Morrissey says new album ‘Bonfire of Teenagers’ is “the modern version of The Smiths’ ‘The Queen is Dead’”

nme.com:

Morrissey has spoken about his unreleased album ‘Bonfire Of Teenagers’ and why it still hasn’t seen the light of day, describing the record as “the modern version” of The Smiths‘ 1986 album ‘The Queen is Dead’.‘Bonfire Of Teenagers’ was recorded between 2020 and 2021 and had been announced for a 2023 release on Capitol, but still hasn’t been released owing to his departure from the label in 2022.

Earlier this year, he said he bought back the rights back to that record, as well as his 2014 album ‘World Peace Is None Of Your Business’.Morrissey claimed in September in an interview with The Telegraph that he had been “gagged” over the release of the album, blaming what he called “Idiot Culture” for the extensive delays.“There is no arts media anymore in England, therefore there’s no one to whom I can sit and talk about this,” he claimed. “The fact is, genuine artists in England are now being held hostage by people who object to any manner of alternative opinion.”The artist gave a rare interview with the writer Fiona Dodwell on Medium where he went into more detail about why ‘Bonfire Of Teenagers’ still hasn’t come out.“There are two albums, as you know,” he said, the other being ‘Without Music, The World Dies’. “The second one was re-recorded in France in late 2023, and given a new title.

We scrapped half of the tracks and we recorded six new ones, and so it is not the album from the beginning of 2023.”Morrissey then said: “Labels say that they are both fantastic high-quality pop albums but they say that they can’t release them because they don’t want the wrath of The Guardian making their lives hell.

The harassment campaign against me by The Guardian is worldwide knowledge now, and it is effective in the sense that labels.