Razorlight Take to the Tabloids

Posted on Jan 30th 2009 2:00PM by Jolie Lash
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Earlier this month it was announced that UK rockers Razorlight were heading Stateside on a mission to break America with their third album, 'Slipaway Fires.' While newspapers, tabloids and the music press across the Brit band's homeland jumped on what appeared to be the story of another UK act setting off to conquer America, frontman Johnny Borrell painted a different picture.

"The thing is, when you're in a band, you're not really making plans," Borrell told Spinner during a recent stop at Sundance. "I do like coming to America a lot. This is the birthplace of rock 'n' roll, and that's a great feeling."

Meanwhile, the band -- Borrell, drummer Andy Burrows, bassist Carl Dalemo and guitarist Bjorn Agren -- recently signed to Mercury, which will release Razorlight's third album, on March 10.

The band will embark on a brief U.S. tour next month, ahead of the release, and the first since their self-funded Stateside jaunt of 2007. Though the last tour actually cost the band money from their own pockets, Borrell is still proud of the choice they made.

"I think you've got to really stress that the important thing is the music that you're making is it's own reward," he says. "I don't want to give you the impression that ... you'd only come over if you felt you were going to sell X amount of records. It's kind of irrelevant."

As for the music, while Borrell himself has become fodder for the UK tabloids thanks to his fame and the host of famous faces he is often spotted out with, it was actually a pal who inspired another observational song on 'Slipaway Fires' -- 'Tabloid Lover.'

"'Tabloid Lover' was just about a friend of mine and I caught him doing that -- scrapbooking his own life," Borrell says. "He was a very famous guy and we were out on a bender for sort of three days. We're sitting there in a bar and I saw him tearing a little article out -- it was like photos of us out on the piss -- and sticking it in his pocket for later. I couldn't believe it, and I ran home and wrote 'Tabloid Lover.'"