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| A1 in Singapore |
I have a very exciting blog post for you today. I ended my month of February interviewing the boys of A1 for Radio Heatwave. My life would have been complete if I interviewed Blue, but oh well, they didn't really engage too much with the press.
A1, Blue and Jeff Timmons had their Greatest Hits world tour and they came to Singapore and performed at the Singapore Indoor Stadium. I sadly missed the concert. Sadness aside, I got to speak to the boys of A1 and interview the pretty boy of the band, Ben Adams.
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| Your friendly Radio Heatwave DJ's (Michelle and me, Andrea) with the boys from A1 |
Michelle and I got to take a nice picture with the boys too. They still look really young.
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| Ben Adams all excited and hyped up when talking to us. |
This is what Ben Adams had to tell Radio Heatwave.
Andrea, Radio Heatwave: How are you finding Singapore so far?
Ben Adams, A1: I’m finding it amazing!
It’s been 10 years since we’ve been here, and we didn’t know if anyone would
remember us, so it was a bit of a worry. But then seeing everyone at the show
last night and people just waiting for us at the airport and the hotel was
incredible! People do remember us and also seem to love the new stuff… It’s
great.
Andrea, Radio Heatwave: How was it touring and sharing the stage with
Blue and Jeff Timmons so far?
Ben Adams, A1: It’s been really fun.
We’ve known each other for a long time and it’s just been really fun. We don’t
do any of this little boy band dancing and backing tracks. We brought a whole
live band and played everything totally live so we do very different shows and
I think it works out well.
Andrea, Radio Heatwave: You took about seven years off before reuniting,
how was it like recording together and standing on the same stage after so
long?
Ben Adams, A1: It was brilliant! I
mean, it wasn’t really a planned thing for us to get back together. We did one
TV show over in Norway where they wanted us to sing A1 songs again and the
reaction was so good, that Universal wanted us to make an album and we went on
to do 60 sold-out concerts over in Europe. It was just magic really. Doing our
own solo projects was really fun but I think we all felt that we just had more fun
together! You know, it’s like when you watch a movie you don’t really want to
watch it alone, you wanna watch it with someone. So, things like last night at
the concert, to be able to look over at Mark and Christian and just go, “Wow!
We’re doing this. We’re sharing it together!” It’s an amazing feeling.
Andrea, Radio Heatwave: After A1 actually split up back in 2002, right,
what have you been doing till you actually reunited back a few years ago?
Ben Adams, A1: I’ve just been playing
PlayStation.
Andrea, Radio Heatwave: Not even Xbox?!
Ben Adams, A1: No Xbox. I played it for
a little while but PlayStation had an edge. (laughs)
We’ve been doing a lot, I mean we have studios in London, so we’ve been writing
and producing for other artists. We’ve all done various different project solo
albums. Christian’s released three solo albums back in his home country. I went
on a show called Celebrity Big Brother, which was very strange, but kinda fun
with some of the people in there. I love Austin Powers, and Mini Me was there
with me, and that was weird! But it was great and kinda fun. But even if it
hasn’t been A1, we’ve always still been doing music.
Andrea, Radio Heatwave: You were known for your “Pretty Boy” image in the
past, now that you’re older, what kind of image do you have?
Ben Adams, A1: Ugly girl. That’s what
I’m going for! (laughs) Pretty Boy to Ugly Girl.
No! I don’t know! I don’t think I’ve aged that much actually! I’ve been very
lucky. I’ve sort of just remained, well,
in my head anyway, about 16 years old. So I’m definitely not more mature.
I’m still just a kid, joking around, having fun. But I got ID’d the other day
while buying some cigarettes for a friend. See, you’ve got to be 16 years old
to buy them, and I was dancing around the shop! The cashier was very confused
behind the counter, but you see but I’m 30! So, I felt brilliant… And also
plastic surgery helped. I’m joking.
Andrea, Radio Heatwave: What inspired your music 10 years
ago and what inspires it now? Has there been any difference?
Ben Adams, A1: 10
years ago, when I was young, I was inspired to write Like A Rose for my mum, but a lot of people thought it was a love
song and they played it at weddings! But, I think when you haven’t had a lot of
life experience when you’re 16, that kind of age, you listen to other songs and
you listen to other artists and you get inspired by them because you haven’t
experienced those experiences of love or breakup or worldly experiences
yourself. But when you’re older, (the
other guys are old, I’m still fresh) you just get a lot more experiences to
draw from.
Andrea, Radio Heatwave: How do you keep your music relevant
to your old fans, while appealing to new ones?
Ben Adams, A1: Well,
it’s a tricky thing but you gotta remember that the old fans that used to love
us back in the day, they’ve all grown up too so we don’t really have to think
about trying to cater to them. We just do the music that we love to do, but we
all keep up-to-date and we’re inspired by loads of different music today like
Lady Gaga’s, Katy Perry’s, our favourite artists’ like Bruce Springsteen. I
think it’s important to keep an eye on what’s going on in the trends of music
but still keep it sort of A1. We don’t want to copy other people too much.
Andrea, Radio Heatwave: Do you have any plans to release
another album?
Ben Adams, A1: Yeah!
We’re always writing! I think, as a songwriter, you always think that the last
song you’ve written is the best one, so we’ve got lots of new best songs that
we wanna release but we gotta obviously take it one step at a time. We’re very
proud of Waiting For Daylight, and we
have to make sure that that gets its own life.
Andrea, Radio Heatwave: What is the craziest thing a fan
ever did to you?
Ben Adams, A1: People
follow us all over the world in planes and minivans. We didn’t pay for
ourselves, but Sony back in the day was paying for everything but they used to
put us up in some amazing flights and hotels, and everything that we did was
very expensive. But the fans kept on following us!
I
think the craziest thing was when a fan came up to me, and we’d seen her in
loads of different places and she’d been following us everywhere, and we’re
like, “What’s your favourite song on the album?” She went, “Oh, I don’t have
your album.” And we were like, “WHAT? Why not?” And she went, “Oh, because I
spent all my money following you around!” (laughs) And we were like “Oh!” So,
yeah, it was interesting, or maybe crazy.
Andrea, Radio Heatwave: Older bands like Backstreet Boys
have formed a unique group with New Kids on the Block. But, where do you see A1
going from here?
Ben Adams, A1: Sky’s
the limit, really. We just wanna branch out and be as successful as possible,
really, but I don’t think we’ll be joining up with any other bands and making a
super group. I think we’re pretty sufficient just ourselves… Unless it’s a girl
band, than that’ll be awesome!
Andrea, Radio Heatwave: Any girl bands in mind?
Ben Adams, A1: Oh,
there’s this K-Pop thing going on that’s pretty cool! We were in the gym the
other day and we were sort of watching all this stuff on TV, and there were
like a million people in one band! I mean, no one makes any money but it looks
great! So yeah, maybe we can be a part of that! Maybe we can be K1-Pop.
Andrea, Radio Heatwave: Are you gonna do any K-Pop songs
then?
Ben Adams, A1: enough, we’ve been asked to write for a lot of the K-Pop groups. So we’ll see,
maybe A1 songs, or maybe A1-written songs, will turn up on their albums. That’d
be fun.
Andrea, Radio Heatwave: What message do you have for all
your listeners and your fans in Singapore?
Ben Adams, A1: Thank
you for your support. It’s fantastic to be back here. We can’t wait to come
back and do more concerts and we hope you’re enjoying the new album, Waiting For Daylight. If you don’t have
it, go get it! You need it. It’s a must-have.
Andrea, Radio Heatwave: Okay, we trust your judgment.
Ben Adams, A1: I
trust it too. It’s awesome.
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| Look at the amount of questions I had :) |
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| Ben Adams giving us our radio liner and also, wishing Radio Heatwave its 20th Birthday! |
Ben insisted on showcasing his drawing skill and drew me a picture for radio heatwave. It was very cute. Check it out for yourself.
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| Ben drew this..so cute right? |
I have to be honest and say that it was just so easy to interview him. Artistes usually have something against the interviewee or at the media at large. Ive interviewed other artistes that I wish I hadn't met or interviewed in the first place. I'll not mention who though. haha.
Hope you found this entertaining and informative and A1 has promised Radio Heatwave that they will be back really soon. He really assured us. So keep a look out for that.
Andrea Flavia William
Radio Producer-Presenter
Radio Heatwave, Ngee Ann Polytechnic
http://mypersonalrecount.blogspot.com/
http://twitter.com/andrea_flavia
http://www.facebook.com/andreaflaviawilliam
