Four of Diamonds rose to fame on The X Factor in 2016 after making it through to the live shows.
Comprised of Caroline Alvares, Lauren Rammell, Sophia Saffarian and Yasmin Lauryn, the group was mentored by Louis Walsh. They made it to Week 5 of the competition before being eliminated after landing in the bottom two against Saara Aalto.
Following their time on the show, the girls regrouped with their management and set about recording music. They signed a record deal with Virgin EMI and released their debut single Name On It featuring Burna Boy earlier this year.
With their new single Stupid Things featuring Saweetie out now, I spoke to Caroline to discuss the track, find out what’s to come from the group and talk about the challenges of finding success after The X Factor.
Your single Stupid Things just came out and it’s a great uptempo feel-good song. Tell me how the song came about…
We didn’t write it but we had the track written for us. We think it’s so relatable and we really wanted a feature on it. We wanted to do something different and we really liked Icy Grl, which is Saweetie’s song, and we thought it would be great to collab with her so we just went for it. We loved it and it was great fun to shoot the video. I think it really got each of our personalities across . It was a lot of fun.
The video really does capture the vibe of the song and it looks like you had a lot of fun. What was the experience like on set?
Oh gosh it was fun! We could just really be ourselves. The lyrics of the song are just so vibey and we just really had fun with the dancing and stuff. It was really cool to shoot and it was nice to meet Saweetie as well. We met her on the day and had some interviews with her the next day so we got to know her and she’s a real girl’s girl. It was just really nice.
I was really pleased to hear you guys had signed to Virgin EMI. I rooted for you on the show a couple years ago and I really wanted you to do well. It’s never easy even if you win something like The X Factor to go on and have success. What’s your journey been like to get to this point?
Well we started off as four soloists and we really always wanted the same thing. We auditioned for The X Factor as soloists and we were put together by our management company Fascination. We had an amazing experience in the show. It’s really like a fast track into stardom. Then we did The X Factor tour and we couldn’t believe it when Virgin EMI was interested in us. We signed our record deal last year and it’s just been great from then. We’ve been doing all the behind-the-scenes stuff and now we’re ready to get our music out into the world. This is our second single and we’re only just getting started. It’s been great fun and we’re just living our dream really.
Your debut single Name On It has had over 1.2 million streams. That’s crazy for your debut single. How did you feel about the reaction to that track?
We hadn’t been in the public eye for about a year and a half at that point so we were just really excited to get our first single out. We just couldn’t wait for that. We were so amazed by the response, we still are, and we can’t believe we’ve had over 1.2 million streams. It’s mad. We feel so blessed to have so many people listening and supporting us. We hope that the journey will just be up from here really.
There’s been a lot of social media buzz since Stupid Things came out. What have fans been saying about the track?
Yeah! They love it and they think it’s so fun. They think the lyrics are really relatable. Everyone loves the hook of it, ‘I mix up my drinks, I do stupid things’. We’re really pleased with the response and the video has been getting a lot of love as well. We’re really lucky and blessed to have had that.
You’ve been in the studio working with lots of songwriters and producers, including Jonas Blue to executive produce. How is the album going? Do you have a timeline for it or are you going to see how things go?
I think we’re just going to of see how things go now. We’ll be releasing more singles in the future and we’ve got some nice songs up our sleeves. It’s an exciting time. We’ve been waiting for it for a long time.
I remember from The X Factor days that you girls have amazing voices. I’d really love to hear a ballad. Do you have one coming up?
Thank you! A lot of our songs are more upbeat but we do have some slow songs. We recently did a cover of Eastside (Benny Blanco, Halsey and Khalid track), which is on Spotify. We use a lot of harmonies and you can really listen to the vocals there.
You’ve all got such distinct voices and you sound so good when you come together on the harmonies…
Thank you! It’s weird how we blend. We’ve all got really individual tones but when we come together it blends really nicely.
What has been the most difficult thing after coming off The X Factor?
I think the most difficult thing for us after the show was the waiting period. We were working hard behind-the-scenes but no one knew what we were doing. People would ask if we were still together and still a band. That was really difficult. We couldn’t wait to get Name On It out because we wanted to show everyone what we had been doing. We feel relieved now but I’d say that was the most difficult part.
In some ways it’s helpful to take a little step back and allow people to distance The X Factor association so you can come back with your own style and sound…
Exactly! That was a difficult thing to find our sound. I think that the year and half that we took out allowed us to find it. We’ve recorded maybe over 50 songs in the studio and some weren’t right but we have a bunch that are really great, that we find really suit us.
You have the kind of sound that could easily translate to different markets but you’ve retained that British sound. A lot of bands tend to lean into the American sound and lose that. Was it important to you to keep that British feel?
We think that Britain needs some girl bands. We like to keep it British and we hope to be one of the big girl bands in the UK. That’s our girl. We want to take it international as well. I think it helps that we’ve got two big features – Burna Boy on the first track and Saweetie on this second one. We’re representing from the UK.
You’ve got some dates coming up in November so fans will get a chance to see you live. What can they expect from those shows?
Yes! You can expect more songs as we’ll be singing some of our singles that we haven’t released yet and a fun show. We didn’t really express ourselves as we can now when we were on The X Factor. We’ve also been together longer now. We’ve gelled more and we live together so we’ve got a different chemistry on stage now I think.
What are you hoping to achieve in the next 12 months? Where would you like to be as a band?
In the next 12 months we hope to release more singles. We hope to be more recognised and grow our fan base. We had some really true fans on The X Factor but obviously after a year and a half out, we lost a lot of people that supported us. We hope to gain more true fans, release great music, do some more live shows and take it international as well.
Stupid Things is out now on Virgin EMI. Watch the video for the track below:
