Take That’s Gary Barlow believes that singers who don’t write their own songs can struggle to find their identity.
The 52-year-old singer has released music as a solo artist and as part of the group – who have had 28 Top 40 songs in the UK Singles Chart, including 12 Number Ones – and he believes that creating your own music is integral to having your own voice as a recording artist.
Speaking to Sky Italy, he said: “Identity is everything for an artist and I feel like when you’re a songwriter you give everything it’s identity, because you are coming up with the music.
“It must be hard if you’re not coming up with the music to find an identity. I think that is really challenging, but we are lucky, because we write our own songs.
“So we create what is in here [our hearts] not waiting for someone to do it for us, we do it ourselves.”
Bandmate Mark Owen agrees with Gary and he believes the reason for the band’s multiple hits is that they write music that they want to listen to themselves.
He said: “We are blessed. I think that is because we make the songs. It’s maybe [because] we like our own songs, we are fans of the songs that we make, so that works well.
That That were created in 1989 by music manager Nigel Martin-Smith who wanted to make the British version of boy band New Kids On The Block and the line-up was originally comprised of Gary, Mark, Howard Donald, Jason Orange and Robbie Williams
Howard insists Take That – who released ninth studio album ‘This Life’ in 2023 – have massively “evolved” since their 1992 debut LP ‘Take That and Party’.
He said: “When we first began, obviously we were put together and the idea was to be like New Kids on The Block, that was the manager’s vision, but that was back then.
“But now, I think we have evolved obviously, and as much as we still dance on stage, and we love dancing and if we come off stage and we’re not sweating, then we don’t feel like we’ve done a good enough show.
“I think now, we see ourselves as a like a vocal harmony group, because on this latest album, we have decided to put more harmonies, more vocals into each track.
“I’m not sure how we’d compare ourselves to other groups now. The fact that there is only three of us and not five, like there was originally, makes it actually difficult to compare ourselves to anybody else at the moment. But obviously through the ’90s, everybody seemed to compare those groups to Take That, we were kind of like the first one around in the UK and Europe, so maybe that’s a good thing.”