“…it’s been 13 years since the band formed and in that time we’ve grown from girls into women and that can be seen in our music now today.”
C’est la Vie, Rollercoaster, Jesse Hold On and Blame it on the Weatherman, these were songs that in all their sugar coated bubble gum pop glory infected the airwaves and our minds and catapulted and held B*Witched in the spotlight for years. The most successful girl band to ever come from Ireland, Sinead, Edele, Keavey and Lindsay were the most famous Irish girls in the world for a time and then the music stop and the group went their separate ways. Now nine years later, Edele and Keavey, twin sisters are back on the music scene with something new, electric and grown up, let us introduce you to the gorgeous Barbarellas!
We caught Edele for a chat about life in B*Witched, h
It’s been 13 years since B*Witched first began and an awful lot has changed for you all since then. What has pushed you and Keavey back into making music?
To be honest we’ve always been making music, even after B*Witched ended we never stopped making music. Keavey and I went our own ways for a little time, we used it as a chance to grow and I ended up writing music for the Sugababes and Girls Aloud and Keavey wrote a musical.
Then on the run up to my wedding we ended up spending a lot of time together, organising stuff and we realised that it was time for us to come together again.
Was there any plan at the time?
We knew we had to wait, we just couldn’t rush into it and all of this has been worked on for nearly three or four years now but we just had to wait. We had to find ourselves and our sound and we just weren’t ready to jump straight back into it, we had to work at it.
The Barbarellas sound is very different to that of B*Witched – is this purely to keep up with the trends of today or is there something more to the music?
It’s definitely very different to B*Witched, that was all very bubblegum pop but that’s what we were like at the time. All four of us were very young, we’d just finished school, we were kids and that’s what we were into. Like you said it’s been 13 years since the band formed and in that time we’ve grown from girls into women and that can be seen in our music now today. It’s a natural progression and we are both very into the electro pop sound of today but you know there is an influence of RnB in there too.
We wrote a lot of our stuff and we knew what sound we wanted but we waited to see what others thought and our producer (who is fantastic!) when he heard our stuff just felt the same way we did about the sound.
You’ve released ‘Body Rock’ and ‘Night Mode’ off the album, would they be the kind of tracks we can expect from the whole deal or are there a few surprises in there?
There are a few surprises there alright; you know an album has got to have some stuff there to throw you a little bit. There are a lot of floor fillers alright but there are a few ballads.
Speaking of the ballads is it true that the sound of your son’s heartbeat was used on a track?
The track is called ‘Faith in Me’ and yeah that is Harley’s heartbeat you can hear! It’s written about my daughter and we’d planned to use her heartbeat on the track but we lost the recording so we’ve used Harley’s instead and I’m glad we were able to do that because both of them get to be a part of it! Like I was saying there are ballads there too, ‘Kiss from a Ghost’ is about a friend of ours who was in the Gulf War and ‘Smokin’ is about the effects of drugs and what it can do to people.
Parts of the album are like a diary of things we’ve seen over the last few years.
Is it difficult working on your career and juggling a family life?
It isn’t easy; it can be really hard at times. Like when we were on tour with Boyzone, I was away for nearly eight days at a time that was too much time to be away from my family. Four or five days max is what we can manage, after that the kids start to act up but I know it’s there way of telling me that they miss me.
What’s it like working with a sibling?
We never feel like we are siblings you know? We’re twins so we feel like we are just the rest of each other! I couldn’t work with any of my other sisters like I do with Keavey, don’t get me wrong I love my others sisters to pieces but me and Keavey just get each other in a way that I don’t think the rest can.
What about the name, ‘Barbarellas’, are you fans of the movie?
Big time, it’s taken from the movie with Jane Fonda in it and it’s only afterwards I realised how perfect it was for us. We’ve changed our image and that’s kind of what the movie did for Jane too not to mention the inspiration in a lot of our outfits!
Does it bother you when people say you are copying artists like Lady Gaga?
It doesn’t bother me no; I mean some people feel the need to label us like that but I don’t think we are anything like Gaga. Ok, the fashion it’s weird but that doesn’t mean we sound anything or act anything like she does. If I were to say we were like anyone then I would say we were like Kylie.
We’ve been asked to ask you if we can expect a tour from you guys anytime soon?
Please God! That’s the dream, to write and record and then go out there and just perform and tour. We’d probably start small, with our venues and that but yeah I’d love to get out there with our music.
Finally, if you were trapped in an Arcade, what one game would you play to pass the time?
(Without hesitation) PAC-Man! Not on the iPhone, the old arcade machine version. My husband is always playing it and he’s mad for it and I could never get into all those new ones, I just love PAC-Man!
To get your hands on a copy of the Barbarellas debut album, ‘Night Mode’, just click here!
You can also follow and keep up to date with their plans here on the official Facebook Page: Barbarellas
