Ting Tings inspired by album flop

Jules De Martino and Katie White had a hit with debut album We Started Nothing and have just released their third album, Super Critical, but said that disappointing sales of second release Sounds From Nowheresville had been a good thing.

Katie said: "We're not with Sony any more, and we feel happier for it. We feel comfortable in our own skins, and very creative again.

"We love pop music and write pop music, but our mentality and the way we work doesn't lend itself to being in that world, so we always found it difficult being on a massive label. We ended up not having anything to write about because we weren't living how we wanted to."

Jules added: "We had a great time making and promoting our first album, but with the second, there was everyone involved because there were multi-million pound budgets involved, hundreds of opinions to be heard and a release date set before you've even written a song, and that wasn't fun.

"There were no opportunities to do fun things, playing to 200 people in a dirty club. With this record, we feel like a new band again. I know we're not, and we can't get back exactly to what we were, but we're almost there."

Looking back, Katie sai d: "I don't think it was a bad record to have as a second album. Where we could've just done a throwaway second album, we made something we liked and we're now on our third. We're building who we are and I don't think we could've done that with a massive second album.

"We were quite defiant when we made it, but then a year later we heard it and thought 'Where were our heads at?'. We must've been so angry, but now, two years later, I think it's interesting to have that marker."

Jules said: "We needed to find the enthusiasm again, and in a way it worked completely because it meant we could break it down a little bit and go back to doing what we loved.

"We played a festival a couple of summers ago, lower down the bill to where we'd have been before, and we came off stage sweating, absolutely buzzing, really into again, and you can hear that enthusiasm on the new album."