Hey
guys, how are you? It's so good to see you. I wasn't expecting you to be in the same room but looking great, congratulations on the new album.
Thank you very much
the Starlight. I was watching the music video for this and I just kept thinking to myself, it just looks like you guys are having so much fun. What was it like shooting a music video together?
Well, it was one of the first things that we've done, you know, when we got back together. Um well, I mean obviously we made the album, but interestingly we made our album quite remotely and quite apart. We had a mobile recording setup that went around to all of our individual houses. That was the first and it was definitely something that was, that happened because of Covid and lockdown and everything like that.
We couldn't really travel around to each other's houses and so the communication levels were high, but physical interaction wasn't, you know, as per the norm during the last couple of years. So when we got it, we came to London and we started making the video and doing some photo shoots and everything for the album promotion and that was the first time we were all back together and
it was the first time we were performing. It was, it was the first of a lot of things to be honest with the first time back in hair and makeup, you know, we got into like cutting our own hair
and
not so much makeup at all for about two years. So you know, it was just, I mean, yeah, it was,
it was, it was interesting, was really good, it was interesting. Yeah, it felt good to be performing again, you know, um choreography was another thing that even though you don't see a lot of in the video, um there's still some stages and right, Mark, you've got to stand here and can you stand here and when that drumbeat hits in, you've got to walk over here and just remembering how to follow all those orders after being, I was my own boss for two years and we
were on our own bosses for like two years. So getting used to getting people telling him what to do again.
Oh wait, hold on, sorry, I lost you. I mean, yeah, that must have been crazy. Did you give each other a huge hug? Yeah, we did actually when we saw each other for the first time, it was uh it was weird, you know, we have been in the, in the same room, the four of us for 564 days. Uh we got somebody to count it up exactly how long it was, it's the four of us were there. So it was lovely to kind of be back together again.
You know, we do nice, we went out for dinner and reminisced on everything like, you know, some of our kids have grown up so much and stuff that happened obviously and market had a baby since we saw some last and it's been a it's been an amazing couple of years. And as Mark said, making the album then remotely, but coming together at the end of the recording, it was lovely.
You know, it was when we did our fourth shoot for the album and finish the record, and we had all our Children there together, and we were in a big castle in Ireland, and it was it was pretty cool. You're giving me the warm and fuzzies. That's so nice about the album though. It reflects you were saying that it's an album that reflects the times, right? People are going through a lot
of difficulties and that's what makes it so special. Did you intend to uplift us with the music or did it just kind of happen?
Yeah, I think, I think honestly there was a huge, well, you know, we all have a conversation as a band and we just said, you know, what kind of album do we want to make, what's it gonna be like? And it's really what everybody just immediately sort of said that
we wanted it to be uplifting. We want it to be something that, you know, like, we know that we're eventually we're going to be performing these songs for our fans, or even if we don't perform them, they're there on, I was gonna say, cd they're there for the the fans to listen to on her album, and, you know, we were obviously aware now that there's lots of people that will wait for our new album and they'll listen to it when it comes out, and we just felt like a responsibility to give them
something positive, something to look forward to, something
uplifting and shiny and bright. And so we we just made sure that the album was quite positive and happy and it sounded like something, I mean, you know, we've all like kind of a couple of cups of coffee and dance in our kitchen, a couple of gin and tonics or whatever makes you dance in your kitchen and, you know, over the last couple of years, I mean, because we've been kind of House Bank and so we wanted people to dance to it, we wanted people to love to laugh to feel, you know, some
of our albums are quite somber and sort of slow and ballad driven and you know, we have a lot of songs that people play, that's sad events such as funerals and stuff like that.
So this wasn't the album to go down that road, we wanted to and, you know, it's not even just about our fans, like for ourselves, I think we needed to make happy music and we needed to make music with beats and with rhythm and something that made us made us feel happy and if it made us feel happy, it's probably gonna make our fans feel opportunity
100%. Um you've been talking about a lot about how it makes you guys feel. Um you guys came back in 2019 as a band that was huge. What did your family members, your spouses, your kids make of that?
It was that was actually really probably the best part I suppose, coming back together was how special it was for our families and for especially for our Children, because, you know, a lot of our Children weren't old enough to understand West life the first time around, you know, so when we broke up in 2012, you know, a lot of our kids were very, very young babies, um Nicole was probably my daughter was the oldest, she's 16 now, so, you know, she still was only like, you know,
eight, you know, so she was still very young. So, I think now looking back, you know, when, when we did come back and started playing all these concerts and you know, we were going to Singapore, we were going all over the world, like, we're going everywhere, and they kind of really got to understand what West Life was and how big it was and how many fans all over the world loved, you know what daddy did for a living, you know, and this is our job, and they thought this is
so cool that, you know, the kids coming Get over that whole hysteria, that was still around West 11, when we came back, you know, we our tour and we came back, we sold more tickets than we did on our, you know, our farewell tour, you know, it was it was incredible the amount of people that came to our shows the last time. Even Singapore, we've been Singapore, indoor stadium, you know, and it was come back,
We miss you. Yeah, it was it really showed that, you know, there was people coming and maybe they were bringing their boyfriends this time, or they were bringing their moms and dads, or they were bringing their kids, whatever it was, West Life turned into a kind of a kind of a family event, you know, and everybody didn't want to miss it, which was lovely to feel and and our families got to see that and they realize now what West Life is and it makes them very excited. So it's cool, it's cool
dad vibes for sure. What are your favorite songs from the album? Because I know that you all had a hand in different ones and they're very personal to you specifically, depending on the member, but if you guys had to had to say, what would it be?
Yeah, there's a few. I mean, I think it is actually, we're pretty happy with the fact that across the board, like it wasn't like, you know, in the past, we've we've written sort of a few songs on an album, you know, everything between one song on an album, to like four or five songs on an album. But this time we've kind of wrote most of it to be honest with you.
So we got to kind of say that we've wrote the album was supposed to a couple of songs on there and we I don't know like I mean it kind of changes. It changed a lot and we've been very busy and promotion the last couple of weeks. So we've been listening to Starlight and my hero a lot because we've been singing them a lot, but I actually haven't listened to
the album in a week or two. Whereas for a while there I was listening to it about 10 times a day, you know, because we're making it picking the songs and everything.
Getting on the final mixes, you keep listening to
listen. Listen Yeah,
Was Your Daughter Like Enough Enough Dad, No more of the album. They were starting to pick their favorites, which was nice to see, you know, I think there was different songs on there, as Mark said, you know, like but while Dreams as a song, because it's the title of the album, it was one of it was one of the first songs that we wrote for the album and it was that kind of essence of we want we want it to be a bit more, you know, upbeat.
We wanted to be a bit more fun. We wanted to be even a bit more contemporary. Um and myself and Mark, I wrote that song and we started the whole idea, kind of we were apart and we were sending each other like boys notes, guitar notes, different things. And it was the song that we wanted to get one of the producers have done a couple of songs
on the album, Grammy. Yeah, cause he was like the guy that wrote when You're looking like that back in the day, So he's a really, really top world class producer, and we thought we'd love to get him involved in this album. And that was the song that did it. And then Fast forward nine months later, it's the name of our album.
It's the name of our tour. It's it's just a very proud feeling as as obviously writers and collaborators and, you know, this is our band, you know, and as Mark said, you know, a lot of songs on there are coming from the band. So, for the first time, I think Lockdown gave us the opportunity and and Covid and fairness, the whole pandemic gave us the opportunity to spend time on this album and really take our time and really kind of experiment behind closed doors when nobody even knew
we were making an album. And we found an inner, suppose, an inner and inner belief in ourselves and confidence that yeah, we can we can do this and we can do a lot more of this and we really, really enjoy the process of it, which is the most important. Oh, that is fantastic. I think we've run out of time, but thank you so much and I want to say good luck for the tour and we really hope that you come here because we've
missed. We're going to be in Singapore. Very sick. Well, I don't know how soon, but very sick. We're going
to, we're definitely going to be there on this tour, whatever that were. So stay tuned for news on that too. Cannot wait. Thank you so much guys and thank you so much for taking the time and have a wonderful rest of your day
to talk to you today. Thank
you very much.