Nick Cave turned down Morrissey collab over ‘silly anti-woke screed’

Australian singer-songwriter called the former Smiths frontman ‘probably the best lyricist of his generation’

Nick Cave has revealed he turned down the chance to appear on a Morrissey song after the former Smiths frontman asked him to deliver a “an unnecessarily provocative and slightly silly anti-woke screed.”

Morrissey, 66, had been expected to put out a new solo album, Bonfire of Teenagers, last year but it remains unreleased. The singer-songwriter has claimed this is due to record label concerns over the title track, which is about the 2017 terror attack at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester that killed 22 people.

Writing in his newsletter The Red Hand Files, Cave, 67, said that the pair have never actually met but “had a few pleasant email exchanges last year in which Morrissey asked if I’d sing on a new song he had written.”

Cave continued: “I would have been happy to do so, however, while the song he sent was quite lovely, it began with a lengthy and entirely irrelevant Greek bouzouki intro.

“It also seemed that he didn’t want me to actually sing on the song, but deliver, over the top of the bouzouki, an unnecessarily provocative and slightly silly anti-woke screed he had written.

Nick Cave (left) turned down a collaboration with Morrissey (Getty)

“Although I suppose I agreed with the sentiment on some level, it just wasn’t my thing. I try to keep politics, cultural or otherwise, out of the music I am involved with. I find that it has a diminishing effect and is antithetical to whatever it is I am trying to achieve.”

Cave explained that he subsequently turned down the opportunity to appear on the song, but was otherwise full of praise for Morrissey, who he called “probably the best lyricist of his generation – certainly the strangest, funniest, most sophisticated, and most subtle.”

Cave also described Morrissey as “undeniably a complex and divisive figure, someone who takes more than a little pleasure in pissing people off.”

He added: “As enjoyable as some may find this, it holds little interest for me.”

Last December, Morrissey claimed that he had initially planned to release his new album through Capitol Records, but they parted ways in December 2022.

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He told The Telegraph that he bought the rights to the album back in April 2024, but alleged that subsequently “every major label in London has refused [it] whilst also admitting that it is a masterpiece.”

In another edition of Cave’s newsletter, published last month, he shared a hilarious anecdote about a particularly memorable time he was confused for the actor Nicolas Cage.