Inherent Voice: Una Foden interview

I am listening to Amanda Brunker and Brenda Donohue give parental advice to one of Ireland'sthe most successful Irish pop stars. What the hell! It’s just another interview in the extraordinary life of The Saturdays’ Una Foden, this time for The Marty Morrissey Show on RTÉ Radio 1. Foden is on the promotional merry-go-round for the fourth series of The Voice Of Ireland, for which she is a coach, alongside Bressie, Kian Egan and fellow newcomer Rachel Stevens. Marty wants to hear all about Una's infant daughter Aoife, the baby son she’s due in a matter of weeks (now arrived!) and what jobs her husband – Northampton Saints and England rugby player Ben Foden – is a bit crap at around the house. Men, eh?

The role for which she is best-known – singing with The Saturdays, the girl group who have scored five Top 10 albums and 11 Top 10 singles in the UK and shifted more than five millions records worldwide – barely gets a look in.
Of course, family life can’t be entirely ignored when your partner has just ruptured his cruciate ligament, putting him out of action for the rest of the rugby season.
“Obviously we’ve had some bad news with poor Ben,” Una tells me. “It’s not the best start to the year. But on a brighter note we’ve got the little baby on the way. Ben’s actually going into surgery next week – and the following week I’m due my baby, so there’s good and bad happening! He’s keeping very positive about it all: these things happen. It’s the nature of the sport. It’s very dangerous.”
But Una is happiest when she's talking about music. It's her passion. Hailing from Thurles, she comes from musical stock – her mother played guitar and Declan Nerney, the Irish country singer, is her uncle. Prior to the 2007 formation of The Saturdays, the then-Ms. Una Healy had already put in years of graft, playing the pub circuit. She fondly recalls her 2006 solo EP, Sorry, being reviewed in Jackie Hayden’s First Cuts column in Hot Press.
She is, you might say, perfectly placed to guide the newcomers battling it out on The Voice. Right now, however, the imminent arrival is her top priority...
"I’ve been at home doing absolutely nothing," she smiles. "I was at the shops there and I was feeling, ‘Oh God, this is uncomfortable now'. I’ve got to that stage where I can’t really do very much. I certainly won’t be strutting my stuff on stage or anything like that!"
Beth Orton once told me that recording while pregnant was like “trying to sing with a bowling ball in your belly.”
“It’s much more difficult," Una laughs. "Your breathing changes quite a lot. I did go on tour when I was five months pregnant. I barely had a bump then and so it didn’t affect me, but it would be a lot different now!"
The Voice live shows don’t start until late March, so there's a bit of breathing space.
"Thankfully! We shot so much before Christmas with the blind auditions, which you’re seeing at the moment. That runs into the battles just a few weeks after the baby is due, so I’ll be heading over to Ireland – bringing baggage, children, everything! I can’t wait. I still call Ireland home."
How has she found being on the show thus far?
"I love it. It’s really fun discovering new talent. I’m so excited about it because from the word go the standard has been so high. I honestly never doubted that it would be, because Ireland has such a great culture for music. Hopefully this time we can find somebody that might break through and become an international star. You never know."
None of the previous winners have made the transition into having commercially successful careers. How do you change that?
"Well, people who don't get to the finals might go on to have huge careers. It’s not all about winning: I think it’s a great experience. I myself did a few of them back in the day and that never stood in my way. It just wasn’t my time. I wasn’t ready. But I was very determined to go on and I worked really hard. But for the person who wins, it’s definitely a big deal – they get a recording contract with Universal and huge exposure. It’s what they do with it that's important. That’s where the mentors come in. We’ve got the experience and the knowledge to pass on to them."
Is it true that the first audition Una did when she moved to London at the age of 25 was for The Saturdays?
"That’s right! It wasn’t televised like these are, but I had already gone through the whole Popstars audition process and things like that. But The Saturdays was something I did quite a few years later. I went away from those earlier auditions and started recording, writing and gigging a lot more. So when I went for the audition, I felt really ready for it."
What does she remember about it?
"Singing ‘Umbrella’! One of the girls sang the same song for The Voice. I loved her as well, so I turned my chair. I said to her ‘this is really weird because I sang this song when I auditioned of The Saturdays!' That was a moment."
Una grew up in a musical household.
"I did. My mum is a nurse, but she used to play semi-professionally in a band called The Saints and she passed me on her guitar. She used to gig around Galway. Her brother is Declan Nerney: I used to go to all his gigs. Every Christmas me and my cousins would sing for him. He was always so encouraging."
What kind of sounds was she hearing at home?
"To be honest, I grew up listening to a lot of coutry music. My mother had the tape in, ready, and when Declan came on, she’d press record. She was so excited when he came on the radio. I was into pop music myself. I loved Madonna, Michael Jackson, Kylie Minogue. As I got a little bit older, I loved Sheryl Crow. I was about 13 when she had that song ‘All I Wanna Do’ and I thought, ‘God, that’s all I wanna do – I wanna be her!’ That became my dream. I started writing songs when I was 12."
Does she remember her first song?
"I wrote something called ‘I Miss You’ for my grandfather when he died. I wrote music throughout my teens. I was encouraged to write in school because I did music composition and actually got to perform for 50% of the exam. It was lovely that I was able to sing original songs in both my Junior Cert and Leaving Cert. I was lucky enough to get As and took that as a sign: ‘I’m good at this'. I went on to join IMRO. They were a huge, huge help to me. I did writing workshops with them and they told me about different song contests. I entered the Glinsk Song Contest – it’s not running any more – and I won that twice. I went on to sing backing vocals for Brian Kennedy in Eurovision – a great experience – and I recorded an EP of my own as well, called Sorry."
She studied nursing and primary school teaching before deciding to pursue music full-time. Did Una ever think she wouldn't make it?
"It got very disheartening on occasion. I loved the gigs, but there’d be times when I’d come home and think: ‘God, what am I doing? This really isn’t going anywhere.’ My mum was so encouraging, telling me to keep at it and give it five years. With hard, hard work and determination I do believe your dreams can come true, so I just kept going. Luckily I got there within the five year time frame!"
Did she have any mentors?
"My uncle Declan prepared me for the industry by telling me how hard it was and not to get into it! That kind of thing! ‘Don’t do it!'. But at the same time, he’d tell me he couldn’t do anything else. That’s just the way it is. When you want to do it, you want to do it, no matter how awful the struggle is."
In the world of pop you can be over the hill at 19. Was the fact that she was a bit older than the other members ever an issue?
"That’s an old-fashioned way to look at it. With The Voice, we don’t discriminate against age. In The X Factor, it’s a little unfair that they do the ‘Over 25s’ thing. You either have the talent or you don’t. People are young in pop but I think the older you get, the younger you start feeling. When I was 18, I was thinking you’re so old at 21! But when you get to 30, you stop feeling old. Age is only a number."
Most groups are based on friendships that have been going for years, but The Saturdays were put together. Was that difficult?
"They like to call it ‘manufactured pop’, 'cos you audition and you’re put together. But at the same time you can’t manufacture friendship. For years to come, me and the girls will always have that. We’re so close, I do class them as my best friends. We’ve been through so much together in life, both professionally and personally – with weddings and babies and boyfriends and break-ups. We’re so lucky that we do get along. I was the eldest by a few years. I remember initially bonding closest with Vanessa [White], who was the youngest. I was never made to feel, being the only Irish girl and being the eldest, that I was an outsider. We are all in it together with the same dream."
There were Girls Aloud comparisons early on. How did Una feel about that?
"Girls Aloud had their own sound. There was a lot of up-and-coming songwriters writing for us. One of them was Ina Wroldsen. She wrote a lot of our early stuff; she started her career doing our songs. So we had our own sound. We did work with Brian Higgins who’d done a lot of Girls Aloud stuff, but we didn’t steal any of their songs or moves!"
How would she categorise The Saturdays musically?
"We've done pop R&B, pop dance, pop rock stuff... like ‘Forever‘ was quite rocky. I think when you are a pop band you can experiment in different genres. At the same time, with The Saturdays, we can be a little bit of a guilty pleasure for people. Because it is slightly cheesy! Over the years we've matured a bit so we’re not doing the same kind of music we used to do. We’ve moved with the times and the trends. It did go very heavy dance there a couple of years ago – where it was literally ‘David Guetta, David Guetta, David Guetta! Calvin Harris featuring, featuring, featuring! Pitbull, Pitbull, Pitbull!’ all the time."
What has been the stand-out moment with The Saturdays?
"Having a No.1 record. We threw a huge party when ‘What About Us’ hit the top of the UK charts! Everyone who'd been involved from the beginning was there to celebrate. We’d had several Top 10 singles and been number two a few times, so to finally have that No.1 was great."
The Saturdays have a big gay following. With the equality referendum coming up in Ireland this summer, is Una a supporter of same-sex marriage?
"I’m all for that. 100 per cent. Do we have to have a debate? No, no, no. We need to move with the times."
What about the future?
"The Saturdays are still together and obviously my focus right now is on The Voice. I have quite a lot on! But I definitely would like to go back to the singer-songwriter thing at some stage."
Is songwriting important to her?
"Absolutely. I can wake up full of music, with a song in my head. If I haven’t got my phone beside me, or something to record it on, I literally go crazy: ‘I had this brilliant thing! Now it's gone!’ Very often, a song starts with a melody I wake up with. I’m much more of a melody writer than a lyric writer: I struggle with words. But I work very well with lyricists because I can sit down with a guitar and loads of melodies flow into my head. Elton John was like that! He had his co-writer Bernie Taupin. I think I'd work really well with a lyricist. I’ve been writing with lots of different producers, coming in with songs that I’ve half-finished. There are so many different methods of writing but I enjoy them all. But the song has to be there from the very start, even just playing it on the guitar."
The old grey guitar test?
"Yeah," she laughs. "A lot of songs sound better if they’re stripped back. If there are lovely hooky melodies in there, and hooky lyrics, a song doesn’t need all that production. Unless it's a dance song or something."
When you search “Una Foden interview” on Google, the first ten pages are filled with talk about her kids and husband...
"Oh, I know! That’s the thing – I never get asked about music. It’s so irrelevant to most people. It’s strange, isn’t it? I’m enjoying talking about music because I don’t get asked about it that often. That’s just the way it is. People want to know what clothes you like, what fashion you like and what make-up you’re wearing. ‘When’s the baby due?’ – that sort of thing. I remember when Kate Bush made her comeback she said the reason that she refused to do interviews for decades was because in the ‘80s, every interviewer asked her about dieting, or cooking, or domestic life. She would do a TV interview and be asked, ‘You don’t have any spots or pimples, what’s your secret?’ – at a time when she was releasing this amazing, boundary-pushing music with great lyrics."
That must be disheartening.
"I understand why people want to talk about gossip and all of that. Of course I do. But Hot Press magazine – because I always read it when I was growing up and getting into my music – is so music-related. That’s what I love about Hot Press. I remember sending my demo in to Jackie Hayden. He reviewed my EP, so you probably have that in the archives somewhere! I remember he came along to one of the IMRO workshops and gave a little chat. I made some good friends at those, so they were really good."
Has Una encountered sexism in the industry?
"I don’t think so... It’s very equal now. There’s females of all ages in pop music, in contemporary music, in classical."
The Saturdays' Greatest Hits was released last year with the ladies adamant that this is definitely not the end of the group. Which, as you know, usually means it definitely is the end!
"No, it’s not!" Una laughs again. "We’ve done five albums now. We’ve been together going on eight years. Something like being a coach on The Voice is something I wouldn’t have time to do several years ago because it was so full-on with the band. It’s great that we can all have that time now to explore different things. We’re taking a bit of a breather away from being on that treadmill all the time."
Are Take That the model?
"Definitely. They’ve taken time out and come back successfuly. At the same time, they’ve gone on to do different things. The same with Boyzone. They’ll often take time off, do different things and come back. Right now, we haven’t got any immediate plans – but we’ll definitely be putting more music together and touring again soon."
So Una's in a good place now?
"Yes, life is good. I definitely made the right decision to follow my dreams. You have to take the rough with the smooth. It’s a rollercoaster a lot of the time. There’s good days and bad days – but I wouldn’t swap what I do for the world.