Saturday night's alright for fighting

It’s 4pm on a Tuesday afternoon and Hot Press’ interview with challengers to Girls Aloud’s throne The Saturdays is not going well. Despite our efforts to charm Tipperary-born Una Healy, she’s being decidedly prickly. No, scratch that. If she was anymore prickly she’d be a cactus.

“Life’s good,” she coolly responds to one of my questions. “We’re in the studio at the moment and everything’s clicking together.”
When asked how her new record (the follow up to last year’s debut Chasing Lights) is shaping up, she responds “It’s a typical Saturdays sound,” before treating me to some awkward silence. This, dear readers, is what they refer to in the journalism game as a “disaster.” So, in an effort to steer her away from giving me one word answers to most of my questions, I ask her about her former life as a relatively successful solo artist and more to the point - does she plan on straddling both the world of pop and acoustic singer/songwriting.
“Errr I dunno,” she says, pausing to consider her reply. “Pop music is what I’m doing now and I haven’t thought much about continuing the solo thing to be honest. Since I started [The Saturdays] this is my life now and that’s my sole focus.”
It’s been just under a year since The Saturdays burst onto the scene with their inaugural gig in Belfast’s Odyssey Arena supporting Girls Aloud and nowadays they’ve notched up four hit singles, a well-received album and are the pin-up of choice for countless hairy-handed teenage boys across the country. Considering they’re so new to the pop world, it’s a remarkable achievement.
“Girls Aloud gave us our start and we’re grateful for it,” says Una. “They were always really friendly and down to earth with us. On the last night of the tour Kimberly [Walsh] said to us – ‘we’ve been in the business a long time and if you ever need any advice just come to us,’ which was nice. They didn’t want to patronize us either by telling us what to do and they were lovely to us. They were cool girls and we definitely owe them a lot.”
On paper, Una’s membership of The Saturdays seems an odd fit. Before joining the rest of the girls she made her name plying her wares in the pubs and clubs of Ireland armed only with an acoustic guitar, but now she’s in an all-singing, all-dancing pop band who have countless managers and constant daytime radio play. Does she sometimes feel out of place?
“Not really… we’re currently writing our own songs and I think it’s always great to hear that the artists are writing their own material. I come from a songwriting background myself, I love being creative and on this album we’ll have a few tracks on there that we wrote ourselves. I don’t think I’ll be playing guitar on any songs however. They’re pop tunes and the instrument just doesn’t lend itself to that. We could always strip it down to an acoustic performance to do them live and I’ve done that in the past, but on record it’ll all be multi-tracked.”
This summer the band will be playing at Oxegen and Una perks up at the mention of the festival.
“Oh, it’s amazing we’ve been added to the line-up. It’s surreal actually. Kings Of Leon are on the same night we are, so I’m dying to see them. There’s a great mix of acts on there. Like us and Nick Cave. How different can you get? I was there about three years ago but I was in the sun on the Sunday and didn’t put any block on and I got so badly burned I had to go home early. I was raging because I ended up missing The Killers.”
Towards the end of our interview the singer finally starts to defrost a little. We’re not sure whether it’s a case of catching her at the wrong time or that she was nervous talking to us, but by the conclusion of our chat she’s noticeably different. We take this opportunity to ask about that sultan of sleaze Basshunter and their live TV bust-up on Saturday morning kids show BBC Sound. For those who didn’t catch the programme, the ‘Hunter was quite rude and gruff with our girls and for want of a better word, seemed to be off his tits. So Una, what exactly was up with him?
“Ummmm I dunno… he was in a bit of a world of his own, wasn’t he?” she says diplomatically. “I think he might’ve been very tired because he nodded off on the sofa at one point and jumped a little when he woke up. I think he must’ve been jet-lagged or something, I don’t know. He’s a character anyway, that guy…”