Sharleen shines her summer son
from The Sydney Morning Herald, 17 October 2000


Twelve years, five albums and record sales over 15 million ... that's Texas for you. And they write such damn fine songs, as well. Mike Gee falls for the charms of the irresistible Sharleen Spiteri as the band releases its Greatest Hits album.

It's 11.15pm in London where Sharleen Spiteri is "chilling out with my cup of tea. I'm sitting here in my chair getting a little bit snuggly and looking forward to my bed. There's a couple of hours of interviews left though. You know what? I don't know whether I'd rather be doing it first thing in the morning or last thing at night. Night is probably better but one o'clock in the morning just ain't cricket for doing interviews is it? One o'clock in the morning playing a bit of music, dancing around your kitchen is cool but doing an interview ... saying that, I've been sitting up at that time watching the bloody Olympics so I'm kind of getting my fill of Australia at the moment.

"Actually, I wish they'd hurry up and get me out there. It's getting warmer there isn't it and I need a bit sun. I need a bit of a holiday, as well." All this is delivered in a beautiful Scottish brogue that just curls off her tongue. "They always send us to Australia in the winter," she says. "It's true. Virtually, everytime I've been there it's been pretty cold, pissing wet and miserable weather." Maybe, with 11 years of Texas you've been responsible for climate changes. Have Texas, have freezing wet Scottish weather. "Shut up," she intones.

Sharleen Spiteri is awfully easy to like and get along with. A lovely lady with an acute sense of humour and the confidence to speak her mind. And she can sing. Hell, can she sing. We're doing this telephone waltz for Texas' The Greatest Hits, a compilation of 16 tracks that hasn't left the CD player since an advance arrived a month ago.

Frankly, there are few better songwriting teams than Spiteri and Johnny McElhone, Glasgow's original teen dream team of the late '80s when together they penned a small diversion called I Don't Want A Lover that went Top 10 worldwide and became the precursor to a career that now wraps its pop fingers - stained with spunky R&B, heartfelt soul and west-coast rock - around five albums - Southside, Mother's Heaven, Rick's Road, the extraordinary White On Blonde and The Hush, countless singles, and sales of 15 million worldwide.

The Greatest Hits features a couple of great new tracks - the first single In Demand, co-written with Dallas Austin (the penman behind TLC and collaborator with Madonna, Michael Jackson, Boyz II Men) and the irresistible shuffling soul-pop rocker Inner Smile from a get together with Greg Alexander, formerly of the New Radicals - and a magnificent reworking of So In Love With You for which original member and now celebrated orchestrator Craig Armstrong (who was recently in Australia doing the soundtrack for Baz Luhrman's Moulin Rouge) returned to the fold to add a breathtaking string arrangement. However, they're just the proverbial frosting. The Greatest Hits shimmers in a dayglo of burnished pop brilliance.

Black-Eyed Boy, So Called Friend, Prayer For You, When We Are Together, Halo, Everyday Now, I Don't Want A Lover (of course) are petals to a rose that has bloomed healthily and often through a decade. But at its very heart is one song so chillingly brilliant it stands as one of the finest pop songs ever written: Summer Son. From its picked acoustic intro that suddenly springs into that whirling melody with the chimes picking out the steps to Spiteri's husky perfect vocal and the utterly impossible chorus that'll send even the stiffest kneecap spinning around the room attempting a thrombosis inducing dance, Summer Son is everything that is great about pop music at its most fulfilling, and a perfect illustration why Spiteri and McElhone were not so long ago given the highest honour the British industry serves up to its songwriters - the Ivor Novello Award for an outstanding body of work. Nobody disagreed. This is a team and a band that has earned every kudos.

"I was like a kangaroo that day," she says. "I was jumping up and down, I was bouncing through everywhere. That and performing with [rapper] Method Man on the Brit Awards are the two highlights. The latter because everybody couldn't believe it. I've never seen so many stunned faces in my life. I had a wicked old giggle about that. You could see all these record company executives going 'What the fuck? Texas and the Wu-Tang Clan going for it?'.

"Getting the Ivor Novello for me was like ... oh, it's a feeling, you know. Just to be voted for by other songwriters is really cool. That's the award if there is any award to get."

Greatest Hits albums should be a recognition of time and achievement - many these days aren't, but in this case it's impossible to deny the title. They earned it.

"It's quite funny," Spiteri says. "I had a journalist saying 'You're not doing the usual thing putting out a Greatest Hits after two years.' And I was a bit like yeah, I know that's the way music has turned at the moment. People are getting lifetime achievement awards after one record and all this shit.' Call me old-fashioned if you want. What a lot of ... have one big-selling album, give 'em an award and whack out that Greatest Hits package." She laughs as much at her own cynicism as at how ludicrous the industry has become.

"Actually, we've decided for Christmas we're going to put out a special deluxe edition of the album. We're tagging on an extra CD with remixes on it and some videos and stuff. We thought it would a pretty cool thing to do. Then we had this wicked idea to do this wicked packaging. You've kind of got to do special things because quite a few fans really want them.

"It's odd though. I was talking to somebody about why we'd re-recorded So In Love With You with Craig, simply because we wanted to get him involved again and he is the biggest string arranger in the world right now, but, more importantly, we thought we could take the song to another level, which I think we have. And the person said to me, 'Well, why didn't you re-record all the songs?' I said that would defeat the whole purpose of putting out a Greatest Hits. You want that point where you listen to I Don't Want A Lover and you want my voice to sound 18 years old and squeaky. That's what it's all about.

"I was trying to convince him of the validity of redoing So In Love With You and not the others and it took a lot of explanation. People do think so strangely sometimes. I dunno, maybe it's me," she laughs, again. "Besides when we originally did So In Love With You we couldn't afford Craig. We can now. See, we've done well. Now we can afford our ex-keyboardist. Can you believe it? Can you believe him? He's done such big stuff - U2, Massive Attack and Madonna - and he is a wonderful string arranger and musician but he's also a good guy. We had a bit of a laugh in the studio. He said, 'I went walkabout for 12 years. Now I'm back. Where's that packet of cigarettes?' "

Dallas Austin she characterises as not being pushy in the time-honoured way of some big US songwriters who virtually say 'You're going to write songs, the way I write songs'. Greg Alexander, though, brings a totally different response.

"How did I find him? Absolutely off his trolley," Spiteri says. "He's lovely. Such a lovely guy. I don't think Greg knew what hit him. I think he thought we were nutters. Greg's so used to having to write the song, get the record ready and so on where all this onus is on him. And we walk in and it's, 'Okay, let's do it.' And then the band arrived and everybody's like 'I'm going to this on it, I'm going to do that on it.' Greg was like 'whoa' but he really enjoyed it because I think it was a different experience for him. Great thing is, he loves a good pop song at the end of the day. If you listen to Inner Smile I think you can really hear him in it and I think you can really hear us in it. In the end it was a really good combination of people who love classic pop songs.

"And don't forget Guitar Song. I'm so chuffed about Guitar Song because it's like a quintessential Seventies singer/songwriter song for the year 2000."

Twelve years is along time though. "Yeah," she says, coyly. So how do you feel about it all? "Proud as hell. I look at my band and it hasn't by any means been an easy ride. Johnny and myself have always believed in what we do and that we could keep on doing it. A lot of people had written us off after Rick's Road when we didn't put anything out for three years and I'm like 'hey'. I think a lot of people had stopped asking questions and thought we were finished, it was all over. And there we were in out little lab cooking up CD sides and doing our thing and out we came with White On Blonde. That shut a few people up. It wasn't a bad comeback was it? I even impressed myself on that one." Is it hard to impress yourself? "I think everybody finds it hard to impress themselves. I think Johnny and I are the worst critics of each other. We're pretty hard one each other, but I think that's a strength. Just like it's a strength that we both still compete and we both have an ego around each other. We sit in a room together and it's like 'I can write better than you', 'No, I can write better than you', 'No, you can't', 'Yes, I can', 'No You can't', 'Yes, I can'. But I think all that makes us good.

"We're both so different. Give Johnny a choice and he'll sit there for three months; give me a choice and I'm 'Right, that's the one'. He's very definite and focused though on what he wants to do and he'll push straight on and keep going on something whereas I'm 'Oh, I'm bored, let's go on to the next thing'.

"In the end though it comes down to the songs. As long they're playing our songs on the radio and people are listening to them and are touched by them - and I think they're good - then we've done what we set out to do. But I want them still to be playing those songs in another 12 years time."

Sharleen Spiteri natters on, talking about touring England in February, her band, her boys. She sounds like a maternal den mother. "Yeah, like right. If they want a mother, go back to her. I ain't their mother. They're just me boys." You just kick their white butts. "Yeah, I'm like 'on the fucking bus'. It feels pretty damn good to be in this band."

And all from a Glaswegian mob that named themselves - in a moment of divine inspiration - after that wonderful flick by a Dutchman about a town in the heart of Americana - Paris, Texas. "Wim Wenders, we thank you," Spiteri says. "Then again, sometimes I kick myself and think 'Oh God, what a stupid name'. But at the end of the day it's just a name. I think we're more than that now." She's right.


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