Radio presenter, northerner and all round nice guy, Darryl Morris is here in his brand new monthly column, ready to give us all the gossip from the likes of Meghan Trainor, Years & Years and Anne-Marie.
I’ll be honest with you; my Christmas weight is lingering longer than I’d expected. We’re in the dying depths of March and the occasional run around the block hasn’t made a dent. We’re hurtling towards beach season and I can see only one way of shifting it. The old classic, sweating it off at the barrier of a gig or two.
Thankfully, some of our absolute favourites are storming around the UK on tour right now. Anne Marie came by my radio show before hitting the stage in Manchester and if you ever fancied befriending the London star, the ladies’ toilets might be the best place to start. No, seriously…
“I did an after-party gig at the Brit Awards a couple of weeks ago and there were no toilets backstage, so I had to use the public ones. I got chatting to some girls in the queue and I thought, these girls are SO lovely. We really hit it off and were chatting for ages. We’ve genuinely kept in touch! It’s random, but the toilets are such a good place to make new mates!”
Less so for the gents. Even eye contact is forbidden.
Her new song – with mysterious, helmet wearing producer Marshmello – is a standout, empowering anthem and American popstar Meghan Trainor is no stranger to one of those herself. She’s stormed back from her break with thumping player-slayer ‘No Excuses’…
“I was thinking of Spice Girls and guys just giving a bit of respect to girls! Especially with everything going on in the world with equality and all of the movements happening – I thought this was a fun way of giving those an anthem! I went through something like that recently and just brushed it off because this business is crazy.”
The world is very ready for another Aretha Franklin moment. Meghan hasn’t exactly been kicking it in front of Netflix during her time away. Between getting engaged to her boyfriend (a ginger guy called Darryl, can’t help feeling it could have been me?) and stitching her new album together, she’s been busy hanging out with some of the biggest stars on the planet.
“I went to Ellen DeGeneres’ birthday party and it was off the scale! We got their right at the start and it was basically just Oprah and Bradley Cooper and we were freaking out a little bit. Every second I was screaming because a new famous person would walk around the corner! Boom. Reese Witherspoon. Boom. Bruno Mars. Boom. Kim and Kanye. Boom. Chris Martin.”
Breathe… breathe…
“We had an amazing night. We got to hang with Adele and we met Coldplay and John Mayor. It was unbelievable. I wanted to say hi to P!nk but I didn’t know what to say. I was too shy to speak to Oprah too. She was talking to Bruno Mars loads and I didn’t want to just walk in the middle of all that like, ‘Heeeyy!’ No. Not going to do that!”
Party. Of. The. Century.
Olly from Years and Years made the most of his recent time away too. The boys dropped ‘Sanctify’, the first single from their second album, a few weeks ago and Olly told me about nearly dying on his ‘gap year’ in Bali…
“I was touching this frog but I didn’t realise it was a really poisonous one. If you see it, you’re supposed to alert the local frog people to tell them that there’s a really dangerous toad in the area. But I just thought it was cute so I was stroking it and petting it. I was probably the size of an Easter Egg. I could have died!”
Thankfully, Olly made it back from Bali and we can expect a new album to land in the summer, with a tour later this year. I’ll see you at the barrier, sweating it out.
Join us next month for another edition of Darryl’s monthly musings.