Louise: “I can’t see Eternal ever getting back together – our baseline beliefs are different”

“I can’t believe I even won an NME Award. I imagine it wasn’t for my pop lyrics! It must have been for Most Popular Female?”

WRONG. In 1998, you scooped the ‘Most Desirable Person’ gong, beating Liam Gallagher. Then, in 1999, you were voted ‘The Pop Personality You Would Most Like to Be Marooned on a Desert Island With’!

“[Laughs] Well, I’m going to take both of those because they could be a lot worse! God, who knew?! I remember turning up to the NME Awards and it being so full of proper rock stars that I felt out of place. Those awards were all right by me!”

“Regardless of whether people’s music tastes were indie or rock, Eternal sold 1.5million records in our first year and you can’t deny that. We were a live vocal act, and people forget that element. We weren’t dancing onstage to a backing tape. Whitney Houston was a fan of ours, and Luther Vandross rang us up when we were in the studio, saying ‘I love this new track girls – you’ve done a great job!’, which was weird.”

“Was it Peppa Pig?”

CORRECT. Bizarrely, the 2019 track ‘Peppa Party Time’ was the subject of a successful lawsuit from the writers of ‘Naked’ claiming that it had cribbed its melody – albeit with lyrics about jumping in muddy puddles rather than “undressing me with your eyes”. 

“Of all the songs as well! [Laughs] Good old Peppa Pig! I got sent it a couple of times, and I couldn’t really hear it, but could understand where they were coming from. I’m quite pleased I got one right!”

“I know I play Ray Winstone’s wife and I remember the scene where I’m walking down the stairs in a negligee, but did she even have a name?!”

WRONG. Diana Smith.

“There you go! We filmed in Belgium, and I knew Ray because he’s a West Ham [United] fan, and I was married to Jamie Redknapp, whose father, Harry, had managed West Ham. I was nervous, but he was brilliant and guided me through. The night before we started shooting, we had dinner and hung out together. When he’s on set, he’s a method actor and completely in character. Looking back, I’m super-proud to be in a film with actors of that calibre.”

Were you offered any other acting roles?

“I got offered a part in Friends as Joey’s girlfriend when they were filming in London in 1998. The producers had seen me on Channel 4’s The Big Breakfast, and rung up my agent asking if I would come down to the casting, and I read some scenes with Matt LeBlanc. They asked me to do it, but filming was happening during a week when I had a record out and was filming Top of the Pops – in the ‘90s, you needed to sell records to carry on making records. So I ended up not doing it.”

“Ooh, no, I don’t think I can! Take That? No? Gina G? I don’t know why she springs to mind! [Laughs] I remember doing Top of the Pops and she was on the stage over from me in a sparkling dress and I remember thinking, ‘Maybe I should wear sparkles!’. Those random things that go through your mind just before you’re about to sing live! Then, I concluded, ‘No, I’ll stick with the PVC I was currently wearing!’”.

WRONG. Among others, you introduced (deep breath!) Enya, Madonna, Tina Turner, Kanana, The Beautiful South, Coolio, EastEnders heartthrob-turned-singer Sean Maguire, Bryan Adams and Shola Ama.

Alas, not 1996’s UK Eurovision hopeful Gina G!

“[Laughs] I could have probably just guessed one of those! I remember being excited by Coolio, because I loved American hip-hop and R&B.”

You mentioned Take That, whom Eternal supported on tour in the ‘90s…

“We toured for about four months.  All the boys were great. I watched their show every night to the point that if one of them was sick, I could have stepped in! I still see Gaz [Barlow] frequently, and they were always inclusive of us. We worried that girls would hate us, because Take That’s audience was hugely female-led and adored them. But their audience bought into us because we were tomboys – we looked more like boys than the boys on that tour!”

You left Eternal on 18 July 1995; one day earlier, Robbie Williams announced his intention to quit Take That. Ever talk about the pressures you were facing when you toured together?

“We both knew that we were struggling within our bands, though we never sat down and said, ‘I’m going to leave on this day’. It was apparent that we weren’t as well-gelled and sitting comfortably within our bands, and we knew we weren’t massively happy. During that time, he was someone I could be open and honest with and talk to. Out of all of them, I did talk to Rob the most about the band situation purely because he understood where I was coming from.”

“I feel like Best British Newcomer was Oasis?”

CORRECT. Oasis did indeed win Best British Newcomer! Blur’s ‘Parklife’ won Album of the Year, Damon Albarn and co beat you again to British Group, while M People pipped you to the British Dance Act post. Eternal performed a cover of The Supremes’ ‘Baby Love’ at the ceremony…

“We never stood a chance against Oasis, right? Nowadays, people have teams of stylists but back then, the label said, ‘oh it might be nice if you wore a dress to the BRITs’, so I went to Armani in Knightsbridge [London] because I thought it was a posh shop, and I remember feeling stupid wearing it. Blur were on the same label, EMI, as us, so we were sat on their table, cheering every time they won. Back in the day, I only knew the Oasis boys enough to politely nod hello to, but I saw Noel [Gallagher] at Glastonbury last year and we had a proper catch-up. Then I went to his solo gig in London which was brilliant.”

“Oh God! I think it was Number 10 in the UK, but Belgium?! [Laughs] 14?”

WRONG. 21 – although, as you correctly pointed out, it did reach Number 10 in the UK charts.

“We sold around 87,000 records and only went in at Number 10 – that’s how many copies you had to sell back in the ‘90s!”

“I had the worst food poisoning at Mighty Hoopla last year. Two hours before I went onstage, I was walking around with a carrier bag. You have no idea! I couldn’t even sip a glass of water! I rung my management in the morning who said: ‘We have a 40-minute set – dancers, backing singers, the whole shebang’, so I just got on with it, but not a lot went in at all! [Laughs]”

WRONG. Sounds like a lot came out though! You were sandwiched between Delta Goodrem and the House Gospel Choir featuring Rozalla. You’ve always stood up for every letter in the LGBTQ+ community. It was the reason you and fellow Eternal bandmate Kéllé Bryan walked away from a lucrative band reunion in 2023 after sisters Easther and Vernie Bennett allegedly refused to play Pride dates, because the duo felt that the gay community was being “hijacked by the trans community”. Why was it a red line for you?

“I make no judgements on other people’s beliefs, but they should also respect that I don’t want to be told what I should and shouldn’t be able to do. I’ve performed at Prides and Mighty Hooplas throughout the whole of my career, and I truly believe that without the support of that community, I wouldn’t have had the career I have had. Though I respect everybody’s choices, I was happy to stand firm on my choices and opinions, and these are shows and events that I enjoy and causes I will always carry on supporting. It was as simple as that. There was no big fallout; it was just, ‘that doesn’t work for me, I respect your stance on it – but it isn’t mine’. I’m proud of standing up for the LGBTQ+ community and want to continue doing so.”

Though the Bennetts are now touring Eternal with a new member, will the O.G. line-up ever reform?

“There’s no ill-will. Those girls [Easther and Vernie Bennett] are hugely talented and incredible singers, and I’m honoured we made the music we did. However, our baseline beliefs are different, and I can’t see Eternal ever getting back together, but I wish them luck for their journey.”

“I only know the gangsters from the Quentin Tarantino movie, which would be Mr White, Mr Pink etc., but as for my video? No idea! How bad is that?!”

WRONG. Ms Blonde, Ms Brunette, Mrs Redknapp.

“[Laughs] Now you’ve said it, I have a vague recollection of it!”

“A rabbit? [Laughs] No? That was a wild guess!”

WRONG. Wolves. 

“There are worse things than being chatted up by a wolf on a Saturday morning! You’d never get away with some of the underlying smutty humour of those shows now but they were really good fun. I remember Eternal did Live & Kicking on Christmas morning [in 1993] with Take That and we had a ball. The sketches on SMTV Live where Cat Deeley was Cat the Dog and I played her bestest, bestest, bestest ever friend Louise were always hilarious.”

“Those bloody bonus tracks! [Laughs] No idea.”

WRONG. ‘All of You’ and ‘Real Love’.

“I can’t even remember how they go, so I’m going to have to check them out!”

Tell us about your new forthcoming album ‘Confessions’.

“This the first album I’ve ever made where I get into a car and listen to it the whole way through out of choice. I worked with producers like Jon Shave, who worked on Charli XCX’s ‘Brat’, and Anya Jones, who worked on Kylie’s ‘Tension’, to create an upbeat album with the most honest, vulnerable lyrics I’ve ever written. My aim was that if I ever came back with a record, I wasn’t going to be a nostalgia act. I wanted to break down walls people wouldn’t expect of me. At the age of 50, I’ve made my most authentic album and hopefully the past element of ageism and judgement within the music industry has disappeared.”

Did you have a ‘Brat’ summer?

“[Laughs] Well, I connected with the ‘Brat’ summer because I was working with Jon, and I love seeing women bossin’ it, whether it’s Charli XCX or Billie Eilish or Kylie. It’s so different from my day when you’d have to fit a square peg in a round hole. Now you can go out and show people who you are.”

Any chance of a future deluxe ‘Those Bloody Bonus Tracks!’ edition of ‘Confessions’?

“Yeah! [Laughs] Just for NME, we’re going to release a ‘Those Bloody Bonus Tracks!’ expanded edition. Come on, we’re talking about Japan-specific tracks from over 25 years ago, so I’m going to give myself a pass on them!”

The verdict: 2/10

“That score definitely could have been better!”

Louise’s new single ‘Borderline’ is out now. Her fifth studio album ‘Confessions’ will be released on May 23 via Lil Lou.