We spoke to you about two months ago and you were still working on the album – have you finished now?

Kelli: It’s being mastered today and then that’s it! So as of tonight we will have the finished album, which will be very exciting for us.

So what have you been up to over the past few weeks then – just hitting the promo trail or what?

Kelli: Yeah, we did lots of photoshoots at the beginning… Since we last saw you we went into photoshoots for teen magazines and stuff like that. We went on a radio tour, which was wicked, just up and down the country in a van with just our bags and each other, which was fun. We had a right laugh on the radio tour. What else have we been doing? Putting the very finishing touches on the album.

Jessica: Road shows.

Kelli: Yeah, the summer road shows, gigging – out in fields around the UK!

Talking of live shows, are you planning to tour?

Michelle: I think we’re going to see how the single and album does. Hopefully, if it does really well, and if it does then we’d love to do another tour and we’ll probably announce the dates around Christmas Time-ish. That’s if everything goes well.

What’s been the response to the single, ‘Song 4 Lovers’?

Jessica: It’s been really good actually. A lot of DJs have said it’s the best song we’ve done so far and it’s going to be a No. 1 and all that, so it’s been really positive.

Kelli: People seem to be quite surprised by it, don’t they? People seem to think it’s quite different, but I don’t think we see it as too much of a departure from our sound

Tony: It’s still at the stage with the track where I think people haven’t made up their mind or they’ve only heard it once. This kind of track is something that we have to incubate for a while to get into people. I think people are still unsure or making up their mind about it, but we’ve always believed that this track was going to be a grower and it’s going to surprise a few people and they’re not going to know what to think. We’re so confident in the song because it works for us and all our friends and families – it kind of seeps into them and they grow to love it. We’re hoping for that kind of effect in general.
Now you’ve finished the album, has it turned out how you had all hoped?

Michelle: Yeah, we wanted to make this album like what people want to hear from Liberty X – which is fun, upbeat club tracks, a couple of ballads, really good vocals, really fun lyrics and just be a party album. And that’s what it is – it’s going back to basics and is just a really good pop album, definitely.

Are you guys like perfectionists when it comes to your music – do you know when you have it ‘in the can’ or is there that tendency to go “Oh, we’ll just try it this way” and keep on going?

Jessica: Sometimes, if you’ve lived with a song for ages like the demo version – we call it demoitis – where you can’t get away from how you first heard it and you sort of want it to be like that. But I think where we have stuck our oar in it’s been justified and we do get really, really involved with tracks and how they’re going to be produced and how they’re going to be mixed. We wouldn’t rest on our laurels until we feel that it’s right, but we’re not tortured artists that can’t let go either. We just want to make sure that it’s as good as it can be – especially songs that you’ve written yourself that are really close to your heart.

Are there ever disagreements about which tracks make the final cut?

Kelli: We’ve made three albums now, and we’ve never seriously disagreed about a track. There’s never been polar ends of the scale where one persons like “I’m not feeling it” and someone else is like “well I really want it on the album”. It’s never ever gotten to that stage where we’ve been torn that way – we always seem to be on the same page musically when it comes to what we should be putting on the records. It’s usually quite obvious really.

Tony: And democracy rules as well – you take a vote. If you’re ever stuck on anything then you just take a vote. We all abide by the democracy rules thing because we’re a band – it’s not any particular person’s decision, it’s a group decision. Even if you feel 100% that a track shouldn’t be on an album and everyone else wants it then you have to accept it.

How do you feel that this album compares to the previous two?

All: It’s better!

Jessica: We all feel that it’s our best one yet – and we’re not saying that as a tool to try and sell it, we genuinely feel that way. I think we’ve come a long way as writers and singers, so yeah, it’s wicked!

As time goes on does it get any easier when you bring out a new album or do you you still get just as nervous?

Tony: This is the worst I’ve ever felt.

Michelle: Yeah, me too.

Kelli: We’re so nervous this time.

Tony: I think this time it’s because I really feel we should do well, I really feel the song’s good enough to do well, but you just never know what’s going to happen – it could go either way really at this stage.

What do you think of the current pop scene at the moment?

Kelli: It’s lacking some… there’s not a lot of good pop around…

It’s lacking some good pop…

Kelli: Yeah, I mean… It’s nice that the Sugababes are back. It’s nice that we’re back….

Kevin: It’s not completely dead and buried – you’ve got Charlotte Church who’s doing well and like Kelli says the Sugababes are back…McFly….

Kelli: Pop is like a lot cooler now than it used to be.

Tony: I don’t think it is you know. I just think people are saying it’s a lot cooler.

Kelli: I feel like it is. All of the pop acts that are around…

Kevin: I think there’s more quality.

Kelli: Yeah that’s it – all of the pop acts that are around are quality. There’s no “can people sing or can’t they” thing going on …..

There’s not so much cheesy pop is there – it’s more sophisticated…

Jessica: Bands are way more likely to not be signed in the first place or fall by the wayside if they do manage to slip through the net and get a record deal.

Kelli: There’s nobody out there, really, releasing records that I don’t respect as an artist, whereas I think there used to be.

Tony: I think that’s a sign of A&R men not really wanting to risk their jobs as well, because they could spend a couple of million pounds putting together some crap pop act five years ago and maybe even make their money back from singles, but now there’s no singles market and people don’t want to risk anything because their job and their family depend on it. So you find that unless the whole package is there – like with singer songwriters they usually go to a label with a finished album, because that is the nature of what they do and it means they get signed and their getting a push. You find a lot of those kinds of acts coming to the forefront.

Kevin: It’s such a funny time though, because everyone goes on about real music and how everything’s real now and it’s better for it, and then so many people buy the Crazy Frog. People don’t really have a standard.

Tony: Commercial dance music has got to be cheesier than anything Boyzone ever came out with because it’s so formulaic – you literally get a dance beat, put a bassline on it and get someone to sing a tune from the 80s over the top of it, speed it up a bit and bang – Top 10.

Kelli: I’m not being funny but I saw a Boyzone video the other day that I’d completely forgotten about and it made me laugh so much. It was the one for ‘So Good’ – oh my word! I cannot believe that video. Fair do’s – the people in Boyzone are talented – but that video!

All: Start singing ‘So Good’.

Kelli: And they do this dance routine with so much running man in it and their really going for it. It was bloody hilarious – they must die when they watch that. I know Ronan wants to die when he watches that.

So do you worry now when you do photoshoots and video shoots that in 10 years time you’re going to look back on it and go “Oh my God, what was I thinking”?

Tony: Yeah, I’m actually really worried!

Kelli: You know, I don’t think that you can help that though.

Kevin: Everything goes out of fashion.

Kelli: It’ll definitely happen. At the time when I wore a shell suit I thought it was the coolest thing ever and now just seeing pictures of me in a shell suit makes me want to die, so it’ll definitely happen.

Tony: It happens already. I look back on one shoot for ‘Got To Have Your Love’ when I’ve got sunglasses on and I look a bit of a cock!

Kelli: I think you looked cool. Anyway, you did it in the new video so you obviously didn’t learn!

Kevin: You watch like a Take That video now and, at the time, even the dance routines were really cool. You can’t help things progressing – people getting better and having brilliant new ideas that just make all the old stuff look crap.

Jessica: A lot of our videos I think a lot of people think are quite slick, but in ten years time they’re not going to look slick.

Kelli: Yeah, but in ten years time they’re all going to be holograms or in 3d or something.

Jessica: It’ll be interactive and all that stuff…

Kelli: That would be cool.

Tony: You know for the film Minority Report, they actually put together a think tank of what the next 50 years might produce. You know when he’s walking through the supermarket and the ads are kind of speaking to him – they know his needs and all that – apparently that’s like 10 years away!

Kelli: Really!? Wow! That’s freaky.

Wouldn’t it be a bit crazy if you walked into a shop with a few people at once and the virtual store guide had to say hello to about five people at the same time? It would get a bit crazy!

Kelli: I’d hate it you know.

Michelle: It would do my head in. You would totally feel like you’re being watched all the time.

Kevin: It’s bad enough as it is.

Tony: But we are being watched all the time. In London there’s nowhere you can go without being caught on camera.

Kelli: Have you seen the big black lampposts that have sprung up everywhere with cameras? There are loads of them – you have to look for them, but they’re everywhere – on every main street there’s these black poles with cameras suspended facing both directions. It’s mental.

Kevin: I hate the fact that it’s like Big Brother.

Kelli: It’s got to be though – there are mad people in the world.

Tony: You’ve got all your terrorism going on now so it’s kind of like an excuse to have all the cameras up and we accept it in our lifetime, but hopefully in our kid’s lifetimes there won’t be that same threat and they’ll wonder how their parents let this happen.
Kevin: I think there’d be the cameras even if there weren’t terrorists around.

So do you guys live in London?

All except Kevin: Yeah.

Kevin: No.

Are you scared now what with all the stuff that has been happening in the Capital?

Jessica: It’s disconcerting and it’s just like awful for something like that to happen, but you have to try and get on with life in as normal a way as you can. I’ve been on the tube since – and millions of Londoners have – and you just have to try and carry on.

Tony: It makes me think how lucky, in general, we’ve been in our lifetime to not be around any conflict. In so many countries it’s constant – people are born into it.

Kelli: Even in London – if you talk to older people they’re like “this reminds me of the time the IRA…. This reminds me of the time in the war…” and we haven’t seen any of that, have we? This was like our first experience of that sort of thing.

Getting back to Liberty X! Obviously there are some very personal songs on the album because you were involved with the writing – can you tell us a little about these?

Tony: There’s one song that I want to talk about that me, Michelle and Jess wrote called ‘In My Bed’. I actually think that it stands out more for me even than ‘Song 4 Lovers’ in terms of the lyrics because there was a phase a couple of years ago before the band kicked off … and even a phase last year where I didn’t even want to get out of bed. You just stay in bed and think “Why should I bother?” because there’s nothing demanded of you when you’re making an album, and certainly nothing demanded of us under the circumstances which we were making albums. It starts to really grate on you and you think “this is a nice place to be – why don’t I just stay here?”

All: Laughter

Tony: I think those lyrics are so simple and so nice, but they’re so honest – there’s a real kind of… I don’t know I’m trying to be deep here!

All: Laughter

Kelli: I remember when they wrote it we were in a studio doing two songs that day and I was in the vocal booth doing the vocals for a different song and I came out and they sang it to me and I was like “yeah!” It’s just one of those songs where everyone will just go “Yeah! I so have those days!”

Tony: It sounds nice – it sounds like you’re saying it’s a really nice place to be, but underneath it’s actually a bit worrying – which is really hard to do with pop. It’s so difficult to do anything with an undercurrent in pop. Normally it’s just on the same level, but I think when you can do it simply in pop then it’s an achievement.

Jessica: There are also songs on there that are just from fantasy, that are totally made up scenarios. ‘Shotgun’ for example is one that Tony and I wrote where we dreamed up a scenario that we would quite like to do and make a video for.

Tony: There’s a bonus track called ‘Bend Over Angelina’ too!

All: Laughter

That sounds interesting! How do you write – do you write in small groups or as a band?

Kelli: We had a thing with this album where it was just like whoever felt creative that day, whoever felt like going to the studio went – sometimes it was me and Tony, sometimes me and Michelle, just whatever.

Kevin: I didn’t really do much on this one, purely because I was doing the games and was just training every day – I had to go to training. I’m a bit gutted that I’ve not really been as involved as the other ones, but I think the guys have done a brilliant job – they’re brilliant tracks. I really like ‘Then There Was You’…

Kelli: Yeah, I really like ‘Then There Was You’ – it’s a ballad that started out as a joke. The day that sticks out for me – the funniest day in the making of this album – was when we had a beautiful, beautiful piano – a guy playing the piano – and he was just messing around playing the keyboard. I don’t know why, but we were talking about being homeless or my heart doesn’t have a home or something, and then it just turned into a joke “let’s write a song about being homeless” and we started making up the most stupid lyrics.

Kevin: It just sounds like it was such a scream!

Kelli: (laughing) It was a scream Kevin, it really was! It was really, really funny, but there were loads of good melodies coming out, and when we finally got serious we came out with some really good lyrics and it’s ended up being one of the best songs on the album for me.
Kevin: I love it because it’s got feeling to it. And I played it to people who aren’t really into pop and they were like “I really like that song” because there’s something about it.” I think that’s a compliment to the guys who wrote it.

Tony: A lot of people I spoke to about that track said they can relate to it , like ‘In My Bed’ they get it straight away because half of them probably started out thinking ‘I’m going to do this with my life and that with my life’ – be the president of a country and all that sort of stuff. But then you get into a job and you get into a life and a lot of people think to themselves “well, it’s not really the way I thought it was going to work out’, but then they find somebody and everything’s cool. A lot of people I know love it because of that reason.

When you start work on a track what comes first - the melody or the lyrics?

Jessica: On the whole we’ve tended to write to backing tracks, but we all write melodies and lyrics. We write in different groups and stuff depending on who’s feeling creative on the day. But yeah, we do all write melody and lyrics and there are also some songs we’ve done that we’ve started from scratch.

How do you decide who sings which bits? Is that something that you decide at the writing stage or when you’re in the studio?

Kevin: We usually fight or do arm wrestles for verses. Or we’ll text our manager and say…

Michelle: I’ll give you 50 quid if you let me sing this bit!

Tony: The producer… he usually puts whoever he wants – or she wants, but I don’t think we’ve ever had a female producer – but whoever the producer wants on it they put on it – it’s as simple as that and we tend not to argue with producers because they know what they’re doing.

Have you decided what your next single is going to be yet?

Jessica: No, actually we haven’t. I guess we’ve got like three options and we’re not really sure. I think we’re going to wait until it’s all mastered and then try and get some feedback – just by playing them to people I guess. I thought we might let people hear them on the website and see what they thought.

Maybe you could have an online vote – get them to vote on which one they liked best or something?

Jessica: Yeah!

Let the fans choose Liberty X’s new single – that would be quite cool actually.

Michelle: But could you imagine if they picked the one that maybe we weren’t that impressed with or something?!

Tony: It’s so hard to choose a single anyway, because you can have a personal connection to a song and think it’s really good, but in the commercial market place what’s going to work on radio is the be all and end all. And you have to bear that in mind – if you’re not getting played on the radio then you’re not getting played on the video channels – you’re f@*ked even if the song is good!

What are your plans for the next few weeks?

Michelle: We’ve got loads of TVs – we’ve got GMTV, This Morning, Ministry of Mayhem, CD:UK and Top of the Pops. We’ve got loads of gigs – big gigs – like G.A.Y. and we’ve got Popworld. And we’ve got some photoshoots that are going to be in the magazines over the next few weeks as well. Things are really busy over the next few weeks, which is wicked, because obviously we’ve got a single to promote!

Do you like promo?