Bananarama hopes that the music industry is “a little less sexist now.”
The pop duo – which comprises Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward – shot to fame alongside former member Siobhan Fahey back in 1982 and were listed in the Guinness World Records for achieving the world’s highest number of chart entries by an all-female group but Keren admitted that life in music was “more difficult” for women during their heyday.
She said: “I think it was more difficult [for women] then. I’d like to think the music industry is a little less sexist now but looking back, I realised that we had to work a little harder and be a bit more determined [than men.] It was that old thing that if we were wanted to do something and we said ‘Oh we’re not doing that’, or ‘We want to do that’, were termed as difficult and I think if we had been male it would have been ‘Oh God, they’re so rock and roll. Lots of little things added up really!”
The ‘Venus’ hitmakers released their greatest hits album ‘Masquerade’ on Friday (22.07.22) in celebration of their 40th anniversary and will support the record with two intimate London shows in August, but Sara admitted that the pair never expected to still be on the go so many years down the line.
Speaking during the joint interview on ‘Good Morning Britain’, Sara said: “We started when we were teenagers and I don’t think we looked past the next Saturday night out. We certainly didn’t think ‘Oh we’ll be doing this in 40 years’, it is quite amazing. And we wrote a book in lockdown so we kind of documented our whole career then and it’s something that we’re really proud of I guess.”
‘Masquerade’ is streaming now on all platforms and is also available in cassette, vinyl, and CD formats from https://www.bananarama.co.uk/shop/#foogallery-10921/i:1.