Back To The Old House: Morrissey signs again to Warners subsidiary Sire

Sire Records are the latest label to take a punt and see if they can establish a working relationship with Morrissey.

Last week, the ex-Smith’s Instagram page shared a post with the Sire logo and subsequently, Rolling Stone has confirmed that he has signed to the label.

There’s no news on when fans can expect new music, or whether Sire will release the two albums the singer has recorded which are as yet unreleased, much to Morrissey’s chagrin.

The first of these, Bonfire Of Teenagers, was set to include contributions from Miley Cyrus, Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Iggy Pop. However, Cyrus asked for her feature to be deleted and BMG eventually dropped him.

Then the singer signed to Capitol, before that label got cold feet without releasing the album. Though neither Capitol or BMG confirmed it as such, but it was widely rumoured that Morrissey’s support for far right groups such as For Britain and suggesting that Nigel Farage “would make a good Prime Minister", was a key factor in their decision to terminate their relationship with him, as it was for Cyrus.

Morrissey claimed that he had been “gagged” by this, before claiming “Every major label in London has refused Bonfire Of Teenagers whilst also admitting that it is a masterpiece.”

Since the debacle with his alleged ‘masterpiece’, the singer has recorded another album, You’re Right, It’s Time, reputedly in France with producer Joe Chiccarelli.

One wonders how long it will be before the relationship between Sire and Morrissey breaks down? Going all the way back to the days of Rough Trade and The Smiths, he has rarely had a good word to say about record companies of any size, shape or description. As a solo artist he’s released records through EMI, RCA, Island, Sanctuary, Decca, Lost Highway, Harvest, Capitol, BMG and earlier in his career (and during the Smiths career)... Sire.

As readers of the singer’s memoir, Autobiography, may recall, he wasn’t that enamoured with Sire back in the day, describing the label as “eternally absent” and disinterested in the Smiths: “Even selling 40,000 tickets in California doesn’t budge Sire’s constipation, and the label remains clueless as to what exactly the Smiths were,” he wrote, before calling a video the label made for How Soon Is Now as “predictably vomit-inducing.”