Sharleen Spiteri has spent four decades fronting Texas. And she’s still loving it. Deana Luchia finds her frank and funny...
Interviewing Sharleen Spiteri, singer with the Glaswegian band Texas, is the most fun I’ve had in ages.
From the moment she appears on Zoom, musician-cool in a rumpled blue shirt and with that instantly recognisable choppy haircut, Sharleen is friendly, funny and very, very sweary.
I’m supposed to be asking her about Texas concerts this summer, including an appearance at Sandown Park in August, but she’s so approachable seeming that I can’t not ask her first about that hair – surely the best in the business.
When am I ever going to get the chance again?
And so I do. Does it look so fabulous because, before she formed Texas with Johnny McElhone (bass player) and Ally McErlaine (guitarist) in her teens, she worked as a hairdresser?
“I do know what I’m doing with hair,” she says, smiling. “I was, even if I say it myself, a very good hairdresser, but the thing is, I just don’t wash it. That’s what I do. I just literally get out of bed, and that’s how my hair is.”
Sharleen wasn’t a hairdresser for long.
The first Texas single, 1989’s I Don’t Want a Lover, was a huge hit, and the band went on to sell over 40 million albums, enjoying international success with tracks including Say What You Want, Summer Son and In Our Lifetime.
Almost 40 years after forming, Texas still play huge arenas – in 2023, they played on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage to 120,000 people.
Sharlene Spiteri
Did Sharleen ever imagine that she’d be fronting the band in her 50s?
“No, I didn’t. When you’re young, you’re like: ‘Oh, if I get to do it for a year, I’ll be dancing.’ I didn’t really think I would go this far down the line.”
We talk about how the music industry has changed over the years.
“It’s never been easier and cheaper to make records, but it’s never been harder to break as a young band,” says Sharleen. “There’s so much traffic out there. And then there’s the argument that record companies and publishers don’t protect artists by making sure we’re paid properly through streaming. It’s difficult. I wouldn’t, I’ll be honest, want to be a new young artist starting out right now.”
What about women in music? Have things got better for them?
“No. It’s harder than it’s ever been because, you know, the bad guys are better hidden now – they know what not to say. They can’t be complete w*****s up front. Instead they make sure that they have the right dialogue, and look the right way, and everything’s all nice on the outside. Then you get in there and suddenly you see that they’re just very bad people.”
Fortunately for Sharleen, however, the Texas guys have always had her back.
“They’ve always been very supportive of any decisions I make, like the fact that I don’t want to work with certain people. And you know, as men, they’re always very conscious of my safety and my voice within the band.”
Such harmony is rare after so many years of performing. How have Texas remained so happily intact?
“We’re a family,” says Sharleen simply. “We’ve been teenagers. We’ve been husbands and wives. We’ve been divorcees. We’ve been parents. We’ve gone through a life together, so we’ll always be connected.”
Whether talking about travelling in a tour bus – “It’s a little bit harder getting up into the bunk these days, with the old bones” – or which song she really hates singing – “I f***ing hate In Our Lifetime, it does my nut in” – Sharlene is enviably, endearingly frank.
Did this come with age or has she always been a straight talker?
“The thing about getting older is that you don’t actually give a flying f*** what anybody thinks, which is great. I love the freedom that it allows. But I’ve never really been one for giving a f*** in any case. I do give a f*** about not hurting people; I really do care about that. But I don’t need you to be my friend; I don’t need you to like me. You either like me or you don’t, and it’s fine.”
In Our Lifetime, she explains, was permanently ruined for her by the making of the video.
“It was one of the all-time worst experiences of making a video, and it damaged the song forever. I just can never ever get it out of my head. We had an arsey video director and it was just a f***ing mess. So every time I hear the first three chords, I start glitching.”
She sings a few bars for me, deliberately off, which makes me laugh out loud.
Infinitely better was her experience of filming the video for the 2000 single In Demand: Sharleen danced the tango in a garage forecourt with actor Alan Rickman. This is like the hair question all over again. Alan Rickman – aka Professor Snape – was my celebrity crush. How can I not ask her about dancing with him?
“We were actually doing a video meeting in the Sony studios just off Tottenham Court Road, and we were talking about me doing the tango with someone,” she recalls. “Vaughan Arnell, who was the video director, said it had to be somebody really believable – not just some good-looking guy.
“As we were talking, the studio door opened and Michael Kamen, the orchestrator and musician, came in. He said that he’d just been on the phone with his really good friend, Alan Rickman, who was a massive Texas fan, and everybody just looked at each other and went: Alan Rickman would dance the tango.”
Sharlene and Alan were friends until his death in 2016. Aside from the video, Rickman also did a spoken word performance for the band’s track Start a Family the year before he died. Sharleen still speaks of him in the present tense.
“He is,” she says, “one of the most generous, kind, creative people I’ve ever met. He’s always been very supportive of young actors, musicians, artists – anyone in the arts – giving his time and his talent in any way that he could. He’s just a wonderful human being.”
Sharleen is generous herself. When I ask about her current listening, she showers compliments on other performers.
“I just love Sabrina Carpenter,” she enthuses. “I love her songs, her energy, everything. I love all the videos that she makes. I like that she’s sassy and strong. She’s got a really good kind of vibe.”
Lola Young (of Messy fame) is another favourite.
“I love her voice and I think her songwriting is absolutely brilliant. And I like the fact that she’s dancing to her own tune. She’s just feisty, you know. She’s got something to say.”
Our interview draws to a close. A friend who met Sharleen years ago describes her as a “cool chick who’d definitely have gone to the pub with you” – which is exactly what I would have liked. But Sharleeen is heading off to write and record. So I settle for a more conventional ending. What’s it really like, I ask, performing to packed arenas with your mates?
“I’m living my dream,” she says. And I totally believe her.
Texas is performing at Sandown Park, Esher on August 7; thejockeyclub.co.uk/sandown/events-tickets/texas
