Nick Cave says he turned down chance to sing “slightly silly anti-woke screed” on new Morrissey song

Nick Cave has revealed that he turned down an opportunity to collaborate with Morrissey, despite considering him one of “the best lyricists of his generation”.

• READ MORE: Nick Cave: “There’s no metric that says virtuousness makes good art”

The Bad Seeds frontman opened up about the decision to reject a collaboration with Morrissey during a new update on his website, The Red Hand Files. The conversation was sparked after a fan got in touch asking for an update on his “relationship with” the Smiths icon.

“I’ve never actually met Morrissey, which is probably why I like him,” Cave began. “He is undeniably a complex and divisive figure, someone who takes more than a little pleasure in pissing people off.

“As enjoyable as some may find this, it holds little interest for me, but for the fact that Morrissey is probably the best lyricist of his generation – certainly the strangest, funniest, most sophisticated, and most subtle.”

Cave continued: “We had a few pleasant email exchanges last year in which Morrissey asked if I’d sing on a new song he had written. 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,” he added. “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. So, I politely declined. I said no.”

He went on to loop in another question from a fan, which suggested to him that “yearning” may be the ultimate “human condition”.

“Yearning is, indeed, the essence of being human. We live our lives with a sense of incompleteness, of abandonment, a feeling of something lacking,” the ‘Into My Arms’ singer wrote.

“The yearning you speak of is the universal yearning for what is good, beautiful, and true. We exist in this world and ache for this truth, for this beauty, in its seeming absence. Certain music has the ability, at least temporarily, to fill that void, making us feel whole and less abandoned. We feel complete when we listen to music we love, while being guided towards the goodness of things.”

He progressed: “I find that Morrissey’s music, regardless of how jaundiced and disaffected the songs may sometimes seem, does precisely that – ushers us toward what is true.”

As well as praising Morrissey’s songwriting, Cave also went on to share that he had spent his morning listening to rising New York rock group YHWH Nailgun, and praised them as both “completely awesome” and able to “point us to the heavens by going all the way down”.

The band were featured on the NME 100 at the start of the year, listed as one of the top emerging artists to keep an eye on in 2025. They then featured on The Cover in April and told NME about how they capture inspiration from “everything expanding from blurriness, colour, light and dark”.

The latest entry on the Red Hand Files isn’t the only time that Cave has spoken out about Morrissey and the controversy surrounding his personal views.

Back in 2019, Cave took to the platform to encourage people to separate Morrissey‘s political views from his music and allow the songwriter to speak his mind. “Whatever inanities he may postulate, we cannot overlook the fact that he has written a vast and extraordinary catalogue, which has enhanced the lives of his many fans beyond recognition,” he said at the time.

The comments came around the same time that Morrissey claimed that Nigel Farage would make a good Prime Minister, and shared his praise for the far-right For Britain party.

Then, last year, Cave touched upon the subject of separating an artist from their work again, saying that he had chosen to make peace with the talented people who have “disappointed” him – provided that the art they make is “authentic”.

“Our lives are complicated and we all think and do things that are often unfathomable to one another, but we do so because we live our experiences and find our truths in different places,” he shared.

In a 2023 interview with NME, Cave also suggested that some of the most powerful music often comes from the most divisive personalities.

“I don’t particularly care where my art comes from. It doesn’t bother me if someone wears a For Britain badge [Morrissey] or is an anti-semite or whatever and they’re making extraordinary music,” he explained. “It’s not that I agree with their politics, which I don’t, I just think that what they’re putting into the world [with music] is essentially good so it should be encouraged.” 

“It’s no accident that the really great stuff is often made by the most problematic people,” he continued. “I don’t quite understand it, but there’s certainly no metric that says that virtuousness makes good art.”

In other Nick Cave news, last month the songwriter used his Red Hand Files page to share a list of his favourite films, which included Scarface, Bambi and Love Actually. He also kicked off his European solo summer tour last week, beginning the dates with three concerts in Zurich, Switzerland. Visit here for remaining tickets.

As for Morrissey, the singer recently shared the full footage of his New Year’s Eve 2024 concert, which was recorded at the Hollywood Palladium. He is currently in the midst of a summer tour with stops in the UK, Europe and beyond.

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