Former Busted boy Charlie Simpson has told the BBC World Service's
Music Biz show that he is "ecstatic" at the reception his new band Fightstar has received. Aware that his new project was being scrutinised "every second" after his high profile departure from the boy band, and that the rock music press he needs support from could "have easily written us off" just because of his pop background, Simpson told the programme: "Pretty much all of the magazines that I like and read gave us really good reviews. I was so ecstatic...
at the gigs people [were] coming up and saying 'I did not want to like this band'."
Going back over his decision to quit Busted so he could work full time on Fightstar, Simpson told the show: "I was 15 when the Busted thing came along - it was a laugh, it was two guys that seemed like they just wanted to have fun. I was at school, the opportunity came along, and I just thought, 'whatever, I'll just take it - what could happen?'. And it suddenly exploded into this huge thing. And I thought to myself, nothing really matters to me apart from my artistic happiness. It sounds corny, but at the end of the day, I could have made as much money with
Busted as there was to make, but that didn't interest me."