Ahead of The Wanted’s appearance at Cardiff Motorpoint Arena later this month, Andy Howells chats to band member Tom Parker
One of the globe’s best loved boy bands, The Wanted, visits Cardiff at the end of March with their Word of Mouth World Tour. The tour comes at the end of a busy four years for the group who have already played to a combined audience of over 1 million people worldwide.
The tour follows on from their recent album Word of Mouth is their first UK Arena tour in over two years and signals a hiatus for the band which consists of Max George, Siva Kaneswaran, Jay McGuiness, Tom Parker and Nathan Sykes although Tom recently said its far from been the end of the road. “When you’ve lived in each others pockets for four years and you live eat and breathe The Wanted that’s all you kind of know,” says Tom, “its been four very intense years travelling the world and not really having time to see our families, concentrate on personal things etc so we all came to the conclusion this would be our last tour and album for a little while.”
“We wanted to leave it open because The Wanted is our life, we’re all very close friends and I think when the time is right we’ll kind of reignite the flame again and come back and do another album. For the moment, its nice to concentrate on some of our other stuff which is exciting but scary at the same time.”
Tom who hails from Bolton is already taking steps into music management as well as working on his first solo project with Fazer from N-Dubz, “it’s exciting but nerve wracking,” says Tom of his new projects, all too aware that leaving the comfort zone of The Wanted’s outstanding achievements is a big move.
The band have naturally gained the tag of Boy Band like so many before them, but Tom insists that the music has always remained paramount over personality “it was more about to make sure the music was first and foremost and when we came out with All Time Low it was like boy bands don’t have to be cringey.”
Tom also reveals The Wanted haven’t just had a female following, “When we’re out and about there’s a lot of lads and older people who come up to us and say “you know what we really like your music is its not cheesy!” I think we’ve done a good job of changing peoples perception of boy bands as have One Direction.”
So the album is out, the boys have spent two weeks rehearsing for the final tour, what can Tom say of the forthcoming Wales gig?
“Wales has been a phenomenal fan base for us, we just want to thank everyone for the continuing support and we cant wait to get to Cardiff .,” says Tom, “there’s going to be a lot of tears and memories its going to be the last tour for a while, its definitely going to throw a lot of emotion up in the air.”
- A version of this article by Andy Howells appeared in The South Wales Argus entertainment supplement The Guide in March 2014.