How does it feel to have a number one under your belt?
“We can’t quite believe it! We were over the moon when we found out – and we’re still buzzing from it now! The day before the single came out, we said we’d be happy for it just to make the top 40. None of us was sure which way it was going to go.”
You did loads of gigs in schools to promote it. Do you think that really paid off?
“We took that route mainly because of how difficult it is for boybands to break out. There’s only JLS out there and they came off the back of The X Factor, which is obviously the best leverage you can get right now! I guess we took the ground-up approach and decided the school gigs were the only way for us to build a strong fan-base.”
Is that why you kept pushing back the single’s release date?
“That was more to do with promoting the song as much as possible rather than picking the right week, which a lot of artists do. We had massive competition that week from Travie McCoy, and then Flo Rida released his track a week early too. We honestly thought we didn’t stand a chance. I’m not going to lie, the fact we came out on top makes us feel a little bit good about ourselves!”
Single two’s a track called ‘Heart Vacancy’. How would you describe it?
“It’s completely different to ‘All Time Low’. It’s a ballad, but not your typical boyband ballad, because there’s no big key-change-stand-up moment in it. It’s just a big, catchy record that we’re all really fond of and we hope everyone else likes it as much as we do!”
What’s the video like?
“The video’s less frantic than our last one. A lot of people must have looked at the ‘All Time Low’ video and thought, ‘Who the hell are these guys and why are they jumping around like idiots?’ This one has a storyline and we each tell a part of it. We had a lot of fun filming it.”
The Wanted recently launched a competition asking fans to choose which song you should cover for the B-side. Have you picked a winner yet? “It’s going really well! We’ve had some hilarious suggestions from the fans. Some of them just want us to do their favourite song at the moment without thinking about how we’d even begin to cover it. The suggestions have allowed us to come up with all sorts of new song arrangement ideas too, so it’s been a helpful exercise. We haven’t picked a winner yet but we’re getting close!”
So, What would be your least favourite song to cover?
“‘The Birdie Song’. Or maybe a song by the Cheeky Girls. Whatever happened to them?”
When can we expect to hear your album?
“We’re still in the process of finishing it. We had a break from the studio and now we’ve gone back in to record a whole load of new tracks. At the moment we’ve written about 40-50% of the lyrics, which we’re really proud of. We had to beg our label to give us more time in the studio because we were keen to have more input. To begin with, they gave us just one day to complete a track, which is difficult by anyone’s standards, but it turned out that they loved what we came up with and now it’s on the album.”
Does it have a title yet?
“We still haven’t thought of one! We’re going to come up with the title once the album’s completely finished. Having said that, we’ll probably go for something quite simple in the end anyway.”
What tracks should we listen out for? “There’s a track called ‘Golden’ that I love to bits. It’s like nothing else on the album as it’s got quite an unusual sound. For that reason it probably won’t be a single, but it’s a great track for the album and shows a different side to us. It takes us far away from that typical boyband sound.”
Your fan-base is already pretty dedicated. What’s the nicest thing a fan’s done for you?
“I’m not sure if this counts as nice, but a fan threw a tampon on stage with ‘I love Max’ written on it. At a different gig a fan threw her bracelet on stage – we picked it up and all of a sudden loads of fans were chucking bracelets at us. It was both an incredibly sweet and strange experience!”
 |
| Nathan Sykes-The Wanted |
The Wanted release ‘Heart Vacancy’ on October 8th 2010.
The Album Will Be Release Later In October!
xxxx
