First News spoke to JLS about their brilliant new album, Jukebox, their favourite X Factor acts and falling over in front of 80,000 people…

Tell us a bit about the new album…

Aston: I think the name probably gives away the sound of the album more than anything else – Jukebox. There’s just an array of songs on there that on paper you think: “Hold on! Is that really going to make an album?” But, obviously, if it’s a jukebox, you’re going to have a whole variety of different songs on there. There’re a couple of new things we’ve tried on the album, that are evolved sounds from album one and album two. It’s nothing really out of the ordinary. It’s JLS and it’s still what we feel are the strongest tracks, out of about 100 that we wrote.

Does it feel different to your first two albums?

Oritsé: It’s different in that we know who we wanted to work with on this album. We wanted to have a really fun and exciting album, that our fans are going to tune into and enjoy. There are a lot of great party songs on there, plus a song that is the first song we wrote together as a group, called Shy of the Cool. We recorded that on the album as a present to our fans.

Did the album title Jukebox come from the album being a melting pot of ideas?

Oritsé: Absolutely! Love that description!

Tell us about your next single, Take A Chance On Me…

Marvin: Take A Chance On Me is a little bit different to what people might expect from us. I think people associate us with doing up-tempo dance-pop tracks, but this is a little bit more chilled-out. It’s got a sort of a Bruno Mars/One Republic vibe to it. When we first heard it we fell in love with it.

You recorded She Makes Me Wanna with Dev. How was working with her?

JB: The first time we met her was when we did the video shoot together, which was during the day and she was just cool. She’s quite reserved, keeps herself to herself – she was just a lovely individual.

Are there are any more collaborations on the album that you can tell us about?

Aston: It’s very much a secret! There might be none, there might be some!

Who would you most like to collaborate with? You’ve mentioned Rihanna and Jay-Z, but is there anyone else?

JB: The Script! Jamie’s a very good writer. We actually worked with some of the guys who co-wrote a lot of their stuff, so we’ve been in the studio with their team. It would be good to get in with him, because he’s very fresh and it would be good to sample some of that type of sound and style.

Where did the idea to sample Can You Hear What I Hear? on a track come from?

Aston: The idea of the song, Do You Feel What I Feel? came from a couple of writers who wrote the song. We were out in LA working with them and it was the morning of our first session together and they sent us an early email. We all woke up, still jet-lagged very early in the morning, to find this email. We played the song and by the time everyone had got down to breakfast it was like: “Have you heard this track? It’s amazing!” We fell in love with the track and we had to record it, so the whole day was spent recording that song and writing new songs in the other studio.

What other classics would you like to put the JLS stamp on?

Marvin: One we did recently was Blame It On The Boogie with the Jackson Brothers.

How was it singing that with the Jackson Brothers at the Michael Jackson tribute concert?

Marvin: That was the best, biggest, exciting, fun, anything of anything you can imagine! The bestest, the best! 

How did it come about?

JB: They actually called us! We were having a meeting and our manager, Phil, said: “You’ve obviously heard about the Michael Jackson tribute concert. We’ll speak to some of the guys that are organising it and discuss what you can do.” What we didn’t know was that Jackie Jackson was going to be in on the conference call! Jackie called us and said: ”You can do The Way You Make Me Feel if you’re happy with that,” and we were like: “Yes, cool!” Then he said: “Actually, I want you to perform with me and my brothers!” We were like: “Really?” And he said: “If you have any songs in mind, then let me know, take my number.” And, obviously, the rest, as they say, is history. We went into rehearsals with them and it was just incredible experience after incredible experience.

You do a brilliant mix of club anthems and ballads, but what do you prefer performing?

JB: Because dance is quite central to what we do and our performances are quite high energy, it’s nice for us to have that section where we just slow it down when we’re on tour and deliver a vocal.

What do you think of the new judges on The X Factor?

JB: Wicked! We’re loving a bit of Kelly.

Marvin: Tulisa’s good. She’s smashed it.

Who are your favourite acts on the current series of The X Factor?

Marvin: We liked The Risk.

Aston: Mischa B – she is a bad gal!

Have any embarrassing moments happened on stage that you can tell us about?

Marvin: I slipped over in front of 80,000 people at Wembley Stadium! I was running backwards on the stage and I went: “Wooooo!” and then: “BANG!” (mimes falling backwards) and just landed on my hands. I’m quite supple, so I literally went down and the floor was like a bouncy castle, so I did what’s known in the dancer’s world as a resurrection (bouncing back up)!

New album JUKEBOX is out on 14 November through Epic Records