The members of the British band Suede are living an odd dichotomy. At home, their debut album entered the chart at No. 1 and they’re recognized everywhere they go. The band recently won the prestigious Mercury Music Prize.
But in the United States, where the quartet is slogging around the country trying to build a following and generate radio play, the album never even grazed the Top 200.
Lead singer and lyricist Brett Anderson, whose ambiguous lyrics, persona and provocative statements to the press have sparked comparisons to mid-’70s figure David Bowie, realizes it may take time to conquer America. If it happens at all.
“Lots of British bands don’t make it in America,” Anderson, 25, said in a recent interview from San Francisco. “If we do, it’ll be in a gradual way, like New Order or the Smiths, over five albums. We’re not the sort of band that’ll have an American No. 1 like, say, Jesus Jones. And I’m glad in a way because those sort of bands have one hit and the fans never grow with them.”
Suede’s self-titled debut album entered the British charts at No. 1 in April and has sold more than 500,000 copies worldwide. Some songs included references to drugs, gay sex and suicide, which led to speculation that the members of Suede lived it like they played it.
Then, in an interview with a small magazine, Anderson said he was “bisexual without homosexual experience” and the quote was reprinted widely.
“I regret the way in which it was taken out of context,” Anderson said. “I mean, you don’t say things unless you mean them, but I was talking about a more spiritual perception of life rather than a physical one. I was trying to explain the way I think about things in a nonphysical way.”
Suede – which also includes Bernard Butler on guitar, Mat Osman on bass and Simon Gilbert on drums – recently won the Mercury award for best album of the year in the United Kingdom. Accepting the award at London’s Savoy Hotel, Anderson donated the $38,250 prize money to cancer research.
