JLS – Or ‘Jack the Lad Swing’ to use their unabbreviated moniker – have rocketed to fame in just two short years, with a string of awards, sell-out concerts and a quadruple platinum album to their name. Not bad for runners up on a reality TV show! We sent Lee Dalloway for a chinwag with four of the nicest lads in pop to find out more…
Lee: Boys, are you well?
Oritsé: Good, we’re on tour at the moment and rehearsing every single day at the moment. It’s important though, we’ve gotta be on point, it’s a big deal.
Marvin: And how are you, Lee?
Lee: I’m shattered, I didn’t sleep well last night…
Marvin: Is it because you were excited to talk to us? [Laughs]
Lee: I didn’t think we’d get into my wet dream about you so quickly into the interview, but there you go. So, the last two years of your lives, you must take a step back and go, “what the fuck”?
[Everyone agrees emphatically]
Marvin: Absolutely, we still genuinely pinch ourselves everyday and think ‘wow, it’s all going so well’. It’s boiled down to the music. Everyone on X Factor is popular for a certain amount of time, but you have to bring out stuff people like to be successful.
From starting at the level of exposure you receive on the X Factor to where you are now, the last two years must have been a crash course in the music industry?
Aston: The whole of X Factor was the biggest learning experience; it really is like a boot camp over a six-month period, it’s very intense.
JB: I think we saw [X Factor] from the underdog perspective though. After it finished, we had a lot more time to set the album up how we wanted to. Marvin used to be in a group before [boyband VS] and he knew the ropes. A lot of it is common sense – the music industry isn’t rocket science. There are ins and outs that you learn everyday, right up until the day you retire.
Marvin: For me, you learn so quickly and so fast about the industry and you have to grasp as much knowledge as you can, hold it, bottle it up and just carry it through. How ruthless it can be and how much hard work it is, but the plus’s make it all worth it. The X Factor is a fast track to everything, like an apprenticeship, you learn two years of industry knowledge in six months. The amount of stuff you go through is mind blowing, even more so now two years later. The press attention on it is unprecedented, and every year gets bigger.
The PR ‘spin’ for the show has to get bigger though doesn’t it? It has to top itself each year.
Marvin: Exactly. Look at the Gamu situation, she didn’t even make the final and her life is massively changed, hopefully for the better. Most people come out of it and do well, but there are cases it doesn’t work out so well. I’ll always say to make the final 12 it can’t do anything but better your life. People are obviously gonna forget about you quite quickly, but you do some gigs, you get some decent money, you have a profile and people know who you are. That can only open doors for you and be positive.
So you don’t think we should believe all we read about the bitchy catfighting that goes on backstage?
Aston: Our year, there was never any bitchiness. Everyone enjoyed it, this year I’m not so sure all that is 100% true. You live in a house with people you don’t know and personalities will clash but it’s all about the Saturday night, if you don’t perform well you’re gone Sunday.
The more ‘serious’ music press always seem reluctant to say anything nice about people from the X Factor and certain sections of the press seem to paint you simply as a ‘manufactured pop group’. Do you think that’s unfair?
Oritsé: It’s one of those situations that because we come from a TV show, people presume that we’re not credible, little do people know that we wrote most of our albums and we came together quite naturally 2 or 3 years ago. We haven’t been manufactured, I kinda put the band together and we’ve been working hard ever since.
JB: We’re very lucky, we stressed to our label and management from the off that we’re writers and musicians who want to show our talent, otherwise what would be the point!
Aston: We write a huge amount of tracks, we’re very much involved with everything. If we weren’t it wouldn’t be us and we wouldn’t be doing it.
Oritsé, how did you get the guys together?
Oritsé: I was scouted for a boyband when I was 17 and it didn’t work, it wasn’t right for me. I came away thinking that it could work, but I wanted to do my own band and did it with a belief you can do anything. I went and advertised all through Central London, through universities and I found Marvin and Aston through two mutual friends, then we found JB. We got together and started singing and it was like magic the first time we came together, so natural.
If everyone’s got a hand in the creative process, do things get heated at all?
Aston: We have heated discussion over business but that’s business, the next minute you can say ‘what are you doing tonight?’ You just have to be honest with each other. We’re running our own business basically, we wouldn’t get that opportunity if our label didn’t trust us. They will sit down and 50/50 we’ll go through with it. JLS is a lot more than us four; it’s a whole team.
Being honest, do you think it would have been different if you’d have won or if Simon Cowell had signed you rather than Epic?
Oritsé: Definitely, definitely. I think we’d have had less of a say but everything happens for a reason, and we still thank Simon everyday.
Marvin: It was the best thing to happen to us, who knows where we’d be now if he had, I definitely think the direction would be a bit different. The guys at Epic said to us they wanted our first single to be something different, something where people would go ‘Oh wow, is that JLS from X Factor’? I don’t know if Simon’s label would have taken that risk, but as I said I wouldn’t change a thing.
So, naturally, you must find you all have different roles within the group? Different strengths and perspectives that makes it all work…
JB: I have a more musical ear because I used to play the flute and piano at music school, Aston has experience from the acting and dancing point of view, plus playing in a live arena – he understands what it’s like to follow a live band. People don’t look at one of us and say ‘what’s he doing there?’ – we all have different vocal styles and add different textures. We had our different colours to represent our individuality and we still do that because it’s the four parts that make everything work.
Aston: In a way, we all leaders in our own right, we all want the same thing so it’s all good. We all want to win and the best for each other.
So, JB, can we expect you tooting the flute on the next album? Gwan, give us an exclusive!
JB: You won’t hear me play the flute, but you may hear me play the piano… but I won’t say any more than that.
Mark Feehily from Westlife recently slated you guys for the condom range you released a couple of months back, inferring that you only did it for publicity. How do you respond to that?
Aston: The Westlife boys are cool but they need to read up on facts… we don’t need any more commercial exposure. It was beneficial for a charity and we just sent out a positive sexual awareness message. All the profits go straight in a pot to the people who need it. Our key audience is 16-24, when you look at the statistics, a huge amount of girls before 18 get pregnant and will have an abortion. We have the highest rate of STDs in Europe. Obviously sexual awareness messages aren’t being listened to, if we can help with that, we will. Everything we do doesn’t need to be for our benefit, and helping people is something a lot of people are missing these days.
Indeed. So you’re about to perform at G-A-Y again soon. Who would you say are the more insane audience, gay men or teenage girls?
Aston: [Laughs] Everyone’s a little bit drunk at G-A-Y but they’re very evenly matched,
Marvin: I’d say teenage girls definitely. It’s funny because people think we have a bigger gay following that what we have. With the gay audience I think solo females and girl bands get more attention than male bands, I honestly do. But we love playing G-A-Y, it’s a great gig.
Oritsé: I think they’re the same. It’s always nice to a gay crowd because a lot of people think we wouldn’t perform there. We make sure all our arms are oiled up, we are a tease, I have to admit [laughs]
I can see the headline now: ‘JLS: Gay Cock Teases’…
Oritsé: Tell me about it. I was walking around doing one shoot in just my underwear, one of the guys from the magazine gave me the nickname ‘Hancock’…
Was he getting a bit excited?
Oritsé: He got hot and sweaty and said that he could quite clearly see my bulge. You know what, I was just there getting changed, I didn’t even realize, I’m just doing my thing…
Oh please, you’re oiled up and parading round gays in tiny pants!
Oritsé: Honest, I didn’t have a clue… honest… don’t look at me. [Laughs]
Jack the Lad Swing – JLS – perform at G-A-Y @ Heaven (Villiers Street, Charing Cross, WC2) on Saturday 20th November. Their new album, ‘Outta This World’ is out 22nd November. The single ‘I Love You More’ is out now.
