British pop star Sophie Ellis-Bextor chose to self-fund her latest album Wanderlust because record label bosses feared her new music was too risky.

The Murder On The Dance Floor hitmaker moved away from her usual pop/disco sound for her fifth record, and she ended up paying for the project herself because label executives would not back her experimental new style.

She tells Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper, "It was exhilarating and quite nerve-wracking. There was no one I was answerable to and no one peering over my shoulder seeing what I was up to - which was liberating, but also (it means) you're kind of a little bit in freefall... When it came to the funding of it and the few demos I had, most labels passed - they liked it but didn't think it was commercial.

"And then I looked at options like crowd-funding. I don't have any judgment about people that do it, but for me it just felt a little bit disingenuous because I thought: 'If I'm making a slight risk of an album, why am I not making the risk my own? Why am I expecting my fans to make the financial risk for me?'"

Ellis-Bextor's risk paid off as Wanderlust reached the number four spot on the U.K. albums chart after it was released in January (14) and she recouped her investment in less than a month.

She calls the chart feat "amazingly gratifying" adding, "I'm really proud of the fact that we did it that way."