Snow Patrol frontman Gary Lightbody wants to work with RAYE next after teaming up with Kylie Minogue.
The 50-year-old frontman and songwriter wrote a batch of songs with Kylie in mind and managed to get the Padam Padam hitmaker to add her vocals to the rock group’s recently released track These Alarms.
Gary says he and Kylie have discussed working together again, while he also revealed that the Where Is My Husband! singer is next on his wish-list.
He told BBC Radio Ulster’s Good Morning Ulster programme of writing for Kylie: “I wrote the songs and they were all just called Kylie 1, Kylie 2, Kylie 3.”
The Chasing Cars hitmaker continued: “The song felt finished for the first time because her vocal is absolutely extraordinary.
“I guess it was always destined to be a song, maybe not for Kylie, but with Kylie.”
Quizzed on whether they plan to record together again, he said: “We’re certainly talking about it. We’ll see what happens.”
Gushing over RAYE’s killer vocals, he said: “I think she has the most extraordinary voice on planet Earth right now.
“She’s something else.”
Heaping praise on Kylie again, he said: “I think she doesn’t just stay in one lane or make the same music over and over again.
“She follows her heart, and I have a lot of respect for that type of artistry.”
These Alarms was originally intended for the band’s 2024 chart-topping LP The Forest is the Path, and had a working title of KYLIE, but didn’t originally feature her.
Gary shared: “As a huge Kylie fan I originally wrote These Alarms with her in mind. I played it to Johnny and Nathan and they loved it and we decided to record it for our (most recent) album The Forest Is The Path. All the way through the recording process the song was simply called ‘KYLIE’.
“But when we finished the song we quickly realised something huge was missing from it. We all knew it was Kylie’s voice that was the missing piece. Nate suggested we send it to her to see if she would join us on it. So, in hope (and with many fingers and toes crossed) we sent it off, it reached Kylie and we heard back that she liked it.”
After hearing the song with Kylie’s vocals, they realised it was too special to bury on the album.
He continued: “Kylie recorded her wonderful voice on it and finally the song felt complete. From the minute she recorded her vocals we knew, to properly honour Kylie and the song, it needed to have a life on its own and not be buried somewhere on an album, but live in its own universe, because the song had its own very unique genesis, journey and destination. We could not be more delighted to be releasing a song with Kylie, the queen of pop herself, out into the world.”
Kylie commented: “The story behind this song was irresistible… Hearing there was a demo called Kylie that had been living in the Snow Patrol archives was a complete surprise and, naturally, I was curious to hear it. Gary is such a brilliant songwriter, so to be invited into the band’s world is a total honour.”