Remember “If This Is Love” is out in the shops NOW! It currently sits at number 22 on iTunes after just a day of sales! Buy it from iTunes and your local music store!
It’s been a while since a new girl group conquered the pop charts, but Fascination Records, the home of Girls Aloud, are hoping to end the drought with fresh-faced five-piece The Saturdays. With their glossy debut single, ‘If This Is Love’, out today, we caught up with three of the girls – Mollie, Una, and former S Club Juniors star Rochelle – to find out what The Saturdays are all about.
How did The Saturdays form?
Rochelle: “Well, there’s kind of a mish-mash of stories. Me and Frankie used to know each other from being in S Club Juniors, so we knew the label and obviously we heard about the opportunity to join this new girl group through that.”
Mollie: “I was in a girl group before this and we did The X Factor, and through that I was poached for this band.”
Una: “I was working as a singer-songwriter doing gigs at hotels and functions, and I decided to get away from that and come to London. I got in touch with the agent who was casting for this band and that was the first thing I went for. It was perfect for me so I haven’t looked back since.”
When did you all first meet?
Mollie: “About a year ago. We met last July, but we didn’t start working together until earlier this year because the contracts took a while to sort out.”
Do you all live together, or is that sort of thing a bit old-fashioned now?
Rochelle: “We don’t actually. I think this is kind of a fresher take on things. You hear about a lot of bands having arguments, but the reason we get on so well is because we go home at the end of the day and have a bit of normality.”
Why are you called The Saturdays?
Mollie: “We just thought it was fun and it didn’t sound like a typical girl-band name.”
Una: “We wrote out a list of potential names, almost everything that came into our heads really, and in the end we had about 200 names to choose from. We thought The Saturdays sounded fun and different to the other girl bands out there. We didn’t want to have a reference to being a girl in there, like Girls Aloud or Sugababes.”
What was the worst name that was suggested?
Rachelle: “Major Tom! I mean, who the hell came up with that? I really liked the runner-up name actually, which was Girls Can’t Catch.”
Una: “But I hated it!”
Mollie: “And I was sitting on the fence, but The Saturdays just seemed to fit.”
How would you describe your music?
Rochelle: “Pop!”
Mollie: “Full-on fun pop. We’re not trying to be too cool.”
Una: “It’s really catchy pop songs that people can sing along to.”
Mollie: “The lyrics are really clever too. We don’t write them, but we’re working with a lady called Ena who asks us how we’re feeling about situations and then writes about them.”
What’s the debut single, ‘If This Is Love’, about?
Una: “It’s about a love/hate relationship really. These two people are falling in love but they’re scared of getting hurt. The verses are all about one of them stalking the other one, hanging out outside the other’s window…”
Rochelle: “Ha ha! So watch out for the stalker!”
What was it like supporting Girls Aloud on their recent tour?
Mollie: “It was the best experience ever. The girls were so nice to us and said if we needed any help and advice we should go to them. It was like a big girly road trip.”
Una: “They’re such an inspiration to us because they’ve been together for five years and now they’re filling out arenas all over the country. If we could be like that one day, how amazing would that be?”
Which girl group from pop’s past do you most admire?
Una: “Spice Girls.”
Mollie: “My favourite girl group was the Spice Girls, but my favourite pop band ever was *NSYNC.”
Rochelle: “I really liked the Spice Girls, but I liked Cleopatra too actually.”
Una: “Cleopatra, comin’ atcha!”
Are you Sugababes fans too?
Mollie: “I like Sugababes, but I prefer Girls Aloud because I feel it’s more my sort of music. I feel we get to know their personalities more too, whereas we don’t really know much about Sugababes.”
Do you want people to know all about you?
Mollie: “We do want people to know us because we’re all different.”
Rochelle: “It’s a fine line because we don’t want to be in people’s faces, but we do want people to get to know our individual personalities. We’ve definitely got nothing to hide.”
Finally Rochelle, would you ever slip an S Club Juniors cover into your live set?
Rachelle: “Hell no! I’m proud of it but I don’t wanna go back there!”