Scouting For Girls frontman Roy Stride is working with Take That on tracks for the ’90s chart-toppers’ new album.
The trio – starring Gary Barlow, Mark Owen and Howard Donald – are hard at work on the follow-up to 2023’s ‘This Life’, with She’s So Lovely hitmaker Roy helping the group pen material for the record.
He told The Daily Star’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.”
He went on to hint at the pedigree of songwriting talent working with the Back For Good hitmakers on their 10th studio album, noting: “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 f-ing hell, Mark Owen’s working with a lot of people!”
It comes after Gary Barlow recently confirmed the group planned to release their next record in 2026, sharing: “We’re all working on a new Take That record right now. We all came off tour at the end of the year and said, ‘Right, let’s get to work’.
“It’s been slated for next year. We just don’t want to stop, really. But I think we’re at the point where we don’t even really want to make an album, we just want to put singles out.”
He added: “We’re writing, we’re recording, and when we like something, we’re just going to put it out.”
“The albums take years to make. And I often think of our fans, they want stuff now. They don’t want to wait for two years.”
