If Johnny Borrell had his way, Razorlight would never have recorded their biggest hit. In 2005, Borrell and the band’s newest recruit, drummer Andy Burrows, had been working on a song that was then called “Lost in America”, a Billy Joel-inspired track they’d started writing on tour in Ohio. Borrell liked it, but felt the rhythm wasn’t quite Razorlight.
So he had an idea. “I was a little ahead of myself. I thought, ‘We’ll give it to some artist, they can have a hit with it, and then years later they’ll find out that we’ve written it, and it’ll be super cool.’” Except there were no takers. “We gave it to the publishers, and they found nobody.”
Instead, the demo – which has just been given a special release to celebrate its 20th anniversary – lay dormant for months while Razorlight rode the success of their 2004 debut album, , and its hits like “Golden Touch” and “Somewhere Else”. Then one day in the studio, Borrell dug out the song and decided to add a reverb-y riff as an intro, channeling John Frusciante of Red Hot Chili Peppers. It was the riff from the first song he had ever written. “Again, I was ahead of myself,” he smiles.
It transformed the song. “And then the band turned up, and we had a really good 20 minutes. Sometimes that happens.” “America”, the band’s number one hit and signature tune, was born. “Once we’d recorded it, I was a fan of it,” Borrell says. “I remember going around on my scooter back then and singing it. It was a catchy song, right?”
Critical consensus was mixed: the anthemic ballad was divisive for its big sound and supposed platitudinous lyrics. But the public loved it. It was released in October 2006 after their self-titled second album that July. “The day before the label rang us to say, ‘There’s no way this song’s going to number one’,” Burrows says. Borrell turns and smiles. “That message didn’t get to me.”
But Razorlight prevailed. Borrell found out in a Chinese restaurant with his then-girlfriend and her mum. “I was underwhelmed. Yeah, number one single, no one’s taking that away from you. That’s there forever. Cool. But I was already like, ‘Okay, so what’s next?’”
As they reminisce, Borrell and Burrows are sitting on a sofa in a hotel room in Covent Garden. It was exactly 20 years ago that Razorlight reached their commercial peak: a number one single and chart-topping second album, with hits “In the Morning” and “When I Fall to Pieces”, that sold over 1.6 million in the UK alone. Before a wave of “landfill indie” bands turned the scene into a parody, Razorlight, with The Libertines and Franz Ferdinand, were at the centre of the noughties UK guitar explosion.
Razorlight had already been moving towards a mainstream crossover: their 2005 performance at Live 8 in Hyde Park was one of the day’s best, raising their profile. But success brought issues for Borrell. He says that, despite a famous girlfriend in Kirsten Dunst and a cover shoot with the supermodel Natalia Vodianova in May 2007 (making him only the seventh man to appear on the cover), he wasn’t built for the mainstream.
“I’m not the guy who’s gonna suddenly go on and embrace the cuddly TV world,” he says, which may or may not be a dig at Kaiser Chiefs’ Ricky Wilson. “I’ve always felt I do a bit better coming in as the underdog. So it did put me in a weird place personally.” He became a tabloid fixture, with everything that entails: people going through his bins and paparazzi snapping his every move. He thinks aloud about how he dealt with it.
“I don’t know, maybe I totally lost it. What do you think?” he asks Burrows. “I don’t think you lost the plot,” Burrows says. “I don’t think you enjoyed us being that big. [There were] things that came with it where you were like, ‘This isn’t my world.’” And Burrows? “I thoroughly enjoyed it,” he says cheerily, to much laughter. “But I’m the drummer of a band. I got the good bits. Whereas I would go out for walks with Johnny around Regent’s Park, and for a time there were people jumping out the hedge with a camera.”
You’d have thought Borrell would have taken to fame. He always presented as a rock star; his penchant for saying ludicrous things and proclaiming his own genius made him both a magnetic presence and a figure of ridicule. Back then, Razorlight was very much the Johnny Borrell Show: in 2006, guitarist Björn Ågren complained that the band were seen as “Johnny Borrell and the Three Stooges”. Today, he is still all curly hair and cheekbones, but he is much more measured.
Borrell says to understand the perception of the band, he looks at the live crowd. “If when I’m onstage, [and] there’s a room full of people going, ‘Boo! I hate this!’ I know there’s a problem. But at that time that you’re referring to, I knew that I could walk into any room in the United Kingdom and play ‘Golden Touch’ and have everybody sing along in joy. So I’m doing something right.”
But behind the scenes, things were fraught, and the band’s testy relationships were becoming increasingly public. In October 2006, Borrell and Burrows had a fist fight in the Hawley Arms in Camden (Burrows takes responsibility for it today). When did the dysfunction start? “It was baked in,” Borrell says. “It was already there.” Did the huge success exacerbate it? “No, I think the success actually kept us going longer than we would have done otherwise,” Borrell says.
The Razorlight campaign culminated in headlining 2007’s Reading and Leeds Festival. “Some pretty good shows,” Borrell says. “But in terms of the functionality of the band, we weren’t at our best there.” The band’s relationships were hanging by a thread: backstage, they insisted on having four separate dressing rooms and went through £3,000 worth of booze. Borrell admits he was losing focus on Razorlight. “It was tough. I was working with Florence [Welch] at that point, and I was excited by that. And I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll turn up and do my mega hits, but I’m kind of more interested in this project.’ I was up my own ass.”
Is it fair to say that the Reading headline show was the end of Razorlight’s imperial phase? “I don’t know,” Burrows says. “I looked at a photo the other day of our third album tour [2008’s ] and I’ve got two drum kits on stage. That feels pretty imperial.” “That happened on my watch?” Borrell asks. Burrows argues performed well. “It’s funny now you look back and it’s like our flop. But it sold half a million copies and went top five.”
But, Razorlight did soon disintegrate. By 2011, Borrell was the last man standing. Burrows was the first to leave in 2009: he and Borrell didn’t speak for 11 years, communicating only through sporadic backbiting in the press. The band’s 2022 documentary Fall to Pieces, which follows Borrell as he regroups the classic line-up in 2020, captures the rather awkward moment the pair reconciled in a meeting in the south of France.
“On reflection, part of me regrets having left the band,” Burrows says. “I should have called a personal time-out rather than quitting.” “Likewise, I should have called you up six months later,” Borrell says, turning to Burrows rather sweetly. “And said, ‘Dude, okay, you’ve made your point, and you’re back now.’ Maybe it was too soon at that point. But I think tragically, we were both probably taking the exact actions that were almost guaranteed to push each other in completely the wrong direction. But that is very often the way. Your twenties is all about learning how to negotiate relationships. And it’s really tough to do that in a high-pressure situation.”
It’s genuinely heartening to see them get on so well today. Later tonight, the pair will play an acoustic gig just around the corner to 150 hardcore fans, including James Corden – a warm, loose and uplifting evening. They are working on new songs, and in November will tour their second album for its 20th anniversary. Razorlight seem in a good place.
“It’ll be a classic Razorlight show,” Borrell says. “There will be no backing track, no click track and a completely unique show every night. And you get to hear one of rock and roll’s greatest drummers.” He turns to Burrows. “With two drum kits, right?”
“Lost in America” is out now. Razorlight tour the 20th anniversary of their self-titled album from November