2. Razorlight - Slipway Fires
Cast your mind back to the more innocent time of 2006. The UK indie music press needed a new poster boy, and inexplicably they chose Johnny Borrell of Razorlight. The band enjoyed some success with the bland indie pop ditties like America and In The Morning, which were inoffensive enough. But somewhere along the way Borrell bought into his own hype, leading us to Slipway Fires. Make no mistake about it, this album is self-indulgence taken to almost insulting extremes. On one of the more ridiculous tracks, Hostage of Love, Borrell points out his similarities with Jesus H. Christ in a totally non-ironic manner. 'I am salvation' and 'for telling my story I have been crucified' are just a couple of picks from this joke of a song. Musically, Razorlight desperately aim for Joshua Tree style bombast, but all the arena rock polish can't disguise the fact that the band's arrangements and playing are woefully pedestrian, which only makes Borrell's pretensions all the more laughable. The rest of the band bailed on their singer after this album's release, and there time as one of the most popular bands in the UK now feels like some odd dream we've all woken up from. As for Borrell? Well indie's one-time messiah released his debut solo album (modestly titled Borrell 1) in July 2013, selling 594 copies in its first week. That's not a typo. 594 copies. Pretty poor showing from the man who once declared himself the new Bob Dylan.