Nick Cave has shared that he turned down a collaboration with Morrissey in 2024 because the former Smiths frontman wanted Cave to sing “an unnecessarily provocative and slightly silly anti-woke screed”.

On his Red Hand Files website, Cave replied to a fan asking if he had ever encountered Morrissey.

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

Despite never having met the former Smiths member in person, Cave recalled a "few pleasant email exchanges" he had with Morrissey in 2024.

In his emails, Morrissey asked Cave to perform on a new song he had written. Cave said he would have been happy to collaborate with Morrissey but ultimately declined due to an overly political text.

"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," explained Cave.

What exactly Morrissey wanted Cave to say was not specified in Cave's blog post.

The Bad Seeds' member said that "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," Cave summed up.

Morrissey's last album, I Am Not a Dog on a Chain, was released via BMG in 2020. His record Bonfire of Teenagers was set to be released in 2023 but has so far been shelved due to Morrissey's controversial statements in the last few years.

In an interview with The Telegraph in 2024, the Smiths' singer claims that no major London record label would release Bonfire of Teenagers as a result of ‘Idiot Culture’.