As a fifth of Girls Aloud, one of the biggest girl bands of our time, Nadine Coyle is used to the spotlight. Her time since the band, hasn’t been spent twiddling her thumbs or shying away from the craft that has made her a household name.

Nadine is back with a new EP and a UK and Ireland tour. She will be bringing with her new material and for any Girls Aloud fans, the voice of the band will be taking some of their legendary hits back on tour. We joined Nadine in London to catch up and discuss possible reunions and girl power.

Congratulations on the release of Girls on Fire, it’s so exciting for you!

Thank you, it took so long to get to this point, then when it does you don’t know what to do with yourself.

How does your sound differ now to what we have previously heard from you?

My voice has changed a lot. So that sounds different to some of the older songs like the Girls Aloud tracks. I sound so young in comparison, so that’s changed and also the content. It’s about really strong women, the really empowering ‘never the victim’ just kind. I love writing songs about that, this is definitely one for feeling good about yourself.

I got that from Go To Work, it was such a good feel good tune for the girls, what can we expect from your EP?

There’s a song coming out in two weeks called Gossip and is a total different style than Girls On Fire or Go To Work. It’s really laid back, it’s more reflective, not deeper but more reflective. We will keep releasing a song every two weeks and just see how quickly we can turn songs around and get them out there.

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During our hour-long interview, Nadine Coyle shows me a picture of a T-shirt a fan’s just tweeted to her. He’s had it made especially for her upcoming gig at London club G-A-Y. On the front is a photo of Girls Aloud and the tweet Coyle posted in March 2013, right after the group announced their separation. ‘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. Xxxx.’ Nadine shoots me a look, equal parts bemused and amused, that seems to say, ‘Fans, what are they like?’

Having reconnected with Girls Aloud’s producer and founder of Xenomania, Brian Higgins, Nadine has just released her first solo single since the group’s demise. Go To Work is a motivational pop song on which her voice, always the group’s best, sounds super-gutsy. ‘This song is a good bridge between Girls Aloud and some of the more “out there” songs I’ve recorded,’ she explains. ‘I’m reintroducing myself, and I don’t want to do it by smacking people round the face with some massive song that I’m just singing the hell out of.’

Since Girls Aloud ended, Nadine has moved back to London after nine years in LA. ‘I grew up in Northern Ireland where it was freezing. Having 26 degrees every day is great for a holiday but, after a while, it didn’t feel like my life,’ she says, her thick Derry accent gloriously unaffected by California. Nadine and her partner, former American football player Jason Bell, have also welcomed a daughter, Anaíya, who’s now three. ‘She thinks my job is so much fun,’ says Nadine proudly. ‘I might have to go away with work for a few days, but when I come back it feels like I actually get more time with her. So I feel very fortunate I can do that.’

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.

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!