BUY Texas’ new album Hi via their OFFICIAL STORE | Read our review here
Thirty-two years on from their awesome debut single “I Don’t Want a Lover,” Texas are still at it. Central to their longevity is a discography not only rife with plenty of chart busting hits, but a panoply of deep cuts that emphasize the group’s unflinching allegiance to the eclectic.
Hi, the group’s forthcoming tenth studio album due May 28th, is evidence of their undiminished power. It is a gorgeous and vital collection of tunes singular in its sound, but it does not feel separate from our current moment—and Texas wouldn’t have it any other way.
Ahead of the upcoming reveal for this masterwork, I had the pleasure and privilege to sit down with frontwoman Sharleen Spiteri to speak about Hi and its unique origins at length. Additionally, the hour-long conversation saw us touch on Texas’ creative processes, take an occasional dive into some of their catalog classics, and share our mutual affection for Donna Summer and seasonal music listening habits. For this longtime Texas fan, it felt like Christmas had truly come early.
Congratulations on Hi, it’s a gorgeous record. Talk to me about the milestone of reaching your tenth album—how do you feel?
Unbelievably nervous because it's not out yet! I mean, it's going to press and everything, but I always feel nervous when there's an album coming, because I think you just don't know what's going to happen. It decides the next couple of years of your life: whether you’re going to be doing jack shit or if you’re going to be out on the road promoting a successful record. So, you just kind of wait to see what happens with it. It takes a lot of guts to put yourself out there—to say “Here you go, what do you think? I hope you like and enjoy!” Because we could sit at home and just be making music for ourselves instead of putting it out there to be judged.
There's a part of me that feels happy that I get nervous (still), because I think if I wasn’t, it would kind of be really weird—you know? Like, do you just not care then? You want it to do well, you want as many people to hear it as possible—that's why I make records, that’s why I write songs.
I just want to be able to say, when I'm dead and gone, that people hear a record and go, “Wow, who’s that? Oh God, I really like that. Ooh, that (song) means something to me that relates to my life and the people in it!” That's how I like music and that's how I listen to—and how everybody listens to—music. A record should be something that really touches you or maybe helps you work through something that’s going on in your own life, or it gives you comfort, or it takes you to another place, it lets you dream—all of the above is really important.
Hi initially began off the back of a cache of unreleased recordings—but you all shifted track to carve out new material instead; what brought on that shift in creative direction?
Basically, we went back into the vaults because there were two anniversaries coming: thirty years for Southside (1989) and twenty-five years for White on Blonde (1997).
We’d been asked to go in and kind of put something special together (by the label), so we thought, “Well, let’s look for stuff—anything—that people haven’t heard.”
We knew there were different recordings around—like the original demo for “I Don’t Want a Lover” that Bernard Edwards had done—and what happened was that we came across stuff from the White on Blonde sessions that we hadn’t finished! One of them was “Mr. Haze,” it sounds very different now to what it did then, we completely re-recorded it. The song wasn’t finished and the Donna Summer sample didn’t exist at that point either.
It's funny because even though we wrote the songs twenty-five years ago, you know them straight away, the words and everything about it—because you worked on them for quite awhile! For some reason we thought, “We know how to finish these songs right now. We know how to complete them.” There were only a few as we started completing them, then we started writing brand new songs and we decided to just do a completely new album. And that is how it came about.
How would you describe the mood or tonal feel of Hi? To my ears, Hi has a very spring/summer feel like another record of yours—my personal favorite—The Hush (1999), which I only ever play in those months. And with White on Blonde—since we just discussed it—I love that album too, but I only ever play it in the fall and winter months.
Oh goodness! You're the first person in thirty-five years that has ever said that!
Really?!
Yes, you know that when we make records and when we’re putting records out—I am such a season person—I’ll literally go, “that record can’t come out in that season,” I’m very specific about it! You’re the first person—I swear to God—that has ever said that to me in an interview.
That’s great!
I absolutely agree with you. Records are very specific to the season and very specific to the feeling of it. It’s like when you hear The Hush and everything, there’s like a smell that you can smell and you go into—[sings the melody of “In Our Lifetime”]—you know what season you’re in.
“I Don't Want a Lover” is so obviously January time—January and February. It’s literally coming out of Christmas, it’s a brand-new start to the year—it’s kind of tough and hard with that quite cold, sparse, open space...that cinematic sound. Like with Jump on Board (2017), when we were putting that out, it was really specific to that time of year. It’s interesting! But Hi is basically sticking your head out of the window of a car (in the spring) driving at a hundred miles an hour.
Texas has never been shy about being stylistically adventurous—what has inspired that sort of pop bravado?
Just being a fan of music and having a massive passion for it. Then that passion becomes knowledge, and your head becomes like a jukebox. I basically have this continuous jukebox on in my brain, so I don't necessarily have to put on a record. Sometimes, I can just hear it. I can just hear it in my head! A lot of people, when they think of a song, they can conjure up the song really clearly in their head, but the amount of songs that are in my head is probably a lot more than most people. [laughs]
But it’s always been about writing a great song and that’s why we’ve never really followed any trends. We’ve just always tried to make relevant records, sometimes we have gotten it very right and sometimes we have got it very wrong. It’s about being able to get back in the saddle and just literally ride on through.
And how does Hi reflect this musical adventurousness today?
I think it's reflected in Hi if you look at the songs—you’ve got the Wu-Tang track, the ‘80s new wave stuff, the Bob Dylan folk stuff, then a bit of disco, then some Motown. It’s like, “Is there any genre this band will not go down (and explore)?” And the answer is no, there’s not.
“Mr. Haze” seems to have made quite an impression on fans. Can you talk about the creation of this song and how you tapped Donna Summer’s “Love’s Unkind” as a sample source? It’s a single of hers—that while popular in the U.K. at the time of its release—is rarely discussed, sadly.
It's funny because I know that record so well—Johnny (McElhone) and I know that record back to front. And we actually worked with Giorgio (Moroder) on a remix of “Summer Son” he did for us back in the day. He’s always been inspirational to us and Donna Summer has been really inspirational to us too, stylistically. You know, “MacArthur Park” and stuff like that. It’s like Donna reaches in and touches you. Sometimes you feel like she's just whispering in your ear.
What we did have with “Mr. Haze” was big horns in it—we just were like, “God, it sounds a bit like Donna Summer.” And we went, fuck it, let’s just use “Love’s Unkind” and when we put Donna underneath “Mr. Haze,” it was like...holy shit! This takes it to somewhere completely different! We phoned up Giorgio to see if we could get permission to use the sample and that’s what happened.
Mentioning Donna Summer, let’s discuss some of the influences on your vocal approach.
The fact that I have sung other people’s songs on night’s out—or just sitting around a piano—has been a very good exercise in being able to stretch, educate yourself and the (vocal) instrument that you have and how to use it. On one side of me, I’d have Marvin (Gaye) that is really sweet, soulful, but unbelievably strong—[sings a portion of “Distant Lover”]—and could open up. Then there’s the other side of my voice where you would have Diana Ross who has more of a small voice—for instance, if I was doing something like “Black Eyed Boy,” I would be in that space and have that kind of Diana Ross tightness to my voice and really slim it down. But someone like Donna Summer sits bang in the middle of the two of them—she's the bridge between Marvin and Diana for me where she can go between the two.
She’s been unbelievably influential to me. When I was growing up, I just remember wanting to be Donna Summer! Because everybody else at my school wanted to be Olivia Newton-John in Grease! And I didn't want to be Olivia Newton-John, I wanted to be Donna Summer. [laughs]
Right on! But we love Olivia and Donna equally!
Oh, I love Olivia too! The period I'm talking about is at the moment in Grease when Olivia Newton-John puts on her satin pants and her little top and she becomes this high school rock and roll queen. I was like, “Yeah, okay. That’s cool or whatever,” I like that version of her, but I wanted to be the Donna version of that because the Donna version was so much more subtle, but stronger. More effortless. I was like, “Fuck, I wanna be Donna!”
What about your technique regarding vocal takes on Hi?
When I’m actually at the point when I am going to go in to do a vocal, it’s like—I’m ready, my headspace is ready, and I know where I’m going with it. I’ll do one or two takes, sometimes at the most five. That’s it. I don't go past that. I ain’t singing it again because if I haven’t nailed it in those five, then I ain’t going to sing it for about another month. I’ll leave it and we’ll go back to it. [laughs]
I remember hearing about when Lee Hazlewood got Nancy Sinatra to sing “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” and he said to her, “You know, you’ve got to sing it like you’ve just fucked a trucker” and I was like “Whoa! Okay!” But when she goes—[sings a portion of “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’”]—the way she starts to deliver, the way she drags the words out, you can see her pointing a finger and singing it too. I'm like, ahhh! I get it.
Nancy was a character actress-singer, I would probably describe you the same way.
You’re absolutely right. Yeah, I get myself in a headspace—it was the same with Dusty Springfield as well. She was very particular on specific words or sections, then it was all cut together. Whereas I don’t do that cutting exactly, sometimes I’ll sing it right through and then do that one part again. I’m not big on singing over and over again, I’ll lose the momentum. I’ll get bored. I get bored really easy. If I haven’t nailed it in the first two or five takes then I’m just not ready to sing the song—today wasn’t the day for it and I’ll just leave it.
I need to have myself in a very specific moment and create a character in my brain and then I perform it. It is a bit of a performance—you need performance! You need to perform the song, the meaning, the emotion and everything that’s in it, so that you can reach out and touch someone to say, “Listen to this moment!”
But when I sing, I'm in my most comfortable place. That's my happy place.
Talk to me about the creative relationship you share with Johnny McElhone and Ally McErlaine?
I’m very lucky that I have a songwriting partner (Johnny)—we put Texas together, the two of us—that basically coaxes me and prods me (to grow). That’s my relationship with Johnny. We always fight. We'll argue a song through when we’re making records that literally makes everyone evacuate the studio and just leaves the two of us to it. [laughs]
We’ll wind each other up so much that sometimes we can destroy something and sometimes something great comes out of that. And he’s really good at saying to me, “Oh, right. We’re just singing like that again, are we? Okay.” Then I’ll do that (to him), “Oh yeah, because we’ve never heard that bass line before.” It’s actually a part of our creative process and it’s a good thing because we try not to be lazy and get stuck in the “same old, same old.” We like to play with things and try something a little bit different—the way we look at it is that we can try it and if it doesn’t work, we don’t use it.
Now, Johnny and I were together for a year writing all of Southside before we found Ally; and Ally, yeah, he was the first member to join (Texas). All of us are integral parts of the sound of what we are as a band when we play together and when we’re in the studio making a record. If you took a part of that away, then you would get something different.
You’ve re-teamed with RZA and Ghostface Killah of the Wu-Tang Clan on this album. How does that feel?
My feeling is it’s right. It just feels right. I mean, it's funny because people can go, “Wow, what a weird combo!” It was never put together. It was never a record company engineered thing when we made “Say What You Want (All Day Every Day)” with those guys (back in 1997). We just went out to New York, Johnny and I, and didn't know—at that point—that we would have so much in common.
But that passion for creating something new and taking chances—that was exactly the same (for us). It was just being in the moment; we were creating music and we were literally on exactly the same path and the same wavelength. We just got each other. And you know that friendship (with the Wu-Tang Clan) continued. I don't talk to them all the time or hang out with them all the time or anything, but there’s this real respect for each other there.
What happened this time is that we were making a documentary about Texas and we thought let's not just do the typical “we started in these humble beginnings, we became musicians and let’s pat each other on the back,” as that’s just a bit typical and boring.
But, if you talk about a moment when our career changed and everything, now that’s a story! That's interesting. So, we decided to tell the story about when we made the first record with Wu-Tang; RZA and I just sat down with a camera and let it roll and we just talked about making that record, that moment in time and where we were at in our lives then and what we were doing now.
By the end of that RZA was like, “We should make another record together!” Johnny and I had already written “Hi” and we just knew it was the song for them because it had that (Ennio) Morricone sound to it, it had that outlaw feel. We gave it to them, and we were like, “Take the song, do what you want with it.” RZA heard it and he loved it.
Your sophomore album Mothers Heaven (1991) is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Fans love this project, but it did not connect commercially. Why do you think that was?
Maybe people just weren't ready for Mothers Heaven because it is quite an introspective record; it is a lot darker than what most people expected of Texas at that point—even though they’d only known one record. It was a moment of a band, literally coming to terms with what had just happened (with Southside). Suddenly, we were on the road for a long time—we toured with Southside for a long time. And just kind of being these kids from Glasgow and trying to get our heads around dealing with the bullshit and bullying of the record company. That’s what Mothers Heaven was all about: “please make these people go away.” Maybe that is what people struggled with within that record.
And also, the truth is we were the outsiders within our record company; we will continue to be the outsiders. We are Scottish! So, we’re known as the fucking pesky Scots, they’re like, “Oh my God, they are so difficult sometimes!” I’m a woman who has no fear in opening my mouth and telling somebody that they’re wrong, that’s not right or not for us. Sometimes, that’s not what the record company wants. The record company wants some band that will kiss their ass, hang out with them and at that point do the shit with the drugs with them! And that was not Texas. I feel very proud that we’ve walked our own path and that we’ve continued to walk our own path—that’s why we have had such a long career.
Building off that last question—is there another Texas record that you felt was misunderstood?
I would never give a thought about a record being misunderstood because if it’s misunderstood, it’s misunderstood. But I think probably Careful What You Wish For (2003) was a record that maybe we should have worked harder on.
What are your five favorite albums of all time?
My five favorite records of all time would be Marvin Gaye’s Let's Get It On (1973), Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours (1977), Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline (1969), Dusty Springfield’s Dusty in Memphis (1968) and Blondie’s Parallel Lines (1978).
Awesome picks!
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