Richard Archer

"A paper phoned our manager and said: 'We know he’s dating Scarlett Johansson, her people have told us.' We told them it wasn’t true and that I’d never even met her. They ran the story anyway, saying I was secretly dating Scarlett Johansson. A week later they ran another story saying her people were denying it and that: 'Richard Archer, from Hard-Fi, is a fantasist.' and that I'd made the whole thing up for publicity. The wankers. It was quite funny until I ended up looking like a prick."

“We had success because real people heard our music. Working-class musicians are supposed to be idiots who get drunk rather than people who have something to say. Sometimes it’s nice to have that to work against but what annoys me is when I think of our fans. You have to wonder what the people slating our record know about music when they’re essentially slagging off the fans of the band. You can take the piss out of my hair, my clothes – I don’t give a fuck. But take the piss out of the fans and that is out of order.”

In 2010, Archer recorded vocals for a track produced by Swedish DJ Axwell, entitled "Think About It" at the time. The track was then re-produced around 2015 by Axwell and his counterpart Swedish DJ & Producer, Sebastian Ingrosso, as the then-newly formed duo, Axwell Λ Ingrosso. The song was renamed to "Thinking About You" and released on 27 May 2016, still featuring Archer on vocals.

On 1 March 2008, rumours started appearing that the two would be forming a new band after Archer joined Jones and his new band, Carbon/Silicon, during a show in London. They revealed that they were thinking about combining the two bands to form a project called "Hard Carbon".

In 2006 there was a story generated by the media that Archer was having a relationship with Scarlett Johansson while she was filming Woody Allen movie Scoop in London. Archer had never said anything of the sort. It did in fact turn out to be a false rumour, which was confirmed when Johansson declared "I've never met him, and until all this started, I'd never even heard of him". One newspaper accused Archer of creating the rumours himself. He says:

Hard-Fi finally saw success with their debut album Stars of CCTV reaching No. 1 in the UK Albums Chart and followed up with another No. 1 record Once Upon a Time in the West. The band went on to be nominated for the prestigious Mercury Prize in 2005 and BRIT Awards among others. Archer wrote all the songs on the albums, while the "Hard to Beat" single featured a track called "Stronger" which he had originally written with Contempo.

The band were licensed to the major record label Atlantic Records in December 2004, where they were given the chance to re-record the album, in the Abbey Road Studios among other well known studios however, the band went back to the mini cab office to maintain their sound.

Mick Jones produced demos that were intended to be released as an album in 2000 but whose release was delayed and eventually cancelled. Some of these tracks have been reworked as Hard-Fi songs.

In November 2000 Contempo announced they had left London Records after months of a mutually tense relationship. After these events, Contempo released a six track EP called "This Is Contempo", which featured the ska song "Ain't Going Out Tonight" on their own label "Nu-Suburban Sounds". Another album, "Contempo - The Demos", was a bootleg CD featuring demos of what would become Hard-Fi tracks: "Better Do Better", "Can't Get Along (Without You)", "Living for the Weekend", "Move On Now" and "Unnecessary Trouble".

Richard Archer (born in Staines-upon-Thames, Surrey, England) is an English singer-songwriter and guitarist. He is the lead vocalist, guitarist, principal songwriter and main composer of indie rock band Hard-Fi. Hard-Fi have produced several top 10 hits and two No. 1 albums. The influence of Archer's hometown of Staines is often evident in his lyrics. He used to front a band called Contempo from 1997 until 2001.

Contempo formed in Staines-upon-Thames during the summer of 1997, originally going by the name "Parachute".