World Peace Is None of Your Business was recorded La Fabrique in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in France during February 2014 in a studio where Nick Cave had also worked. The album's cover features an image of Morrissey crouching down and offering a pen to a chocolate Labrador.
Promotion
The album's lead single, "World Peace Is None of Your Business", was released on 13 May 2014, alongside an accompanying music video featuring Nancy Sinatra next to Morrissey performing the song in spoken word. On 20 May a second spoken word video was then released for the album's second single, "Istanbul". Purchasers who pre-ordered the album received a free mp3 download of the song. On 3 June the digital download and spoken word video for the third single, "Earth Is the Loneliest Planet", was made available. The video features Pamela Anderson. On 17 June the studio version and spoken word video of "The Bullfighter Dies", the fourth single, was put on Morrissey's official YouTube channel. The spoken word video had previously leaked online on 18 May. In addition to the four singles, "Kick the Bride Down the Aisle" debuted live prior to the album's official release. On 7 July 2014 a four-track 10" vinyl EP was released, featuring the four singles, for Record Store Day.
Release
World Peace Is None of Your Business was released on 15 July 2014 by record label Harvest. A Deluxe Edition was also released with more material. Of these other tracks, "Scandinavia" had been played live many times in 2011 and 2012, and also performed as part of the Studio in Session bonus feature on the 25Live DVD and Blu-ray release. "Art-hounds" had been played live only once, on 7 August 2011. The four spoken word videos are available in audio form on a Japanese deluxe version, as well as the other 18 tracks.
Harvest Records controversy
On 20 August 2014 Morrissey announced that, due to disagreements with his record label Harvest, the album would be dropped only three weeks after its release. On 8 January 2015, Morrissey advised fans that a 45 of "The Bullfighter Dies" was scheduled for a global release by Harvest, but was scrapped by Steve Barnett at the last minute. The b-side was to be the original French mix of the song "One of Our Own". Further vinyl singles, including "Istanbul", "Kiss Me A Lot" and "Neal Cassady Drops Dead" were to include other French mixes of several songs as their b-sides: "Scandinavia", "Smiler With Knife" and "Art-hounds", and were available to pre-order from amazon.fr. However, these were also presumably scrapped However, the album was still officially available for digital download via online music stores.
Reception
The album was generally well received by critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews and ratings from mainstream critics, the album has received a metascore of 70, based on 36 reviews. In political magazineNational Review and in a review titled "World Summit" Armond White wrote that "Morrissey challenges pop and political orthodoxies." Alexis Petridis concluded a four of five star review for The Guardian with "Not as great as you might have hoped, but far better than you might have feared, a little more reliant on others than a man who ended his Autobiography claiming that "I have never had anything in my life that I did not make for myself" might care to admit, World Peace Is None of Your Business may be as good as it gets at this stage in his career, which is good enough." In a more mixed review for Clash Magazine Benji Taylor wrote "though the bleakly beautiful is still there, the flashes are sporadic." In Truck & Driver's regular music reviews, Shaun Connors concluded one of five star assessment with "Lyrically, with his self-absorbed anti-views so all-prevalent in the alternative universe Morrissey inhabits, is it any surprise this collection of rants to music covers such cheerful events as a bullfighter dying and a student’s suicide? Maybe the latter listened to this album once too often…"
