Armitage, Paul Farley, Sophie Hannah or Ian Macmillan. These are poets who use vernacular easily and write engagingly about life as most of us live it. (That said, Macmillan points to the adolescent nature of much adult verse: "I judge a lot of amateur poetry competitions and the entries fall into one of four types: the Hospital Visit, the Nature Poem, the Princess Diana poem and the I Need Sex Now poem.")