EVER HOPEFUL

Indie rock band Johnny Foreigner may not have made it big, but after reuniting in 2021, they headed out earlier this year for a UK tour as joint headliners with anti-folk group Crywank — and relished every minute, as lead singer Alexei Berrow writes

- Alexei Berrow

I SHOULD START THIS off with a potted history of our band and how, all things considered, we shouldn’t really exist in 2025. I mean, we had a good run. We signed a Proper Record Deal in 2007, and within a couple of years had made two records in America with Grammy-nominated producers, criss-crossed the globe touring them and ticked off our teen dream bucket-list goals. We'd just about become used to referring to ourselves as “full-time musicians” when the magic supply of other people's money ran out. I mean, it wasn’t all our fault as much as the machinery of the record industry itself collapsing around us, empirically devaluing songs as currency. But also, it is fair to say, we did not achieve the expected levels of fame and fortune.

It’s a common and boring tale, and the point during most bands’ existence — most of our friends’ bands’ existence — where they’d accept that they had had a good run and go and get proper jobs. We collectively lacked that middle-class sensibility. We turned down an option for another album with our Proper Record Label, signed (actually, not even signed, just shook hands in a pub. And it was probably a hug not a handshake) with an indie label called Alcopop and made a 19-track third album in our practice space called Johnny Foreigner Vs Everything, which was released in 2011.