And critics say that dance music doesn't spawn real artists... Twenty-five years into their career as the most successful girl group of all time, Bananarama (the duo of Keren Woodward and Sarah Dallin) have released "Drama," a defiantly dance album, featuring the singles "Move in My Direction" and "Look on the Floor." Already a hit on satellite and dance radio, will the 'rams conquer the states again? Taking time out from her super-hectic schedule of world domination, Keren talked with dancemusic.about.com about fame, fun, and the continuing surreal joy of being Bananarama.
DJ Ron Slomowicz: So how did you enjoy your US trip?
Keren Woodward: It's been tough. It made us get up so early in the mornings. That means we didn't have much time for fun.
RS: I heard y'all did something with Playboy?
Keren: A radio thing, yes.
RS: What about a photo shoot?
Keren: Not sure about that one. As long as they've got Photoshop on hand, I suppose.
RS: I've been loving the Drama CD. When you were writing the songs, where were your ideas coming from?
Keren: Well, we didn't really work like that, to be honest. First, it was the case of finding the right people to work with, because when we're writing with people we have to gel - personality-wise- and have an understanding. We didn't really have a plan of how it was going to sound, really, I think we just went in to write songs. What turned out is what turned out. We've never been very good at making master plans. We knew it would be pop because we write pop songs, and we wanted to make it a modern sort of dance album really. And that was it.
RS: Feel For You on the album is that perfect kind of pop record that you've been making for what seems like twenty years now.
Keren: Yes, one of my favorites, that one.
RS: Why do you think that you keep having this fresh pop sound album after album, year after year... What keeps your ear to the ground with pop music?
Keren: I don't know. We love listening to music, whether we go clubbing or barhopping and that keeps it sounding fresh. When we went in to make the album, we didn't want to set any boundaries, but I do think that we didn't want to do something that sounds too far away from Bananarama. Although that seems to come quite easy, because whatever we do has that Bananarama feel to it. We weren't influenced by anyone in particular, we would sort of have ideas from hearing certain sounds on tracks or trying to get a certain vibe. We worked with amazing musicians like Merlin and the Swedish guys. Basically, we sat from the first drum beat and sort of directed them. Oh, try this, try that, and it was just trial and error really and just doing what felt right, which is how we always work.
RS: So what was it like working with Ian Masterson?
Keren: Well we've known Ian for a long time. Ian's like working with an old friend, because we've known him a long time and we kind of hang out with him as well. Basically in between projects, Ian's always been up for co-writing and working together, which is great. So when we got around to doing the album we just felt like we wanted to do some stuff with him because it's just a comfortable situation and also I really like the stuff he does.
RS: Talking about old friends, the new version of Really Saying Something really took off as well.
Keren: Yes, it was huge in the clubs over in Britain.
RS: What's your feelings about DJs reworking or remixing your classics?
Keren: I don't have a problem with it, I mean I find it quite interesting really. I think it puts a new angle on it. When it comes to performing all the old stuff, as much as we love doing the old stuff, we do slightly different versions of a lot of the tracks because you like to sing songs but you can't necessarily dance to all of them. A lot of our early stuff, it wasn't really dance music and it's it's kind of hard to perform some of it. When we're performing, we do a different version completely of Cruel Summer, which at the moment is a sort of Latin version and Venus, I can't even remember what the original sounds like, because we've reworked that so many times for the live show.
RS: For Look on the Floor, where did the idea come from to rework the Hypnotic Tango track?
Keren: The Swedish guys who we were working with, Korpi & BlackCell, asked if we remembered this song that had an amazing chorus. We listened to it and thought the chorus was amazing but we didn't want to do a cover version of anything, really. We started resinging the line of the chorus, and the lyrics are hilarious, they're just so crap and we were going to change them. Then we became sort of amused by it. And it was like, right, what are we going to call it? Oh, look on the floor, that's ridiculous. We came up with so many different sort of things and we wrote a song around it and tried to just give it a completely different feel. Then we wrote another one around it as well to try and change it. We thought initially it might be a bit too odd, like it sounded like a couple of songs put together because the verse maybe didn't go with the chorus. So we did one that was more of a sort of just a complete dance reworking of it. When you listen to it, I really like the fact it was unusual, if you take that chorus and the original track you would never expect anyone to do what we've done. I'm not sure how it happened really, but it's turned out to be one of my favorite tracks.
RS: The videos for the album are quite nice. The Look on the Floor set is club-ready, but I am wondering about The Move in My Direction video. I didn't really understand it, was there a story there that I missed?
Keren: No, we saw some pictures in a magazine - the neon graveyard where they put all the old signs in Vegas and thought it looked like an amazing film set. We'd never been to Vegas, so we thought, well let's go to Vegas then. It was so bloody hot, a hundred and ten degrees and I had five-inch Louis Vuitton shoes on and I had to walk up and down the street. After the first half hour, my feet were actually bleeding. They were the wrong size and I couldn't keep them on, so I'm just hobbling up and down the street in absolute agony. So, I'm not in it much. There was a gorgeous cowboy in it, though... The cowboy made the video for me.
RS: Let's get a bit personal. If Bananarama was a mixed drink, what would be the ingredients?
Keren: Well it's always to be vodka and tonic. With us, it couldn't be anything else.
RS: Do you think you'll ever write a tell-all book?
Keren: Everyone asks that because when you're traveling around and talking to people different stories come up, hilarious things that have happened. Strange things that have happened to us on our travels- and we could make an hysterical book. But I think my feelings about doing a book is if you're going to do a book you don't really want to leave too much out. I used to think I couldn't do that, what if my mum read it. Now I sort of think, well apart from the fact I wouldn't want her to read it, do I really want my son reading absolutely everything? Surely that's not a very good example to him. The last time I went up to university and said to my son, I really think you should concentrate on your studies because you've been going out too much. And he said, 'well, mum, what time did you get in last night?' I said five, and he said, 'well, I was in at four, so I don't think you can tell me what to do, can you?' So yes, I mean maybe I've already set him a bad example.
RS: I've got to ask you about one story that's floated around over the years. Tell us about the run-in you had with the lead singer of D:Ream, Peter Cunnah.
Keren: We'd be sitting there and he was saying some really, really odd things to us, and I think he'd had a few drinks. Then it all got a bit bitter and we'd just about had enough of him. He just turned round and said 'come and talk to me when you've written a hit song.' He'd had the one and we'd had quite a lot at that point. I think Sarah just gave him a push off of his seat and I gave him a dead leg on the way down really... Thanks for the memory, though I wouldn't want you to think that we were violent girls. I haven't done anything like that before or since in my life. But yes, he was a strange one and it's amazing how many people seem to have heard about that.
RS: Let's chat some more about the 'Ram's history. Love, Truth and Honesty is one of the finest sad songs ever.
Keren: Do you think so?
RS: Oh definitely yes. Do you ever think that people, because of the bouncy PWL sound, that they don't realize the strength of the lyrics?
Keren: People shouldn't assume because you're a girl making pop that you don't have a brain. If you listen to a lot of our early stuff we went through a phase, particularly on the second album where we were writing songs about a drug addict, the situation in Northern Ireland, and all that sort of stuff. Afterwards, you listen to it and think, does it make it sort of trivial because it's wrapped up in a pop song? I think there are people who are really great at doing that sort of thing, but with the sort of music we make, maybe we don't want to get too heavy. I do think that we've developed from being quite embarrassed to talk and sing about love in our early days and writing about more sort of menial stuff that meant something to us in our lives then. Obviously having had the turbulent love lives we've had since then, I think we're quite open at writing about them. I do think you write about your personal experiences and most of the songs on this album seem to be very much sort of relationship songs.
RS: What's it like hearing your songs in movies, like Cruel Summer in the Karate Kid and The Wild Life theme?
Keren: Cruel Summer was so exciting for us because we'd been out and done a couple of promo trips, and nothing had really happened. Then all of a sudden, we sit at home doing absolutely bugger all and then we come out, we've got a huge hit just for the fact it's been in a film. So yes, more of that please. There's nothing like sitting back and doing no work and watching something happen.
RS: And then what about when Ace of Base covered it?
Keren: The same thing, more of that please. Let someone else do the work.
RS: So the group's name came from the Banana Splits and the Roxy Music song…
Keren: It didn't come from the Banana Splits actually, it came from the Roxy Music song and Bananas was just sort of one of those things. We were eighteen and our first single was sung in Swahili and we thought that bananas were tropical. I don't know what it was and I think someone sort of threatened us, if you don't get a name by the end of the day we're going to call you the Pineapple Chunks, which would have been a lot worse.
RS: Have you ever gone to meet Bryan Ferry and talked to him about it?
Keren: No, I've met Bryan Ferry when I was about twelve outside a gig - Sarah and I were trying to bunk in the side entrance, which we did, I hasten to add. He got out of this car to go in the stage door and said hello to us and we just sort of punched each other and fell to the floor squealing babyishly. I only saw him one other time when he was at a party, and it was one of those moments where I would have loved to have just gone up, but it would have sounded so crap. I'm not very good at going "oh, I love you," it just wouldn't have worked. So I just sort of looked at him and thought, yes, he's so cool, but I didn't actually bother him. Typical British reserve.
RS: During the Stock, Aitken and Waterman years I have read that songs kept going from group to group. Did a song come out by someone else that you wish you all would have sung instead?
Keren: No. When we went to them, they'd had a couple of Hi-NRG hits and we just loved that sound. I think people forget that when we went to them they hadn't really had much and also that we wrote with them. So why we ended up leaving them was they would present us with backing tracks, and we'd feel that we didn't like that backing track and we wanted to do something else and they'd say 'alright, well, we'll give it to someone else then.' It needs to be a bit more personal than that for us when we're making an album, we're not the sort of group that you can just give a song to and say 'here, I've written this song, sing that.' I would do if it was an amazing song, but if someone gives us something and I think I could probably do that myself better- well, maybe I'm just being big-headed there, but you do. Unless someone gives me an amazing song, I don't really see the point in doing someone else's song, I might as well write my own. I think it got to the point where they were so successful doing their little team thing of writing their own stuff that they probably got a bit bored of taking time out to work with us because it made it more difficult for them. Everyone else they were working with would probably say 'oh yes, that's great,' and just do what they were told. Obviously that wasn't the way we worked and it's not the way we've ever worked, so that was why we left really. Once it became that sort of real production line, you just felt it, and I just want to be special when I'm working.
RS: You are very special! Is there anything you'd like to say to all your fans out there?
Keren: We've met so many on this trip and that's been the best bit. We've actually got out there and we've done some signings. You sit there thinking 'oh, I bet no one turns up' and loads of people have turned up and they've all just been great fun and we've ended up having a laugh with them. We even took a load on a night out after our last one because they were such fun and it's the best part about the job really. What we're really hoping to do is just come back and at least do some club shows, because we don't have a band at the moment, then at least they get the chance to see us perform. A lot of them have sort of missed out and never really seen us perform. We do club shows around Europe and the rest of the world, so that's probably the next thing on our list. Maybe next time when we come over to do a promo, we'll try and work in a few shows here and there.