Tough talk

It's not just rock acts whose sales are giving cause for alarm. On the contrary, some of pop's biggest players are suffering too. Capital Records head Steve Barnett admitted this week that he's had to have "tough conversations" with Katy Perry and her management team following disappointing sales figures for her latest album Witness.

That said, Barnett didn't put the album's poor performance down to a general seachange in tastes - or, for that matter, to any deficiencies in the songs themselves. Instead, he pinned the blame on the four-year gap between albums, which he said had had a damaging effect on fans' "engagement" with the singer. Very much a case of out of sight, out of mind, then. It can work the other way around, though - just ask the likes of My Bloody Valentine and At The Drive-In, both of whom found to their benefit that (prolonged) absence only made the heart grow fonder.