Two years ago, Sharleen Spiteri said on Gabby Logan‘s podcast that if she were “a man in the music industry right now”, she would be considered “a national hero”. She has, after all, sold over 40 million records as frontwoman of Scottish rock band Texas. Has anything changed since then? “No,” says the 55-year-old. “Absolutely not.”
She looks up. “You can’t see this, but my sister’s mouthing: ‘You’ll always be a national hero in this house'” – she’s at her sister’s home in Glasgow, because she’s flown back to make a guest appearance at a Wu-Tang Clan concert – “but she’s doing that as she’s doing a wanker sign at me.”
Spiteri has always been straight-talking. Although she lives in north London’s bohemian Primrose Hill with her celebrity chef husband Bryn Williams, she still has a strong Glaswegian accent and swears like a sailor. And though she may not feel like a “national hero” yet, the band she steers – formed by Spiteri and former Altered Images guitarist Johnny McElhone in 1986 – are having a bit of a moment.
They have just released The Very Best of 1989 – 2023, a compilation featuring nearly all of their biggest hits: 1989’s bluesy debut “I Don’t Want a Lover”, 1997’s Motown blast “Black Eyed Boy”, 1999’s dance banger “Summer Son” and 2001’s irrepressible bop “Inner Smile” – plus both versions of “Say What You Want”, the swooning pop tune that became a hit in 1998 after being championed by then-Radio 1 presenter Chris Evans, and then again when they released a gloriously unexpected rap remix with Wu-Tang Clan members Method Man and RZA (hence tonight’s surprise guest performance).
Spiteri dismisses my suggestion that compiling the tracklist might have been tricky. “It was literally like putting together a [live] setlist – we’re putting on our best to impress,” she says.
On Friday, Texas will play Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage – their first set at the festival since 2015, and their first on its largest stage since 1999. “I’m glad Emily and Mick [Eavis, the festival’s organisers] have gone, ‘Yeah, we’ll put Texas on the Pyramid,’” Spiteri says. “It’s saying, yeah, as a band Texas are important.”
Once again deflecting any potential preciousness, Spiteri says there has never been a “guiding principle” to Texas’s musical evolution. She has collaborated with artists as varied as Wu-Tang Clan and German industrial metal band Rammstein – Spiteri sings on the latter’s 2005 track “Stirb nicht vor mir” – simply because it felt right at the time. When Texas hit on the ingenious idea to sample Donna Summer’s disco classic “Love’s Unkind” on their shimmering 2021 single “Mr Haze”, they went ahead and did it.
“Is that not what rock ‘n’ roll is supposed to be?” Spiteri says bullishly. “I think people sometimes think it’s about getting absolutely f***ing wasted and literally being a drug addict. But for me, the whole point of rock ‘n’ roll is that there are no rules. Why did I get into a band? Because I found it difficult to do a nine-to-five job and be in [a life of] set rules.”
Spiteri did briefly dabble in the nine-to-five life – she put in a stint as a hairdresser before quitting at 19 when the band landed a record deal. Thanks to that deal, “I was able to buy my first flat and it gave me independence as a woman”, she says. “I felt like the dog’s bollocks.” In 1989, when she was still just 21, Texas’s debut single “I Don’t Want a Lover” cracked the top 10 and she never looked back. “I love it when people say, ‘Getting famous at a young age was so difficult’,” she says with a mocking eye roll. “And I’m like, ‘So that entitles them to be a f***ing arsehole? I don’t think so!'”
Propelled by “I Don’t Want a Lover”, Texas’s debut album Southside became a gold-selling success in 1989. Their next two LPs, 1991’s Mothers Heaven and 1993’s Rick’s Road, proved more popular in France than the UK, though the latter got a boost after “So Called Friend”, a reflective guitar-pop gem, was chosen by Ellen DeGeneres as the theme to her landmark 90s sitcom.
It was 1997’s White on Blonde, which went six-times platinum to become the band’s best-selling album to this day, that took Texas to another level. “So many stars aligned on that record,” Spiteri says. Its slick but soulful pop-rock sound was “sort of a bridge” at the time between the “really indie” posturing of Britpop and the “really pop” hits of the Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys.
Texas capitalised on their commercial uptick with 1999’s The Hush, another multi-platinum chart-topper. Then, the band really leaned into their early Noughties hit-making phase by teaming with Madonna collaborator Dallas Austin for 2001’s “In Demand” and Girls Aloud producer Brian Higgins for 2005’s “Can’t Resist”, which added to their tally of high-charting singles.
Today, Spiteri says she and McElhone always felt confident working with supposedly “hot producers” because they were never going to let themselves be steamrolled. “I remember going to LA to work with these big songwriters that our record label suggested,” she recalls. “And when we got to the studio, they wanted us to do a song called ‘The Itch’. And I went, ‘These guys are asking a female artist to sing about ‘The Itch’? Let’s get the f**k out.”
This strong sense of self has proved useful whenever Spiteri has been confronted with sexism. At the start of her career, a record executive cruelly referred to her as “a dodgy boiler”, something she found “devastating”. Later, when glossy Texas videos like “In Our Lifetime” and “Summer Son” became music channel staples, she was complimented in the press not for her music prowess but for having “great hair”.
When I suggest that male artists’ styling rarely attracts the same attention, with Harry Styles a possible exception, Spiteri points out that there’s a link between today’s “better-hidden sexism” and old-fashioned rock snobbery.
“They say Harry Styles has great hair because he came from a boyband,” she says. “He’s now Harry Styles the rock star, but there’s still that snobbishness and f***ing arsehole attitude [surrounding him]. Welcome to the world of being a woman.”
Spiteri thinks any lingering snobbishness surrounding Texas is multi-layered. “Number one, we’re Scottish. Number two, we’re a female-fronted band. With those things, it’s like… boom, boom, you’re down the pecking order,” she says. Still, she refuses to let it bother her too much. “We’ve sold shitloads of records and we’ve been around for 35 years, so the evidence is there. What else do I need to say?”
The Very Best of 1989 – 2023 is out now. Texas play Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage on Friday