Girls with soul

"Really, the only thing we have to do is get up and sing.”

Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me. Perhaps that’s why 25-year-old Sharon Condon feels the need to backtrack a little.
“Obviously, we have an interest in how the industry works and how many albums we sell, but Kian and Louis are amazing and we have an amazing record company. If there’s a problem, they’re the people who’ll sort it and we just feel so confident in them.”

Put together by dream team Louis Walsh and Westlife’s Kian Egan, grown-up girl group Wonderland are about as far away from the underground DIY scene as you can get. Between stylists, make-up artists, producers and vocal coaches, there’s always someone to lend a helping hand – co-manager Egan even decides which girl sings what and occasionally puts together the band’s outfits.

“We’ve been very lucky,” Sharon adds. “It’s been a long three years, don’t get me wrong, we’re burnt out! It’s meant to be the most exciting bit, releasing the album, but we’re all absolutely knackered! We didn’t even get to go out and celebrate for a top ten album in the UK, we were just too tired!”
With the exception of Kian’s wife, ex-Hollyoaks hottie Jodi Albert, the girls in Wonderland spent very little time in the limelight before auditioning for the group. Condon, a former contestant on Irish talent show You’re A Star, is grateful that her lack of experience didn’t go against her.
“Kian would call you into a room, ask you questions, suss you out a little bit, see what your personality was like. He was looking for people that were down to earth and he studied us to make sure there wasn’t too much cattiness. There’s loads of girls who can sing and are talented, there’s millions of them all over the world, but he wanted five girls who would have a good bond.”

And?
“It was instant. Obviously, it took time to get to know each other and build trust with each other, just like any girl, but now we know each other three-and-a-half years, we spend 24/7 with each other. We live together, so if we didn’t genuinely get on, we wouldn’t be able to do it.”
Although the audition process was not filmed, the transition from bedroom singers to fully-fledged pop vixens was documented on reality show Louis Walsh And Kian Egan’s Next Big Thing.
“It showed a percentage of what we did, but it got a lot more difficult after the show. We’ve done so much since then, we did a school tour, a radio tour, we did the Westlife tour again, the Boyzone tour, we did loads of different festivals… we’ve also been groomed a lot more, you can see at the start we were all so pale!”

Alright, so they’ve been upgrading their tans, but Wonderland have also managed to climb the charts without resorting to belly tops and booty pops.
“If we’re doing rehearsals, it’s not going to a dance studio,” Sharon insists. “We want to grow as artists, not become dancers. Beyoncé can just stand there and sing and she has that thing that just draws you in. I know you can’t work on that, but you can work on the confidence behind it.”
Unlike pretty much every other pop act going, Wonderland have yet to yield their songs to the European electro trash trend.
“Our sound is country,” Sharon says. “If you look at Adele, people actually do obviously want to hear that sort of music. All the dance stuff is great but for us we want to do what we do, which is country pop, and I think there’s definitely a gap in the market for us.”

Clearly, being in a girl band means an awful lot to Sharon, who recalls bursting into tears when she first saw the video for their ‘Nothing Moves Me’.
“I couldn’t believe that was our video,” she beams. “You spend you whole life dreaming of having your own video. It was very surreal.
“That’s what you have to remember when you feel like things are hard or you’re worn out. You have to think back to those moments. I went to see The Script the other night in the Aviva stadium and I was looking around thinking, ‘This is incredible, I would love this for Wonderland!’ I just want that so much.”
They may not be selling out 50,000-capacity venues just yet, but with fans like gossip king Perez Hilton on their side, it might not be such a lofty ambition.
“He asked us to come over and do a song for him in his back garden. He was so different to what I expected. Obviously, he had a bad name for a while but he’s not like that at all! He came out, he’d just hopped out of the shower and had a little chat with us. We’re very lucky to have his support, he’s got millions of followers.”

Aside from meeting the bleached prince of blogging, what’s been Wonderland’s pièce de résistance?
“Getting the album charted in the UK and Ireland. We couldn’t believe it, we had just gotten off the plane in Ireland to start promotion and Kian told us over the phone. I just couldn’t believe it, I just felt so relieved… but I didn’t cry!”