His last two albums sold abysmally? Hmm, not sure about that one, Amy!
ROTT sold about 200,000 in the UK making it probably his 3rd best selling 'solo' album to date.
YOR sold around 90,000 which is a lot fewer but still considerably more than Maladjusted, Your Arsenal, Kill Uncle and Southpaw Grammar, making it a medium selling Moz album.
The problem is partly the recent sales trajectory rather than the actual sales themselves, going from 400,000 YATQ to 90,000 for YOR. Morrissey has become heavily dependent on Radio 2 for airplay. If they decide they don't like the lead-off single for the next album, and no-one else plays it, it could potentially sell as few as 50,000, and that's what's probably putting record companies off.
All he needs is two great songs which are released as singles, and he could easily hit 200,000 again, if not more, which would be enough to attract a decent deal.
If I was thinking of making Morrissey an offer, I'd wanna know that he a) had (or potentially had) two great songs (in demo form, or whatever) and b) would take record company advice on which singles to release. Releasing 'Something is Squeezing' was a very poor decision, as the last 45 seconds were just grating (to the casual radio listener), whereas 'Carol' would have been a relatively huge radio hit.
Maurice
PS Thanks for earlier explanation of your 20 year old's knowledge of all things Smiths related! I just had the feeling that you had actually lived through the prime-time Smiths/early Moz era given your views on his current output (which I partly share). Most of the younger fans aren't quite so ... disappointed!