Business News Labels & Publishers

Morrissey details “botched” album campaign

By | Published on Thursday 21 August 2014

Morrissey

In the ongoing saga of Morrissey’s record deal with Universal/Capitol’s Harvest imprint, or lack thereof, the singer has now issued a chronicle of his view of the “botched” campaign for his latest album, ‘World Peace Is None Of Your Business’. As ever, his missive appeared on fansite True To You.

There has been some question over the validity of the claims made on True To You that Morrissey’s partnership with Harvest was over. Universal refused to comment on the matter, and previous claims on the site that deals with Penguin Books and Warner/Chappell had ended proved erroneous. Though on this occasion the site, and Morrissey himself, have been far more insistent.

Although the deal with the label initially appeared like “a saintly beacon of light”, he said in his latest statement, the campaign the company came up with to promote the album, involving a series of (now deleted) spoken word videos featuring lyrics from the album, was the beginning of the end.

“I believed that the rich soil of the album had several strong hit singles”, says Moz. “Frayed tempers began when Harvest arranged the ‘spoken word’ films, none of which gave any clue as to what ‘World Peace Is None Of Your Business’ intended to be, or is. The films were OK, but they went nowhere and stayed there”.

The conclusion of his time with Harvest, he says, went down thus: “During the weeks of the album release, the label were minus one single structural idea, and it appeared evident that each member of the team was acting in separate rooms without doors or windows. Mutual mistrust exploded between Harvest and I, and with fashionable pessimism, the label boss yawned and ordered the surface smartness of dropping ‘World Peace Is None Of Your Business’ three weeks after its release. There, now! This would not have happened to the Teletubbies”.

That, I think, is a new claim. Not that Harvest has decided not to option a second album under its licensing deal with Morrissey, but that it has entirely ditched the latest album from its catalogue too.

On the details of this, he is unclear himself, saying: “I might be wrong, but I think ‘World Peace Is None Of Your Business’ will instantly disappear from iTunes and record stores and every download-upload-offload outlet on the planet, because Harvest technically have no right to sell it”.

A quick check of ‘download-upload-offload outlets’ confirms that that album’s instant removal has not happened.

Conceding that “most of the Harvest team are very nice”, Morrissey finished by saying: “I still believe that there’s a label out there with my name on it”.

So, there you go. Any takers?



READ MORE ABOUT: | |