Nick Cave turned down Morrissey collaboration for being “anti-woke”
Nick Cave has revealed that he turned down the chance to collaborate with Morrissey on a song that the singer was producing last year, due to its “anti-woke” sentiments.
Cave made the revelation in the latest letter published to his website on June 16th, in which he responded to a fan question on how he says no to certain projects that come his way.
The singer gave the example of the former Smiths frontman Morrissey, who he described as an “undeniably a complex and divisive figure, someone who takes more than a little pleasure in pissing people off.”
In that vein, he then recalled a series of exchanges the pair had last year, in which Morrissey asked Cave if he would contribute to a song he was creating with a “Greek bouzouki intro.”
Cave explained: “It 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 then 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, Astrid [the fan asking the question], I politely declined. I said no.”
Cave’s confession came shortly after Morrissey was forced to cancel and postpone a series of concerts in both the US and Madrid in the last month, owing to a “severe sinusitis attack”. He completed a UK tour in recent weeks, returning to his native Manchester on June 7th to play the city’s Co-Op Live Arena for the first time.
Meanwhile, Cave is also currently on the road in Europe, where he is next set to play Hamburg in Germany on June 21st and 22nd.
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