Scouting For Girls' Roy Stride on their new album, new tour, an SFG musical & more
Let’s get reacquainted with Scouting For Girls… the multi-award-nominated indie pop icons, who’ve sold over 2,000,000 records, received over 500m streams and have achieved eight top 40 singles over the past two decades.
Now, they’re back with their seventh studio album, The Place We Used to Meet, set for release on 13 October 2023 and a brand-new UK tour in October, plus they’re hitting the road this spring/summer with the legendary Olly Murs.
We caught up with frontman Roy Stride, to chat all things writing, recording, touring, swapping red wine for Ribena, the Scouting For Girls Musical and more…
Plus: book your tickets to see them live this summer with Olly Murs & Tom Jones & on their solo headline tour in October below:
Olly Murs: Colchester Castle (special guests)
Greewich Summer Sounds: Tom Jones (special guests)
Tyne Theatre & Opera House (headline tour)
Check out their new single, ‘The Place We Used To Meet’
So… what have you been up to?
Well, we are currently just finishing our new album. I’m thinking it’ll come out in October, so we're in that last bit now - finishing up the last couple of songs and working out what songs are going to make the album and how the running order will look, what changes we need to make… so it's kind of like the real business end of making an album.
Can you tell us a bit more about the writing process? Did you start in lockdown… has it been a long-time coming?
Yeah, it’s been a while… there’s one song on there, which is almost 20 years old, and there’s another song on there which is pretty recent, so this’ll basically be our first proper studio record in almost five years.
Our first original album. We did do a cover album in lockdown, which was just a bit of fun, but yeah, this is going to be our first proper record for a long time… so we’ve put a lot into it and are really, really proud of it. I think it's our best collection of songs for years.
It's got a kind of more indie-rock sound this time, so it’s like ‘This Ain’t A Love Song’ you know? Really back to that real band-y sounding type of record. But yeah, I'm really excited for people to hear it. I can't wait to get it out there.
Did that kind of sound happen organically? Or did you start writing and intentionally nod back to your earlier sound?
No, not at all. It was really just what came out. We did try and do this record more as a band, like some of the albums we’ve done in the past have been just me working my own and then getting the guys in at the end to add some bass and drums.
This was a much more collaborative process right from the start, to sort of get back into writing music how we used to, you know, where we’d sort of bash things around in the rehearsal room first and try them out live and in person before putting them down on record.
It's been good... I think we’ve had more time to do it - it's definitely benefited from some more time and it's been a really fun process and, has probably allowed me to really rediscover my love for music over the last year or so.
On a personal level, it's been the most enjoyable record I think we've made.
Do you think your time writing for other artists has impacted the new record?
Oh my god…totally. Writing for other artists is sometimes incredibly rewarding, but can also be incredibly frustrating because you write something you love and then suddenly the other artist has to love it too… and then their manager has to love it and their record label has to love it before anybody else gets to hear it.
Whereas, if we do a song for ourselves, which we love, then it's going to come out.
For every big song you have, you've got another 100 songs which haven't made it, so being an artist yourself gives you that outlet for those songs which you know, are still great songs, but that maybe other people don't get them n the same way you do.
So you’ve been on an arena run with Olly Murs recently, and will be doing a bunch of outdoor dates with him this summer? Will you be playing some of these new songs live?
Yeah, absolutely. We've only got 40 minutes, so I don't think we're going to unleash the whole album. Ha, imagine that, people would be so upset. It'll be mainly the big hits, and then I think we'll probably sneak in a new one towards the end.
What we have done actually… we’ve recently invested our own mixing desk for live recording, so we can record everything. On the last tour, we recorded every single show, and so what I might do this time, is play the new album across the dates and record it, so we’ve got a live version of each new song.
We always do one bit when we perform live, where we get the crowd to sing along to it, so they might become part of the record.
Last year, when you celebrated the 15th anniversary of your debut, and performed the record in full during live shows, was there any track on the record that go played for the very first time?
No, because that first record was only half an hour long and we became incredibly successful off the back of that one record, which meant suddenly we had to play like an hour and a half set each night with our whole entire debut album - that was just half an hour long. (laughs)
So we ended up learning every single song of that record very well. (laughs)
It's quite mad now when you think about it… this will be our seventh album and you kind of know even when you start recording a record that half the songs on there, you’re never going to play live, ever.
They're only ever going to exist on this album, unless it becomes a massive hit, a lot of these songs will just exist here… and then they’re gone. And so it makes it very… liberating in a way. Thinking about songs in that way, but also slightly sad, really.
Are there any songs you’ve written that you can’t play live? Or that don’t translate to a live setting even though they sound great in the studio?
We always play fully live. We've never played to track, so we what you see is what you get with us. It’s like the real bare bones, you know, drums, bass, guitar, keys - so all our live versions are slightly stripped versions from how they are on record and therefore exist in a different space.
When we’re choosing songs to play from the new record, we try to make them work better live than they do on the record. At least we think… there's some records you just can’t do it, so if it sounds rubbish live, I just won't play it. I think it's quite good to be free like that.
I don’t want to go into the studio thinking, well, if I can't play this live, I don't want to even record it… so some songs just end up living in different spaces.
You’re also doing an album tour in October?
Yeah! The new tour… it’s going to be a proper album tour, which we haven't really done for a while… so naturally it’ll include a lot of the new stuff, plus we’ll always do the big, big songs at the right time in the set.
I’m really excited to be playing some new stuff because we've been playing a ‘greatest hits’ set for the last 18 months, which in itself has been nice… like to play the songs I know people already love, but this new record, it feels so strong. I’m looking forward to getting it out there. It's going to be good to change things up.
If you've seen us live in the last sort of two or three years, our new tour will be a totally different show. And if you've never seen us before, you'll still get to hear the new songs alongside the big songs, they just might be presented in a slightly different way.
Now that you’ve been a band for over 15 years, do you have any pre-show rituals that you do before you go on stage?
We always used to raise a glass to wherever the town is. There's a bit in Spinal Tap where they go and tap into America… so, we’d do the same - have a tap into Oxford or a tap into where ever… and we used to always open the best bottle of red wine we had on the rider… but now, about half of us don't drink anymore, so it's more like a Ribena now – and perhaps a few vocal warm ups too.
That brings us nicely to your rider-essentials…
Yeah, it's very healthy now. Think natural yoghurt, muesli, fresh fruit…berries rather than before, when it was essentially the entire contents of Odd Bins.
Your favourite song to perform live?
As I said, I’m really enjoying playing the new ones at the moment. We’re sounding really good live. We've got this new guitarist, who is incredible. He's playing with us and he sings as well… so we’ve got these great harmonies going on… so I'm just really enjoying the whole thing. It’s like a brand new sound in a way. It's like a bigger sound. Honestly, we’ve never sounded better.
And I always love playing She’s So Lovely. I love the power and the mad energy and connection, it's like unleashing a drug over the audience at the end of the show and it drives everyone crazy. That's always great fun to play!
Is there anyone you'd really like to work with that you haven't already?
I would love to work with Harry Styles. I did…actually, I wrote a song on the first ever One Direction album so, I think that would be a quite nice end to the circle to write a song with him on one of his solo records.
Who would you like to tour with next or share a stage with?
Well, the Olly tour, we’re really, really looking forward to that. I think that's a perfect pairing - us and Olly Murs! He's such a legendary guy. He has such an amazing energy and he’s fun and I can’t wait to see his show. And I'm really looking forward to hanging with him as well. I think people are getting sort of two for the price of one there.
How’s the podcast going? Have you learnt to fly yet? your podcast going. Like have you learned to fly yet?
I haven't, no. That had to take a bit of a back burner, I got about halfway through and then I ended up having to pause, because I started in lockdown, so I had loads of time, but basically as soon as the festivals came back, suddenly got really busy doing actual work.
I let it slide, but I am definitely going to… that is my sort of resolution for next year is to actually get my pilot's license.
So what’s next for you guys? Are there any other projects you’re working on (that you can tell us about)?
Somebody’s been speaking to me about a Scouting For Girls musical at the moment and I've got some other artists who want me to produce them. It's just that… we’ve just got to finish the new Scouting For Girls record first and then we’ve got our tour with Olly, and then our own tour… then I’ve got to sit down and have a breather, work out what I need to do next after all that.
A musical?
That was a conversation that started recently. It is very early days.
What's been pitched to me, is a story based around a band getting a record deal and then getting dropped, who are all childhood friends, so it’s kind of inspired by the story of us, but with a much more interesting backstory… and I’m hoping very good-looking younger versions of our self.
It’ll use all the Scouting For Girls songs too hopefully.
In your own words, why should people come out and see you?
It's just a great, fun night. We always say the audience becomes the fifth member of the band…so it becomes your chance to be in a band, and sing really loudly, and just have a great night out.
