In an ideal world there would be a commemorative plaque above the entrance of Liverpool’s Echo arena. “Here ended Girls Aloud, the last great girl band” it would say. On 20 March 2013 Nadine Coyle – one fifth of the genre-bending, pop-reshaping rabble – was getting ready for the final night of the band’s reunion tour. “I was in hair and makeup,” she explains in a north London restaurant, “going through my nightly ritual.” Rather than taking delivery of a good-luck bouquet, Coyle received some news via the band’s PR and manager – the other girls wanted to call it quits. Not the more fashionable “hiatus”, which they’d already done in 2009, but a proper split. With the band working to majority rule, there was nothing she could do.

“It was shocking. We’d signed a new deal and recorded what was basically another new album.” Confused, she marched into the venue’s green room, ignoring video directors there to record the tour for posterity (a DVD), and confronted recent Celebrity Big Brother winner, and closest ally in the band, Sarah Harding. “I said, ‘Do you want to break up the band as well?’ and she was like, ‘Oh fuck it, I can’t be arsed with it, I fucking hate everybody.’ That last show, all emotion was switched off as far as I was concerned, with any of them.”

Further ignominy followed: it had been decided the split announcement would be made that same night. Via a tweet. “A tweet?!” Coyle roars in her thick Derry accent. “I saw the draft and just said, ‘Remove my name from that.’ We’d been saying since the start we were properly back.” In the end the tweet went out as the stage was being dismantled. After an end-of-tour party that lasted until the next morning (“[the band] wasn’t drinking together, but we were in the same room”), Coyle posted her own tweet: “You should know by now I had no part in any of this split business. I couldn’t stop them. I had the best time & want to keep going.” Aside from Harding, she’s not spoken to the rest of the band since.

Fifteen years after they formed via ITV’s Popstars: The Rivals, and four years since the split, Coyle has reunited with Girls Aloud’s unofficial sixth member, Howard Hughes-esque production genius Brian Higgins and his coterie of pop mavericks, AKA Xenomania, for new single Go to Work. Alongside lyricist Miranda Cooper, Higgins masterminded 20 of their UK Top 10 singles, including Biology, Love Machine and Something New, shredding the pop rulebook, spray-painting it neon and then painstakingly suturing it all back together to create a Frankenstein’s monster-pop that made everything else – with its boring verse-chorus-verse structure – look decidedly pedestrian.

Bradley from Muumuse has posted a fab interview with Nadine. Bradley is a full-on fan, which makes this chat more interesting. Its a long read but i just wanted to highlight some key points, and you can go read the full transcipt over on their website here: https://www.muumuse.com/2017/09/nadine-coyle-go-to-work-interview.html/

• Firstly, Nadine has the Victoria Secret wings on a wall in her house!
• She was signed onto Virgin EMI 2 weeks before Christmas.
• A 4 song EP may be released and not an album. Still undecided!
• A second single has already been chosen.
• One song from 2013 that Brian Higgins liked Nadine’s vocals on may make an appearance!
• She’s a huge fan of Little Mix and went to their O2 concert.

Nadine Coyle talks new music, being a Girls Aloud fangirl and calling her fans her Passports…

She’s back, bitches.

Nadine Coyle stormed into New Music Friday this week by telling everyone to Go To Work over a thumping club beat and infectious pop chorus, teaming back up with Xenomania who she worked with on most of Girls Aloud’s biggest hits.

“It’s terrifying to release songs,” she told Gay Times when we sat down with her at the office of her new record label, Virgin EMI.

The singer likened the experience to running and running and running through lovely scenery and then jumping off a cliff and hoping you land somewhere.

But Go To Work feels like the proper launch of a solo Nadine Coyle, hearing her distinctive vocal lead a pop production she’s been accustomed to for 15 years now. But in true Xenomania style, there were plenty of different version before this one.

“When I recorded the chorus, it was so laid back and soulful almost,” she told us. “The track was completely different when I first sang over that wee bit.

“Then we did more parts, and more parts, and more parts, and then there were three versions. We didn’t know which one was going to be the lead single.

“The other two have different verse parts on it are now going out as part of a package, but at one point they were both contenders to be the actual single.”

Nadine has been busy in the studio with Xenomania for quite some time now, having recorded over a hundred songs with the hit-making team.

“We’ve got four singles back-to-back. It was really hard to get to that, because what style do you go with?” she said.

Surely that means there’s an album on the horizon then?

“I don’t even know, to be honest, if it’s going to be a classic singles then album type of situation. Everything is so different now. We’ll just go with it and see, but it would be great.”

Nadine seems cautious about committing to her fans about a full album at this point possibly because of how Insatiable played out seven years ago.

Many consider the collection an underrated pop gem, but because of a unique distribution deal with Tesco back in 2010 where it would only sold in their stores, it stalled at No.47 on the UK chart.

“At the time it was about trying something new,” she told us. “It seemed like it was all written out perfectly. But there was such a move to things being online and it just wasn’t available online anywhere, so you basically had to be in select stores or you just couldn’t get it.

“This time it’s a lot less on me. The last time I did this it was just a lot of pressure on me in terms of having to be the infrastructure. I had to basically be this building. It was impossible and I wouldn’t want to do it that way again.”

But through the ups and the downs, Nadine’s very passionate (and largely gay) fan base have stuck with her, essentially turning some of her iconic moments into fabulous memes.

In a revealing interview, Nadine blows the lid on Girls Aloud tensions, their eventual break up and Sarah Harding’s recent Big Brother stint. Plus she also discusses details of her new music, her growing family, and her relationship with Louis Walsh.

Listen below or from the other podcast websites linked below

iTunes
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/nadine-coyle/id1231619938?i=1000391967503&mt=2

Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7nreWOhX2PhXGczdic0W0K

Stitcher
http://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=51403428

See 7 HQ pictures from the interview in the gallery linked below:

Photoshoots > 2017 > Louis Wood [The Sun]

Girls Aloud’s impressive body of work has long been part of the pop canon, still dominating the playlists of millennials across the UK in 2017 (we’ve all been under the DJ booth screaming for “Love Machine”, right?). Their debut single, 2002’s banger “Sound of the Underground” continues to be considered a brit-pop game changer, and despite the group splitting four years ago, the gals are still very much in demand (I mean, Sarah just won CBB!)

Thankfully, Nadine Coyle is on hand to serve up some new tunes to fill our aural Girls Aloud fix, teaming up with Brian Higgins (who was basically responsible for all your fave GA jams) on her upcoming single, “Go To Work.” For the past two years she’s been writing new material, exploring her new found “soulful” voice.

Ahead tomorrow’s drop (the single lands 8 September), we caught up with Nadine to discuss the evolution of her sound, her relationship with her Girls Aloud bandmates, and the power of the potato… (yes seriously!)

How has your summer been? What have you been up to?

I went to Spain a few times. I love Spain! And being in London you hop on a plane to Europe and you’re there! There’s this beautiful part, my parents actually took us there when we were kids and I was searching the world for this beach and it was in my mind and I thought it must have just been in my memory, but it turns out, it exists and it’s in Spain and I love it!

Nice. So you’ve just signed with Virgin EMI, how does that feel?

Surreal, completely surreal! I’ve got the chance to do it before and I’ve got the chance to do it again. It brings a tear to my eye, everybody is so good and so amazing that I just feel really really really fortunate.

You’ve had a bit of time away from music, how does it feel coming back to it?

To be a singer you can just walk around the house and sing, you don’t have to be in a studio or on a stage. [It’s] something I’ve always loved to do. [I’m] working with Brian Higgins again, who did all of the Girls Aloud stuff.

You must have a great working relationship with him!

I met Brian when I was 17, we’ve done every Girls Aloud song ever really, all of our singles have all been Brian, he knows how to push me and we just have a great way of working together. I love the challenge with different tunes.

Considering your time away, do you feel nervous or excited about coming back?

I feel excited because it’s one of those really odd things where it’s so out there, like oh my god, you shoot a video, you do photo shoots, you do all these things, it’s such an exciting job that I’m really really happy to be back and I’m really happy to be here and I’m really happy to have all the people here and have these opportunities.

What can we expect to hear? What’s the sound that you’re going for?

The sound is definitely pop. I’m all about the pop! My voice has changed a bit since before, so it’s a bit more soulful, soulful melodies, but just fun, the whole thing! What you can expect is to get up and be dancing and be able to put it on and hopefully feel energised and in a better mood, that’s the hope, that’s what we’re really going for, fun times!