With A1, to Dagbladet

People are still throwing knickers at us

Tomorrow A1 are performing their selfpenned song “Don’t Wanna Lose You Again” in the third and last semifinal in Skien.

Mark Read (31), Ben Adams (28) and Christian Ingebrigtsen (32) were topping the charts around 1998 to the beginning of 2000 before they put the band on hold at the end of 2002. Last year they made a successful comeback at “Allsang på Grensen”, and did seven gigs at Christiania Teater.
- A lot of people will remember you’re TV appearances with screaming fans in the background. Is it still like that?
“At gigs it’s defiantly still like that” Ben Adams tells Dagbladet when we meet them earlier this week.
“But it is important to remember that we are six-seven years older, and so are the fans. You can say they are a bit more grown up”, he adds.
“At the same time the whole celebrity culture have changed. Now everyone can become celebrities through reality-tv, and then it’s less impressive to be a celebrity” Ben says.
Christian Ingebrigtsen thinks it’s a lot like it used to be.
“When you watch ‘X-Factor’ and even our gigs, you’ll see that teenage girls haven’t changed that much since The Beatles’ time. They are screaming and having fun, Christian says.
And there is one thing that it seems like some female fans haven’t stopped doing. The boys reveals that one thing is still happening like it did at the start of their career:
“People are still throwing knickers at us”, Ben says.
The other two boys laughs a little.
“Yeah, people threw them at us in Oslo in December. So then I collect them all in a bag and take them to Marks & Spencer to exchange them. I don’t need to use money to buy boxers then” Mark Read tells while Ben and Christian are laughing.
Throwing knickers is probably something every boyband experiences, but a1 are not like every boyband, as they are writing their own songs. After the comeback last summer, they started recording songs for a new album, which is expected to be released this spring/summer. They have already seven songs ready and use time in between the MGP rehearsals to record songs.
The song “Don’t Wanna Lose You Again” was already written when they got asked to participate in MGP, and agreed that the song was perfect.
“It isn’t a lot of better chances to show a new song from a new album than in front of a million TV viewers” says Ben. But it wasn’t that easy for them all to say yes to participating in MGP.
“Some of us had to convince that it was the right thing to join. All three of us thought at some point it was stupid to join MGP. None of us agreed at the end, but then it was too late to change your mind” Christian says.
“It probably is a bigger risk to participate for a established band, especially since it is so many different opinions about the show. In UK a lot of people may think of it as a bit ‘corny’ and we wouldn’t want to be recognised as A1 from Eurovision” Mark tells.
“Last year the level was raised in both Norway and UK. We were surprised that there was a lot of good songs on the show”.
Christian thinks that some of the times greatest popsongs have their source from Eurovision.
Glitter, glam and choreography have been the main ingredient in countless MGP-success’. A1 assure they won’t do either of those things.

“There won’t be a choreography” Mark says.
“I’m glad we don’t dance anymore” say Christian.
Ben tells us: “We haven’t danced in years. As a band we were always musicians trying to dance, but didn’t really succeed. It was the opposite for other boyband. Now we can finally do what we want”.
“I think people expects a more liveband performance”

- So you rule out the glitter suit then?
“We aren’t going to be wearing glitter and skirts that’ll be ripped off on stage” Mark smile. “We tried it before, but it didn’t work. Some of the guys didn’t have very nice legs for it”.

Source: Dagbladet

Thanks to Camilla that sent the interview translated.

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