Ne-Yo defends 'misunderstood' album

Ne-Yo has blamed low sales of his latest album Libra Scale on his decision to focus on movie-style promos rather than the music, insisting the project was largely misunderstood.

The disc has sold just 277,000 copies since its release in November (11), and singles including Beautiful Monster and Champagne Life both failed to scrape into the top 40 on the Billboard chart.

The R+B singer admits he spent too much time working on creating a movie-style concept for the record, and he's convinced many of his fans were confused by the project.

He tells the Associated Press, "I didn't get to pay as much attention to the music as I normally would because I was so focused on the story line that the album is based off of. There was so much energy put into that, that when it came time to put the music together, you know, for one there wasn't as much time and for two there wasn't as much energy."

But Ne-Yo insists he has no regrets about trying something different, adding, "Libra Scale was my opportunity to do some things I've never done before... I'm not in any way saying that I think the album is bad. I don't think the album's bad at all, I think it's a pretty solid album... Some people got (and understood) it. Some people didn't. The majority of people didn't."

He also concedes time spent filming his role in new alien invasion sci-fi film Battle: Los Angeles may have detracted from the record: "I was kind of back and forth with (both projects). It's almost impossible to take the amount of focus to shoot a film like this and the amount of focus it takes to put an album together and do them at the same time..."