Nothing goes out on S圜o without his approval, he listens to everything, everything goes through him.” “We see him at events and he has his say on what goes on the album. You spoke about Simon Cowell and S圜o’s involvement earlier, how much is Simon still involved day to day? It’s very slow and tender and we’ve had fans telling us that it’s given the song a whole different meaning to them. It’s a very different ‘I’ll Be There For You’ isn’t it? A few of these were choices for the tour that we’ve ended up recording, Christina Perri’s ‘A Thousand Years’ and The Rembrandts’ ‘I’ll Be There For You’. We were quite close from the beginning, we all love harmonies and making our voices work together.”ĭid the songs that went down well on tour end up on the album? When we first got together we were looking at corporate events and cruise ships, but once we started singing together we knew had to make this so much bigger. “We spent a huge amount of time together on the road and we’re still learning about each other. How has touring changed you as a band? Your voices must gel that much quicker? We agree on most things, disagreements are rare, but when we do there are five of us, so someone always has the casting vote. The good thing about Collabro is we’re all on the same page 99% of the time. “It’s half our choice, and then half of it is down to S圜o and Simon (Cowell), who put their input in. That’s what we look for, which songs are going to be the most impactful with our voices.”ĭo the five of you agree easily? Or does it take a long meeting to decide which songs to do? ’All I Want’, which is a Kodaline song and was on The Fault In Our Stars soundtrack, wasn’t a song we knew too much about, but a lot of fans suggested it and we knew we could get a lot of emotion in it. There are some more unlikely choices on there too… We’d done it live on tour too, so we knew it really well." We wanted songs that told stories, that’s how we whittled it down, there were some obvious choices, ‘Music Of The Night’ from Phantom Of The Opera, we had so many people suggesting that one.
We picked the songs we did because we love them, it’s not because anything in particular is en vogue right now, we wanted songs everybody could relate to. How did you go about picking the 20 songs? Did you have a goal in mind? It was a bit more relaxed this time, this is a bigger and much better album.” Not counting the demos, it was probably only nine or 10 days, but we knew the songs really well this time and we were well prepared, we didn’t have that luxury last time, we had to learn the songs and record them all in 10 days. Last time we spoke to you it was when your debut album was coming out and you’d said you’d had about 10 days to get the album done, did you get a little more time on this album? It really is an album by the fans for the fans.”
We demoed and then we picked the 10 best. We went through all those and we whittled them down to about 20. We got the demos together after we did this big poll on social media, we asked all our fans what songs they wanted on the next album and we had hundreds of suggestions. “We started demoing before Christmas actually. How long did Act Two take to come together? We sat down with Collabro’s own Thomas Redgrave to find all about the making of Act Two, touring the thing and their plans to write their own material one day… There are also more contemporary covers, including Christina Perri’s ‘A Thousand Years’ and Kodaline’s ‘All I Want’. Once again a 10-track collection, it’s largely comprised of songs from musicals, including ‘I Dreamed A Dream’, from Les Misérables, ‘Music Of The Night’ from Phantom Of The Opera and the iconic ‘Memory’ from Cats. After scarcely taking a breather they’re back with a new album, which is, fittingly, called Act Two. They recorded their debut album Stars in the space of 10 days and spent the following year touring it up and down the country.
Most 18-month old artists are usually still gigging in pubs or slogging it around the country on the toilet circuit, but Collabro aren’t most artists.įormed back in 2014, the fivesome put their career on an express train when they auditioned for Britain’s Got Talent and ended up going all the way to the final and coming out on top. “When we first got together we were looking at cruise ships, but we knew had to make this so much bigger” – hmv.com talks to Collabro