NINETIES’ pop chart-toppers B*Witched are riding high after a series of huge live shows and will release a brand new EP later this year.
The record-breaking Irish group, whose first four singles topped the UK chart, are back doing what they do best 24 years after they were unceremoniously dropped by their record label.
Lindsay Armaou has revealed B*Witched will release a new EP this year Credit: B*Witched
Lindsay, Edele Lynch (top), Keavy Lynch and Sinead O’Carroll became huge stars in the late 90s Credit: Alamy
Their new single Firefly is out now and more music will follow, Lindsay Armaou, 47, has confirmed to The Jattvibe in an exclusive chat.
“We have got some other songs in the bag which we’re going to release this year, so there will be a new EP.
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“So it’s all kind of ready to go and then in the background we’re doing shows and gigs as well and as I say, we’ve been busy with that single as well, so yeah, there’s a lot going on actually. It’s been a busy time, but yeah, enjoying it all.”
Back in June, there were tears of joy as the group returned to the biggest of stages to support Boyzone over two nights at the Emirates Stadium in London.
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The group supported Boyzone at the Emirates Stadium earlier this year Credit: Tiktok/@officialbwitched
Lindsay said the girls’ old record label ‘cut short’ their pop career when they dropped them Credit: Rex
It was a family affair, B*Witched sisters Edele and Keavy Lynch are the sisters of Boyzone’s Shane Lynch, and emotions were high backstage.
“It was incredible on so many levels,” said Lindsay. “Believe it or not, we haven’t done a stadium before, so for us it was like, ‘guys, we’re doing a stadium’, that’s pretty huge all this time on. Who would have thought that almost 30 years after the release of C’est La Vie we’d be doing this still and on a stadium?
“So that was really, really cool. And I guess the fact that it was Boyzone as well was quite poignant,” said Lindsay, speaking on behalf of online bingo site Zingo Bingo.
“It kind of marks the beginning of our career in a lot of ways as well because we supported them on tour at the very beginning of our career and it’s kind of like they gave us that chance in a way. And so for us to be supporting them at the end of theirs feels quite full circle in a lot of ways. It was quite emotional backstage, it was very emotional actually.
“All our families were there as well, it was a real family kind of moment. So yeah, it was a really beautiful moment actually on lots of levels.
“The actual moment we were on stage as well, I just remember having a moment myself thinking, ‘just really take this in’.
“Like this is not something that happens on the regular, this is a moment. And I literally scanned the audience from left all the way across to right and just really took the moment in. I probably forgot a couple of steps in that moment, but I was in a moment, taking it in.”
The girls looked to be the natural successors to the Spice Girls’ crown when they blazed onto the scene in 1998.
Their self-titled album went double platinum in the UK and platinum in the US and spawned a string of number ones.
Music fans lapped up their catchy tracks and the girls made waves in America too, touring with the likes of Britney and NSYNC.
But their relentless work ethic was callously disregarded when label bosses decided to drop them after their second album, Awake and Breathe, failed to match the heady heights of their debut, despite still shifting impressive numbers.
“I do feel like we had more to give at the time,” reflected Lindsay. “I’m a firm believer in things happen for a reason, but for whatever reason, I do feel like our career was kind of cut short at the time.
“There was a lot of changes going on within our record company and decisions were made by the people at the top and we were dropped, we were let go.
“And if I look back now, we had our first album, which did multi-platinum selling, and then we released a second album, which was… I’m trying to think, I can’t remember the exact number of record sales, but it was really good, it was definitely gold. And I think the amount of records that we sold, based on the amount of records that we sold, bands would just not get dropped nowadays on those numbers.
“They were successful numbers. So it kind of came out of nowhere for us, and I do feel like we had more to give as a band. I think we had at least another couple of albums in us, had we had the opportunity.”
Lindsay, who is now a successful actor having starred in Netflix’s Stay Close and harrowing drama The Bombing of Pan Am 103, said they fell victim to the notorious second album syndrome.
She believes the push to promote the girls around the world had a detrimental impact on the music.
“You just don’t have the time to sit in the studio and be really creative and take your time with it and let the juices flow,” said Lindsay. “It’s like, ‘right guys, we’ve got an afternoon in the studio, we need to bish-bash-bosh three tracks out’.
“So there’s a lot of that going on. So although the second album, I still feel, was a really, really good album, I do feel like it suffered from that classic second album syndrome. So had we been given the opportunity to release the third album, I think we would have come back from that, and that never really happened.
“But again, like I say, I do firmly believe that everything happens for a reason. Who knows what that is. Potentially we might have burnt out because we were working very, very hard.
“And there were moments of that, I think, of burnout for us, all individually at different kind of stages. I think we would have needed to find a more sustainable pace to keep going longer.”
