Rock Icon Turned Down Collaborating With Controversial Goth Singer
Nick Cave collaborating with would have been something special back in the 1980s. Even in 2025, it would have been huge, but Cave revealed that a partnership between these two underground rock icons was not meant to be.
Cave first found success in the late 1970s by leading the post-punk band The Birthday Party. In the early 1980s, Cave formed Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, incorporating darker sounds and themes into their music, making them contemporaries of the goth movement of the time. A star of that movement was Morrissey, lyricist and frontman for the gothic rock band The Smiths.
And these two nearly worked together on a song. 'I've never actually met Morrissey, which is probably why I like him,' wrote Cave in a recent edition of his newsletter, The Red Hand Files. Cave acknowledged Morrissey as 'undeniably a complex and divisive figure, someone who takes more than a little pleasure in pissing people off.'
But Cave considers him 'probably the best lyricist of his generation — certainly the strangest, funniest, most sophisticated, and most subtle.'
Nick revealed that through 'a few pleasant email exchanges,' Morrissey asked him to sing on a new song with a 'lengthy and entirely irrelevant Greek bouzouki intro.'
'It also seemed that he didn't want me to actually sing on the song,' wrote Nick, 'but deliver, over the top of the bouzouki, an unnecessarily provocative and slightly silly anti-woke screed he had written.'
'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.'
In recent decades, the 66-year-old Morrissey has drawn ire over political views and statements. In 2019, he wore a pin in support of For Britain, a far-right political party, per The Guardian. He also has a history of inflammatory remarks about race, the #MeToo movement, and more, often leaving fans feeling 'betrayed.'Rock Icon Turned Down Collaborating With Controversial Goth Singer first appeared on Parade on Jun 17, 2025
This story was originally reported by Parade on Jun 17, 2025, where it first appeared.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Axios
20 minutes ago
- Axios
High-end Mediterranean restaurant coming to Mass Ave
An upscale Mediterranean-inspired restaurant and lounge is coming to Mass Ave next month. Driving the news: Dusk will open in early August in the space vacated by World of Beer at the end of 2023, restaurateur Nasco Angelov told Axios. The first floor will be a 135-seat restaurant and patio, which Dusk is expanding beyond the outdoor space World of Beer occupied. The basement will be a weekend-only speakeasy serving craft cocktails and bottle service with space for about 80. Zoom in: Angelov said the menu will be Mediterranean-inspired, drawing from Greek, Lebanese, Moroccan and Italian cuisines. Entrees will be priced between $30-$50, he said. The vibe: Swanky. Think Miami or Tulum, Angelov said, with a big city lounge element. The large marble bar will be backlit and flanked by fire towers built into the tiled wall. DJ booths will be on both floors, and there will be live music on the weekends. Wood panels hang from the ceiling and rich grasscloth covers most of the walls — with the exception of a wall of original 1900 brick that the team cleaned up and restored to honor the building's 125-year history. Plus: Wait until you see the wallpaper in the women's bathroom. It may single-handedly bring back the bathroom selfie. If you go: 409 Mass Ave.
Business Insider
7 hours ago
- Business Insider
Charlize Theron says being a single mom was 'one of the healthiest decisions' she ever made
Charlize Theron, 49, has zero regrets about doing motherhood solo. During an appearance on Wednesday's episode of " Call Her Daddy," Theron spoke about her life as a single mother of two. She adopted her daughters Jackson and August in 2012 and 2015, respectively. The " Mad Max: Fury Road" actor told podcast host Alex Cooper that her parents' relationship was a "cautionary tale" that helped her realize she didn't want to be in one. Theron was 15 when she witnessed her mother fatally shoot her alcoholic father in self-defense. Theron said it was a "layered and complicated" decision driven by two factors: not wanting what her parents had and recognizing that she "did not have the capability of being healthy in a relationship." "Those two things I had to acknowledge when I decided to be a parent, and I think it's probably one of the healthiest decisions I ever made," she said. However, she acknowledges that there's still a stigma being placed on women who choose to be single. "With women, it's always like, something must be wrong with her. She can't keep a man. And it's never part of the discussion of like, 'Wow, she's really living her truth. She's living in her happiness. This is actually a choice that she made,'" Theron said. "I want to look at them, and just be like, 'Do you know how fucking great it is to live exactly how I want to live?' To experience motherhood exactly how I wanted to experience it," she added. Theron says some people might question whether her decision was fair to her children, but in the end, only they can speak to their own experience. "I can only tell you that this is the best way that I know how to be a mother to them," she said. "I love every single day of it. I love that I don't have to share them with somebody. I love that I don't have to run every fucking thing by a guy," she added. Theron said she "broke the cycle" by knowing exactly what she didn't want in a relationship and what she had to offer. "And who I am at the time that I wanted to be a parent was not somebody who should be having kids with another person," Theron said. Theron isn't the only celebrity who has spoken about being a single parent. Lucy Liu told The Cut in 2023 that the decision to have a child in her late 40s via surrogacy — as a single woman — was largely unplanned. "I didn't do a lot of research, I just pulled the trigger," Liu said. In a March interview with Parade, Connie Britton — who adopted her son from Ethiopia as a single woman at 45 — said she always wanted to be a mother. "I knew that I hadn't achieved the kind of partnership that I was looking for to have a spouse and a child together. And so I thought, 'This is the time, I'm going to start the adoption process,'" Britton said.
Elle
13 hours ago
- Elle
Theo James on What He Really Smells Like
Every item on this page was chosen by an ELLE editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy. There are a variety of candles on Etsy that promise to 'smell like' Theo James. They theorize that the star of The White Lotus season 2 could smell like 'Atlantis whisper' or 'hometown blue jeans.' But James really smells like a mixture of sea salt and lemon. I know this because he told me about his love for diving and the ocean (he had just gone swimming in it that morning), and because this is what his new job smells like. James is the face of Dolce & Gabbana's Light Blue fragrance: 'I've actually always liked that fragrance before I had anything to do with it, honestly. It's very timeless and fresh,' he reassured me. The original perfume campaign has been reimagined with James and model Vittoria Ceretti, who cavort in blue Capri waters and white swimsuits just as well as their predecessors, models David Gandy and Bianca Balti. The brand's best-selling fragrance line also now has a new edition called Capri in Love, which is more long-lasting (up to a purported 16 hours) and more intense (thanks to notes like patchouli and black pepper). talked to James about recreating the iconic images, how The White Lotus inspired his newest business venture, and his deep, deep love for the ocean. What would you say is your most memorable experience in the ocean? I've always loved the sea. I was obsessed with sharks as a young child. We used to go to Greece quite a lot, since I have some Greek heritage on my dad's side. I free- and scuba dive as well, which I [grew up] doing with my brothers. But there was one holiday, when I was about 18—some friends and I were being 'louty,' and went down to the beach to swim out to this island. We stripped off our clothes. We got there and were like, 'Yeah, we did it!' There was a bell on this beautiful island. We saw some people over by our clothes and thought they were waving at us, so we started ringing the bell and waving back. Then we got back and realized they had stolen all our things and our wallets, so we had to walk through this town completely naked back to the hotel. How would you translate 'louty' for people who aren't British? It would be like lack of culture. A little dodgy, drinking too much, and failing miserably at most things. Do you have a favorite body of water? There are so many, but I love the Mediterranean. I love the water clarity and marine diversity. I work with a charity called Blue Marine [that works to prevent overfishing], and Dolce & Gabbana decided to support them as well. With my own eyes, I have seen the fish and ecosystem populations plummet in the past 30 years; 90 percent of large fish in the Mediterranean are gone, which is insane. I go swimming with my daughter, and the idea that she sees a very different environment than I did as a child is depressing and scary. Do you have a favorite ocean movie? Jaws is a great movie, but then it led to the vilification of all sharks. I think Spielberg himself said that he regrets that, but it's a beautifully made film. I liked My Octopus Teacher. It was an interesting rumination on our friendship with the ocean and having a connection to the sea. We lose that quite quickly in the world we live in. If you could be any creature in the ocean, what would it be? A sea snail. They have predators, but they lead a relatively laconic life. They get to see everything, both above and below the water. Unfortunately, if you were [to be] a shark, you're going to get fucked. I don't mean literally, but by the fisherman. There's a great book called The Snail and the Whale that my daughter likes, which is about the little connections that creatures have with each other. I also read you're opening an Italian restaurant. What inspired that? It's in a little space close to where I live in Islington that used to be an old shoe shop and has beautiful, big windows. I've always liked the idea of doing something in the food space. I'm a terrible cook, but I love food and wine. A friend of mine who lives down the street already runs his own restaurant in town, and also wanted to do a local thing. He spent two years in Rome. While filming The White Lotus, we had a month shooting [in Rome]. My wife and I also got married in Italy, and I just love it as a country. We've found this really great chef from Milan who loves Roman food, particularly, so it felt like a good symbiosis. There's a lot of shit cacio e pepe, but we feel like we might have cracked cacio e pepe for British Italian audiences. We shall see. Who was the character you envisioned for the Light Blue campaign film? Well, I did a whole backstory. No, I'm kidding. Honestly, I didn't. I felt like I had a good blueprint with the previous version. The David Gandy [campaign] had been so obviously iconic. You get the story from the environment. Vittoria [Ceretti] and I were on a tiny little boat. Gordon [von Steiner] shot on film while the sun was going down, and then we all jumped in the sea after for a swim. The film is very Italian, but it has something quite rich about it. It's this mixture of the sensory explosion of Capri, rocks, sea, food, and lemon—all these things smashed into one. Then, there is a kind of animalism; that's where sex comes into it. It's about the linking of two people in this heightened way. Did you have to train in some way for this? I did not eat much pasta. I'm not a spring chicken, so I vaguely keep in shape. But there's a difference between vaguely keeping your shape and then suddenly wearing tiny white pants in front of 100 people filming you. But that's part of that job. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
