Why Edinburgh's Hogmanay is a happy place for Sharleen Spiteri and Texas


Sharleen Spiteri has made a career out of breaking the rules and doing things her way with Texas, but when it comes to Hogmanay she’s a traditionalist.
“Normally my usual Hogmanay routine is trying to get someone out the door to first foot me, when they look at you like what do you mean I’m going to stand outside with a bottle of whisky and a bit of coal?”
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Hide Ad“People look at you like ‘are you on crack?’ she says. ”I say ‘Go out. Ring. The. Doorbell. Don’t do it until the last bell, and then say ‘Happy New Year!’ They’re looking at you like you’re a psycho. So that’s normally my routine, trying to convince someone to get outside the door. It used to be my daughter when it was just me and her and she was ‘no I’m scared!’ and I was ‘shut up, you’ll be fine, I’m just behind the letter box, don’t worry’.
This year Spiteri won’t need to explain as she’s in the Home of Hogmanay, fronting Texas who are headlining the Concert in the Gardens in Edinburgh on 31st December, and as the skyline explodes in a blaze of fireworks against the castle backdrop, she’ll be wishing everyone a Happy New Year and making a wish.
Along with an estimated 45,000 revellers in the centre of the city, Princes Street will also be thumping to the sounds of special guest Edinburgh’s Callum Beattie, who has gone from busking outside the Usher Hall to selling it out and award-winning comedian Susie McCabe as host.
Spiteri is looking forward to the gig when we speak and her anticipation is infectious. It’s good to interview the Texas frontwoman again as she always has an answer and shoots from the hip. Frank, funny and fearless, there’s no flannel with Spiteri (well there probably is as she’s a snappy dresser, the daughter of a seamstress and a seaman) and if she thinks a question is ‘bizarre’, she’ll tell you (examples - what will you wish for at Hogmanay? or tell us a secret? Answers: ‘I’m not telling you cos it won’t come true’, ‘No, because it’s a secret’). She laughs a lot too.
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Hide AdTexas are the first band ever to headline Edinburgh’s Hogmanay three times, but Spiteri treats every time like the first time.
“The truth is any time you walk on stage, you’d be pretty frigging arrogant if you thought you knew what it was going to be like,“ she says.
“You’re just hoping you’re going to entertain and people are going to go away thinking what a brilliant night. And you’re getting to bring The Bells in with loads of people, and it’s celebratory and a lot of fun.
“I know Callum and he’s brilliant live. We’ve got a great line up and I think it’s going to be a fantastic night. It’s a big night and it’s a big deal to be finishing up the year and bringing in the New Year, especially the year we’ve had which has been absolutely amazing.”
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This year saw Texas selling-out arena shows across the UK including London’s The O2 and two homecoming gigs at the Glasgow Hydro and a hit collaboration album, The Muscle Shoals Sessions, with acclaimed American songwriter and pianist Spooner Oldham. Spiteri was also awarded the prestigious Chevalier medallion at the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, celebrating her contribution and work within music and the arts. Texas were already on a roll after 2023’s The Very Best of 1989-2023 album and a triumphant Glastonbury Pyramid stage appearance that Spiteri credits with bringing a new generation to their gigs.
“I think Glastonbury was a wake up call to people. I think a lot of them were there going ‘oh yeah Texas, maybe I know a song or something’ and then suddenly they were ‘holy f***ing shit, I know loads of Texas songs, and when the Arena tour came up, loads of people bought tickets and it was fantastic.
“You can’t expect people to just have you on the top of their list year after year so when we remind you and you’re all in, then thank you very much.”
Part of staying relevant is Texas’s ability to mix it up over the years, and collaborate with the likes of Blue Nile’s Buchanan on Sleep, and Wu Tang Clan with versions of Say What You Want and Hi, or on videos with the likes of Alan Rickman, Peter Kay and Thierry Henry.
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Hide Ad“Yeah, we’ve done all sorts of things, making videos with loads of amazing people. I have to be honest, I’ve had a lot of fun. As a band we’ve just had the best life and I hope it continues.”
Looking forward to 2025, Texas will be playing several outdoor festivals in the UK and Europe, including the Isle of Wight in June, but looking back over 2024, what’s been the highlight for Spiteri?
“Definitely the arena tour, it was fantastic and finishing off in Glasgow, the home city. We’ve been doing this a long time, but never have I walked on a stage when the music’s going and hardly been able to hear any of us when we’re cranked. The crowd, the noise that came off that audience, I’ve described it as a tsunami of love coming off, it was extraordinary and fantastic, emotional and it was like fire. It was woooooahh! Amazing.


One of Texas’s strengths is their back catalogue, the sheer number of hits they’ve racked up since Glasgow-born Spiteri formed Texas with Johnny McElhone and Ally McErlaine back in 1985 and they smashed into the charts with their debut album Southside and 1988 single I Don’t Want A Lover. Since then the band have released ten studio albums, one live album, five compilation albums and 45 singles, selling over 40 million records.
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Hide Ad“The most important thing with a band is that after nearly 40 years we’ve got a massive catalogue and repertoire of songs that have been hit records and have been part of people’s life,” she says. “Maybe when they kids in the back of the car on the school run, or their parents saw us on the uni tours in 1989, so yeah it’s amazing, but the thing is it’s nothing without the songs. If we never had the tunes and never had the songs there would be nothing.”
If Spiteri sounds like she’s in a good place right now maybe it’s because she’s never happier than when she’s on stage.
“I just know that I really like doing it. I feel very comfortable on stage, like that’s what I should be doing. I am very, very happy. There’s been times where things haven’t gone the way you want, but that’s the name of the game. I’m a musician and a songwriter and we’re a band - why wouldn’t we be on a stage? It’s in the job description.”
In the job description for Spiteri’s first foot is not tall, dark and handsome; what she values is goodwill and going all in.
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Hide Ad“It’s literally who will bring goodwill into my home? If you’re going to come in, you know a bit half-arsed, you’re not going out. Who will bring love in and be in the moment, go with it wholeheartedly’.


Spiteri values wholehearted and giving your all, this year’s Muscle Shoals Sessions with Spooner Oldham recorded at the Fame Studios in Alabama, with the hits stripped back to Spiteri’s vocals and backing singers and Oldham’s keyboards, a case in point.
“We were asked to do a piano album and it took us six years to find the right person then Spooner Oldham came up.
With a pedigree of playing on the first four Aretha Franklin records, Percy Sledge’s When a Man Loves a Woman, Wilson Pickett’s Mustang Sally and Aretha Franklin’s I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You), Spooner fitted the bill.
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Hide Ad“It made a lot of sense with the Northern Soul thing and everything. It felt right,” says Spiteri.
“And as soon as we started playing, well, that’s how we write songs, stripped right back, that’s how it starts so it’s almost like going back to the beginning. And the great thing was being able to show the space within the song, which basically is what the whole process is about.”
Was there a particular song that felt like it was going right back to the beginning when they played it with Oldham?
“I think Halo worked unbelievably well because we completely rearranged it and it just had this really beautiful, ethereal, angelic sound to it. And the great thing about it is, Halo was written as an answer back song to something and was about a pain in the heart for me, but because we did it this way the song was redone, and suddenly it was a letting go of that anger and pain. Halo was up and in your face and there’s so much sarcasm in the song, it’s all yeah, yeah, yeah, and ‘her hair is a mess’ and it’s like ‘yeah, whatever’, but with the organ and vocals and backing vocals around it, it was suddenly something very, very different. For me, the full blast version of Halo - I’m not still holding on to the pain after all these years - but that’s what the song signified, then suddenly when it was performed in that way, it was a very, very different feel and meaning. It was like, as Bob Mortimer and Mr Whitehouse would say, ‘and away…’, ‘and it’s gone, thank you.’ So yeah, it was perfect.”
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Fronting a band in the music business, Spiteri has had to be strong and always have an answer yet she’s not afraid to show a more vulnerable side when it counts, such as when she was awarded the Chevalier medallion.
“I was absolutely gobsmacked when I got the phone call. I knew a long long time before wasn't allowed to tell anybody, and when I was given it, it was huge, really emotional for me.
“I don’t know if it’s my age or what it is, but I was like a bumbling fool. When I had to speak I was trying with my best French and sounded like a bumbling idiot.
“There were a lot of things getting that - my grandfather lived in Bordeaux all my life, and the memories, of thinking if my parents were here, how proud they would have been of me getting that honour.”
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Hide AdSpiteri lost her mother in March 2020 a week before the country went into the first lockdown and her father a year later.
“It meant a lot, especially because it’s a recognition of what we’ve given to the arts in France. And to be honoured in a different country. That’s a major deal. My own country, the UK, has never given me anything like that, so I’m a bit like, f*** you because in the UK these awards are given by the establishment and I’ve always been a bit ‘f*** the establishment’.
“I didn’t join a band to be ‘yes sir, please sir’. That’s not me. The whole point of being in a band was because we didn’t fit in.”
So why does she think Texas are so big in France?
“The reason we’re big in any part of the world where we’re big is because of the public, because they get it, have continued to buy our records, concert tickets, support us and allowed to live our dream.
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Hide Ad“When you starting out in a band you think it’s a mad cap idea. I remember people were like ‘you’re giving up working at Irving Rusk and a brilliant job to go and be a pop star, you’re f***king barking. It’s such a far-fetched idea.
“I remember meeting Johnny for the first time, thinking ‘f***ing hell, look at that, that’s a real pop star, a real musician’. I’d seen him on Top of the Pops! It just seemed so far-fetched. Sometimes I still laugh and go ‘it’s really far fetched’ and look at other people and go ‘oh my god, they’re a real top star musician’. And then people go ‘you’ve been doing it for this length of time’ and I think ‘shit, so we have. It’s mad.”


Spiteri doesn’t do anything by halves. If she’s decided to do it she gives it her all, right back to when she was a hair stylist. I tell her a story about a friend of mine whose hair she cut back in the 1980s in Glasgow who still talks about the quality of the cuts (and the version of I Don’t Want A Lover a shy Spiteri was strongarmed by colleagues to play on a dictaphone she had in her pocket).
“Yeah, I was a really good hairdresser,” she says and laughs, adding, “Oh my god, hassling the customer to listen to my song… But I was a good hairdresser. If I’m not any good at something, I just don’t do it. And I still do haircuts. I cut my daughter’s hair. I’ll cut whoever’s. Sometimes emergency cuts are needed on tour and somebody will go to a chemists’ and buy scissors and I do a wee haircut.”
Whose hair would she like to cut if she could choose?
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Hide Ad“Don’t even start,” she says. “There’s loads of people. I don’t really want to cut their hair, but I’m always commenting, ‘they need a haircut, ‘is she serious with that hair cut?’ or ‘who decided that that was a good haircut on them?’.”
Now that Spiteris is 57, what does she know that she didn’t know when she was starting out at 17?
“I know now that I know nothing. That is the truth. I thought I knew everything when I was 17 and I now know that I know nothing.”
It’s time for Spiteri to go, things to do, including stocking up on shortbread for her in-laws and people she’ll be visiting in the New Year - she’s discovered “a guy in London who is the don of Scottish food here, Auld Hag [The Shoap] and they make their own rolls and do square sausage and bridies, everything, so I think I’ll need to clear his shelves,” she says.
So all that remains is to wish her a Happy New…
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Hide Ad“Don’t you dare say that yet!” she says quickly and laughs. “Keep it for The Bells.”
Concert in the Gardens with Texas and special guest Callum Beattie takes place on Tuesday 31 December 2024 in West Princes Street Gardens, from 9pm – 12.50am. Tickets at www.edinburghshogmanay.com from £72.50 plus booking fees, ticket price includes £1 charity donation to CHAS (Children’s Hospices Across Scotland).
Texas www.texas.uk.com
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