It's not a rumour - Bananarama's back!
Spend an afternoon with Bananarama, one of the best-selling all-girl groups of all time and one thing becomes abundantly clear: Keren Woodward and Sara Dallin embody every gay man's Sex and the City fantasy - with a bit of AbFab thrown in for good measure. The girls (sans original member Siobhan Fahey, who left the group in 1988 and is now playing DJ dates in Europe) hit new York in May for the Stateside release of Drama, their new dance-friendly disc which includes clubby tracks "Move In My Direction" and "Look On The Floor".
"It's the first album we've had out in about 10 years that's had an international release," Dallin says. Reaping the benefits of an independent label, The Lab/UMVD, this time around they picked their own producers (including Murlyn Music of Britney Spears' "Toxic" fame) and wrote all the songs from scratch.
"I think it slowed down a little bit in the early 90s," Dallin says of her tenure in the recording industry, "because I had a daughter and the music scene had completely changed. In England, it was the Brit Pop thing and not necessarily a time for us because we'd sort of been around for 10 - 12 years. To come back was quite difficult."
Out of the earlier work, Woodward calls 1987's "I Heard A Rumour" her favourite. "That was a fun time," she says. "That's when we discovered the joys of taking gay dancers with us on the road. It had just been the three of us always and suddenly there were three dancers - well, one of them was a dancer and the other was just his boyfriend and another friend. And they just stood there looking butch, really." Adds Dallin with a laugh: "Or not."
What's more, one of the guys turned out to be Bailey Walsh who went on to do videos for Kylie Minogue. Another, Bruno Tonioli, later made a name for himself on Dancing With The Stars. "The people we used to hang out with at the point were really creative people - Leigh Bowery, [director] John Maybury. Not only were they fun but they were bright," Dallin says.
To celebrate their 20th anniversary, Bananarma performed at London's GAY in 2002. Co-founder Fahey, who Woodward describes as "really nervous", even came out for the encore. "She had never experienced the adulation of that gay crown and we were so used to it," says Dallin of Fahey. "I think then she decided she liked all that pop stuff that she proclaimed not to like the in the beginning. She loved being there."
Both ladies acknowledge that they gay fan base has been integral to their longtime success. "They're my favourite," Woodward says. "They've been loyal to us all the way through. Maybe it's our sense of humour and our sense of fun. You can sit and try to analyse it but you can't - there's just a connection. There must be a reason Sara and I will go out with 10 people and it's us two and eight gay men. Its just the way it always works out"
Eight gay men and two Venuses? No wonder they called the album "Drama".