As Razorlight announce a 20th anniversary tour in celebration of ‘America’ and their chart-topping, self-titled album, frontman Johnny Borrell has spoken to NME about the heady days of 2006 – from fame and the Kirsten Dunst motorcycle incident to Dave Grohl asking to be punched in the face.
Released on July 17, 2006 following the success of the band’s 2004 debut ‘Up All Night’ and its indie disco classic lead single ‘Golden Touch’, ‘Razorlight’ elevated the band’s celebrity to the next level. The record hit Number One in the UK, spawning a chart-topping single with ‘America’ and huge hits with ‘In The Morning’ and ‘Before I Fall To Pieces’, while Borrell rapidly became a mainstream public figure, featuring on the cover of Vogue and, for a period in 2007, dating actor Kirsten Dunst.
NME gave ‘Razorlight’ an 8/10 review upon its release, describing it as “Borrell’s bid for Bono-stature”. It added: “It’s a soulful, romantic album about what happens when the lights come up at the end of the night and life smacks you in the face.
“It’s a record that understands, and is there for you through all the highs and the lows. It’s also a record that sees Razorlight comfortably leap the ‘difficult second album’ trap. Now that calls for a party.”
Despite this glowing review, the record was ALSO nominated for Worst Album at the NME Awards 2007. However, the statue ended up going to Robbie Williams’ ‘Rudebox’. That same year, Razorlight headlined Reading & Leeds off the back of their second record.
“I probably didn’t go home or even have a home during the whole two and a half years of touring that record,” Borrell told NME this week ahead of the tour announcement. “After five years of being on the road [between that and ‘Up All Night’], you go completely insane and have no reference point for anything like a normal life. But that was cool because I never really wanted a normal life. A normal life was the one thing I saw when I was growing up that I knew I didn’t want.”
Having written much of the record – the first to feature drummer Andy Burrows, who became a core collaborator – on tour, Borrell told us about playing ‘America’ to Liam Gallagher and “him telling me about six times what an incredible song it was. We went and played with Yusuf Islam – Cat Stevens – a couple of days after and he said he loved it too. A lot of people had a lot of love for that song!”
Looking back on his tumultuous relationship with the press, Borrell recalled how his first ever interview with NME spawned the infamous quote, “Compared to the Razorlight album, Dylan is making the chips, I’m drinking the champagne”.
“I went to the interview with a lot of things written on a piece of paper and said, ‘Let’s not do an interview, I’m just gonna read these out to you and you can build your article around them’,” the frontman told us this week. “Had I had a fuller knowledge of the way [the press] works, I might not have done that but it was pretty fun at the time…”
However, by the time that ‘Razorlight’ had sent the band stratospheric, Borrell’s portrayal within the media was one he says “destroyed my relationship with my fans”.
He continued: “What I loved early on in my career was having direct communication with the fans, because when you’re in the dream place, your fans are like you. They’re the kid you were and there are certain things you understand. But then there was this tabloid version of me that was created, and there was no social media or way for me to talk to my fans except via these people. Pretty much every time I did an interview, I’d be praying they’d represent what I said fairly, but there was nothing I could do about it.”
Check out the rest of the interview below, where Borrell talks about the upcoming tour, his infamous tale of riding a motorbike through Dunst’s house, and the time that Dave Grohl asked him to punch him in the face.
NME: Hi Johnny! You’ve just announced the 20th anniversary ‘Razorlight’ tour, how are you feeling about it?
Johnny Borrell: “I’m sure everyone says this, but the band are in a really good place at the moment and playing really well. We’re all thrilled and terrified – not of the shows, but when you start thinking of the planes and hotels and the bus… We can be cranky! We’re humans! But hey, bring it on. Bring it on, I think?
Will you be dusting off your white jeans?
“Nudie Jeans don’t make the white ones anymore so I don’t know about that. They were pretty integral to that time though, and they definitely made touring a lot easier. You just carry three pairs of jeans with you and rotate them. If your stage wear is just a pair of jeans and a pair of trainers, it really simplifies your day.”
How do you remember the period of writing and recording ‘Razorlight’?
“My main memory is of the tour bus. Based on what was coming out in the press, people thought I was just hanging out in London and partying with famous women and that was my whole existence. But to be honest, we were just on tour all the time, playing all around the world. I wrote a lot of ‘Razorlight’ with Andy on the tour bus, which I think is a good advert for not having the internet and smart phones. Now everyone gets into their own little digital world, but then you couldn’t even get online with your laptop so we were forced – condemned! – to communicate with each other.”
You’d already had a taste of success with your debut, how competitive were you to better it?
“Oh, unhealthily so. It wasn’t pre-thought out, but I was obsessed with always trying to improve what I was doing so the album started to turn into what it turned into. Instead of Patti Smith, it was Blondie. Instead of Television, it was The Police. What I liked about that was that 99 per cent of other indie bands who have a hit with their first record, what do they do? They put on the leather jackets and come back and make a slightly moodier, slightly not as good version of the first album as their second one.
“To me, that sounded very like the playbook and I just couldn’t wait for all the respect I was gonna get from all the intelligent people at the NME for the fact that we’d bucked the playbook and taken this genius step of doing something completely different. It didn’t quite work out like that but I was looking forward to it!”
The NME review said you were “aiming for Bono stature” – is that fair?
“I mean, it was a good review! Four out of five?”
8 out of 10!
“It got very good reviews in the UK, but aiming for Bono stature? Hmm. I don’t know about that. But it sure was nice touring with [U2] because they have their own plane. What can I say? If someone had offered me my own plane I would have taken it. We did have one at times for shows because we were trying to get from one end of Europe to the other to do festivals, but it definitely didn’t have a livery on the side.”
What’s it like being at the centre of the whirlwind when you have a huge period of success like that?
“Of all the places I’ve been in music, the mainstream was the weirdest for me because I’m just not really that guy. You go from being this outsider musician with a chip on his shoulder to being this mainstream figure, and that’s very confusing. I’d sit down in interviews and think, ‘If you’re gonna thrust me into the mainstream then at least I can bang on about the slide of the world into military industrial fascism and people will listen’. But they just want to ask you about who you’re dating.”
And then all of a sudden, you’re dating Kirsten Dunst and in The Daily Mail…
“And I don’t fit in The Daily Mail! My views are not represented by The Daily Mail. I am not a Daily Mail person. But for a bunch of years, I was in The Daily Mail. You just have to ignore it and get on with what you enjoy doing.”
If you ride a motorbike through someone’s house, you have to know people are going to write about it… what was that all about then?
“Me and Kirsten had a place together so we were throwing a party. I had a vintage motorcycle at the time and people wanted to rev it up, so we were riding it round the courtyard and it was quite open plan so you’d take a bit of house in there. I love that it’s such a shocking story because that’s just normal life for me. But when you put it into The Daily Mail world it’s like, ‘Oh my god!’ If I’m throwing a party, I like people to do shit, otherwise it’s just boring with people sitting around talking about what they like. ‘Oh, I like X, or I really don’t like Y. Oh you like blue? I like blue as well’.
“What, and then you have a couple of bottles of wine and everyone goes home? That sounds pretty boring to me. This is what I’m saying, I’m not a mainstream guy!”
What was it like doing a cover shoot for Vogue?
“I didn’t know shit about shit. They said they wanted to do a Vogue cover and I said OK. They asked who I wanted to be on the cover with and I didn’t know anything about that, so I asked my girlfriend and she said to say Natalia Vodianova. She turned up – I think she was three months pregnant in those shots which was kind of incredible, we did the shoot and it was over in 10 minutes. It probably took longer to do my hair than it did to do the shoot and the first thing Mario [Testino] did was get a wind machine out. ”
What was the most surreal moment of that period?
“I was just thinking about Dave Grohl asking me to punch him in the face, but that’s a longer story…”
We’ve got time, Johnny!
“I’ll just leave it like that or it’ll end up like the motorcycle story. It’s just normal shit to us!”
Razorlight’s upcoming self-titled anniversary tour dates are below. Support comes from London punk-inspired brother and sister duo The Molotovs, with The K’s joining the line-up in London. The latter are also set to open for Razorlight in Europe.
Tickets go on general sale at 9am local time next Friday (June 19) – you’ll be able to buy yours here (UK) and here (Europe). Alternatively, fans can access a pre-sale at the same time on Wednesday (June 17) by signing up here.
Razorlight’s ‘America’ European and UK headline dates for 2026 are:
OCTOBER
23 – Kägelbanen, Stockholm, Sweden
25 – Tavastia, Helsinki, Finland
27 – John Dee, Oslo, Norway
28 – Pumpehuset, Copenhagen, Denmark
30 – Kantine, Cologne, Germany
31 – Mühle Hunziken, Rubigen, Switzerland
NOVEMBER
01 – La Madeleine, Brussels, Belgium
03 – Roxy, Prague, Czech Republic
04 – Technikum, Munich, Germany
05 – Simm City, Vienna, Austria
07 – Kammgarn, Schaffhausen, Switzerland
08 – Trianon, Paris, France
10 – Den Atelier, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg
11 – Melkweg, Amsterdam, Netherlands
13 – Rolling Stone Beach Festival, Germany
14 – Heimathafen Neukölln, Berlin, Germany
15 – Circolo Magnolia, Milan, Italy
17 – Moon, Valencia, Spain
18 – Wolf, Barcelona, Spain
20 – Grand Mix, Tourcoing, France
26 – O2 Academy, Glasgow, UK
27 – O2 City Hall, Newcastle, UK
28 – The Civic Hall, Wolverhampton, UK
30 – O2 Academy, Leeds, UK
DECEMBER
01 – Rock City, Nottingham, UK
03 – O2 Victoria Warehouse, Manchester, UK
04 – OVO Arena Wembley, London, UK
05 – The Prospect Building, Bristol, UK
08 – Hedon, Zwolle, Netherlands
09 – Nieuwe Nor, Heerlen, Netherlands
13 – Telegraph, Belfast, Northern Ireland
14 – 3Olympia, Dublin, Ireland
This summer will see Razorlight open for Kasabian at their big concert at London’s Finsbury Park and appear at the inaugural State Fayre festival in Chelmsford.
The group released their fifth and most recent studio album, ‘Planet Nowhere’, in 2024. It marked the first full-length project from the classic line-up – Borrell, Burrows, guitarist Björn Ågren and bassist Carl Dalemo – since 2008’s ‘Slipway Fires’. They had announced their return in 2021.
Speaking to NME about reuniting for their latest LP, Borrell admitted he had been ready to end the band if they hadn’t been able to make more new music together.
“I said to everyone: ‘If new music doesn’t work, let’s move on.’ I was ready to ceremonially say goodbye to Razorlight,” he said. “It would have been a major deal. I was contemplating all kinds of ways to end it, some involving Japanese swords. But this album wanted to be made.”
When looking back on the heady days of the ’00s, the frontman told us: “Because we formed the band, me and Bjorn sometimes look at each other like: ‘This whole thing is our fault. What the fuck were we thinking?’
“If I think about the past, it is: ‘Did that really happen?’ Like hanging out with Quentin Tarantino. Sitting at a table where Tarantino is going: ‘Mr Borrell! A man after my own heart – or so I’ve heard.’ I felt I was in a Wes Anderson movie at that point.”