Thank you for starting this thread. I am looking forward to the new album, immensely.
If it (all things regarded as marketing & promotion) have not happened yet, they are not going to happen. There will be no media blitz. I can only agree with almost everything that has been said here. It should be noted, that unlike Sade, Morrissey is not a total recluse, and that he did do a fair amount of promoting (TV, Radio, Print Media, etc.) for Quarry. There is a difference between not being able (generally, illness) to promote and not being willing (generally, stubbornness) to promote. If he is ill, nothing can be done. If he is not ill, what would be his reasons to refrain from promoting? 1) he is embarrassed about the tour cancellations and does not even want to send out a statement on TTY saying he is OK; 2) he is just happy to be able to put out a new album, sales and charts be damned; and/or 3) he truly wants to see what happens absent much promotion (i.e. figures the digital downloads and spoken word videos were enough). What I mean to say with regard to #3, is that aside from the U.S. tour, which would not make a big impact on U.K. sales and chart position, there never was going to be much promotion for this album. It starts with having no physical singles and b-sides and/or digital singles and b-sides. If the Twitter microblogging account did in fact have 50,000 followers, to cancel that, was clearly a titanic f**k up. Tweet for a couple months, and after the album is released, ditch it. Morrissey has stated that he personally made a mess out of the roll-out for Southpaw Grammar, the sleeve being the least of his self-complaints. You don't have an album called Southpaw Something, and then put out a single called "Boxers" in January 1995, only to have the album drop in August 1995 and undermine the entire boxing theme, diluting the album. You also don't put out an "album" with 8 songs. I would say "it's [his] life to ruin [his] own way" if it was not for the fact that "this story is old, I know, but it goes on."
