Roy Stride has been tasked with writing Take That’s “biggest song” to date.
The 46-year-old musician – who is best known as the frontman of Scouting For Girls – has been writing with Mark Owen, and explained that the Take That star thinks that despite his decades in the industry alongside bandmates Gary Barlow and Howard Donald, the best is yet to come.
He told The Daily Star newspaper’s Wired column: “I did a writing session with Mark Owen from Take That over here (LA) and it was so inspiring because he’s achieved so much. It’s the biggest boyband to ever come out of the UK, like what more could they achieve?
“But literally he started the session going, ‘I still don’t think we’ve written our biggest song, we still have more to achieve, I still think we can write the biggest song ever, so yeah it was quite humbling but inspiring.
“It was amazing to work with him because he was really like, ‘This isn’t good enough, this isn’t it, we could do better than that.’ It was really hard work because he was so demanding about how good it had to be.”
Roy also noted working with a Take That member comes with a certain type of perstidge but then it is all a breeding ground for songwriting talent in the end because of how it spreads on social media.
He said: “You’ll do an incredible session and be like, ‘Yes got that!’ but then I am following other songwriters on Instagram like, ‘Oh he’s in with Mark Owen, he’s in with Mark Owen, oh fing hell, Mark Owen’s working with a lot of people!”
Meanwhile, in the late 2000s, Roy found fame himself alongside Greg Churchouse and James Rowlands and they enjoyed success with hits such as ‘She’s So Lovely’ and ‘This Ain’t A Love Song’.
Ahead of the release of a 15th anniversary edition of their album ‘Everybody Wants To Be On TV’ and a tour set to begin next year, Roy noted that the thing he is still most proud of is knocking Lady Gaga off the top of the UK charts when they were at the height of their fame.
He said: “I probably mention that at most dinner parties.
“It’s quite funny, especially as I’m working and living in LA and nobody knows who Scouting For Girls are…
“So I do say, ‘Yeah, we were No1, we knocked Lady Gaga off’ and you can see them go like, ‘Is this guy for real?”