When MusicRadar caught up with Snow Patrol mainman Gary Lightbody, latest album A Hundred Million Suns was on the verge of release and Leona Lewis' cover of Run was topping the UK chart.
Given that Snow Patrol's original version re-entered the charts at number 29 on the same week, unsurprisingly, Lightbody was all for it. Now, Rhythm magazine's got an exclusive with the band's drummer Jonny Quinn on Run's aftermath, X-Factor fodder and the current state of the music industry.
"She's got a great voice," says Jonny on Leona Lewis. "Gary [Lightbody] could have sung it like her, which is quite grand in a way, but he didn't and the way we did the song is the way we intended it."
"It would be nice to see an X-Factor where they have to write their own songs," Jonny Quinn, Snow Patrol
"It's a great song and it was number one for two weeks. It just shows that a good song is a good song. Fair play to her, it's nice that people want to cover it."
Z-Factor
Leona Lewis aside, Jonny is not a big fan of the reality-TV spawned pop star: "a lot of it is designed for the people that own the label and the TV rights and they seem to do well out of it. A lot of people turn up and they don't realise what is required. If you just stand in a queue you might get picked like in the lottery and you'll get famous but there is no guarantee."
"A lot of X-Factor people have won and their careers have dwindled very quickly. It would be nice to see an X-Factor where they have to write their own songs."
Piracy
"We're definitely going through a bit of a revolution at the moment," continues Jonny on the changing state of the music industry. "The people who work for record labels don't know what's going on and there is a real sense that things are going to change, but nobody knows which way it's going to go."
"I think the government should act quickly and do this thing they are going to do in France which is three strikes of piracy and they'll cut your internet off. The record companies were too slow to respond to the internet, they didn't believe it was a threat but now they know."
You can read the full interview with Jonny Quinn, plus a never-before-seen 1975 interview with Who legend Keith Moon, in the current issue of Rhythm magazine, available now.
