Gary Barlow: I don’t care if my new album isn't a hit, I had to do something by myself

 
ES MAGAZINE PHOTO SHOOT 3/10/13. Pictures by Rick Guest. Styled by Orsolya Szambo. Cocktail jacket, £1,980. Waistcoat, £890. Trousers, £830. Bow tie, £145. Pocket square, £105. All from Tom Ford (Tom
3 October 2013
The Weekender

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Gary Barlow has insisted he “couldn’t care less” if his new solo album is as successful as his work with Take That.

The singer admitted he had to face many demons when making the record — his first since Twelve Months, Eleven Days sent him spiralling into depression in 1999, as his weight reached almost 17 stone.

Opening up in an interview with ES magazine, the X Factor judge also described how he let the pressure of bandmate Robbie Williams’s solo success get to him.

Barlow said: “I’ve got to do this record. I can’t go all through my life and never do something by myself again. Lyrically, musically I’m in a good place. I’ve enjoyed the process and it’s got positive feedback as well.”

On the success of the new record, he said: “This is going to sound wrong, but I couldn’t care less. I’m not looking to sell ten million albums. I’m 42, my biggest material’s when the band releases something, and I’m just a fifth of that.

“I want to sell enough records to be able to maybe do another tour, to be able to return to this in five years, to earn back the money we’ve spent making it. That’ll do.”

Barlow was speaking as he celebrated 21 years in showbusiness, selling 50 million records with Take That and as a solo artist.

Speaking of the difficult period he experienced in the late Nineties following the break-up of the band, he added: “At that point, the only thing I wanted was to be in music, and the only thing everyone else wanted was me not to be in music.

“It was like, ‘F***, who am I then? Because music was me. I can’t do anything else! I’m 25, I’ve barely started and it’s ended’.

“And there was the pressure of Robbie being a bigger star in the UK. I couldn’t find the music. There was that much s*** in the way of the door I couldn’t get through it.” He said eating was how he expressed his feelings, adding: “ I look back now and I think, ‘Wow, the lengths I took not to be me’.

“You know, I ate so much food and you couldn’t recognise me and that was what I wanted. It was horrible, actually, to look back, and very sad.”

Despite admitting that the X Factor had contributed to a fame-hungry culture, he defended his role on it.

He said: “At the end of the day it’s what’s going on in people’s heads.

“You can put on a movie showing someone being killed, but you can’t patrol whether people [watching] are going to go out and ... do you know what I mean?”

The album is out on November 25.

Read the full interview in tomorrow’s ES Magazine.

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