Ireland In 50 Albums, No 26: Making Waves, The Nolans (1980)
The Nolans had shortened their name from the Nolan Sisters.
Though often not afforded their proper credit, sisters Anne, Linda, Coleen, Denise, Maureen and Bernie Nolan have claims on the title of Ireland’s First Family of Music. One of the most impressive pop outfits of the mid-1970s, the group – originally named The Singing Nolans, The Nolan Sisters and later becoming The Nolans – made a major step towards fame in 1973, thanks to a performance at Blackpool's Cliffs Hotel on Christmas Day, witnessed by entertainment impresario Joe Lewis. The sisters’ dad, Tommy Nolan, persuaded the London-based businessman to give them a shot singing in his club above the New London Theatre in the West End.
In early 1974, the whole family moved to London to work in the London Rooms on Drury Lane, eventually catching the eye of Cliff Richard’s people, who booked them to perform ‘Stuck on You’ on the star’s own TV show on BBC One. They later became regular guests on the show, growing a huge fan base both in Ireland and the UK.
Their 1980 record Making Waves was by far their biggest, selling five million copies. It was the first album by a girl group to go to number 1 in New Zealand, and the first international album to go to number 1 in Japan.
The Nolans began working on the album shortly after their name change (from The Nolan Sisters) in early 1980. Making Waves had some of their biggest UK and Irish hits, such as ‘Don’t Make Waves’, ‘Attention To Me’, and ‘Gotta Pull Myself Together’.
The track ‘Sexy Music’ won the prestigious Tokyo Music Festival in 1981 and the group have remained incredibly successful in Japan to this day.
“A lot of younger people don’t realise how big we were,” Linda Nolan smiles from her home in Blackpool, via Zoom.
“Especially in Japan, because it was just so far away. Like we’d win at a big festival in Tokyo and it would barely make the newspaper back home. But really, we were outselling The Beatles.”
Making Waves was the first album The Nolans felt that things were really coming together, Linda insists.
“It was the first time that we did a proper big video. You know, we did bits before, adverts here and there and stuff with our albums, but this was the first time we really thought… God, this is working. It's happening,” she recalls.
At that stage of their careers, Bernie was the only Nolan sister whose name appeared on the writing credits. “At the time it was very mechanical,” Nolan says.
“We heard the song, they [songwriters Ben Findon, Mike Myers and Bob Puzey] did the arrangement, then produced it and then we’d hear it and be like ‘Oh, you left my harmony out in that bit’, or tell them if we hated it or whatever.” ‘Who’s Gonna Rock You’, was one of their favourites to perform, Linda says. “Billy Ocean wrote that and got in touch to tell us, very kindly, that we could use it.”
As punk gave way to new wave, popular music at the time was going in a direction that didn't necessarily suit the Nolan sisters, but they nevertheless found a pop-disco sound that gave them the success they were looking for, at least for a while. ‘Don’t Make Waves’ from the album is played at 106 beats per minute, leaning into the groove of the time.
“It was a really, really exciting time, and we made great music. I still listen to ‘Sexy Music’ today. At the time we were doing the Tokyo Music Festival, and Randy Crawford was singing ‘One Day I’ll Fly Away’, and Jermaine Jackson was in it and all that, and we won with ‘Sexy Music’,” she laughs.
“And the six of us were all dancing around the stage when we won. Because we hadn’t just entered for the sake of it, we wanted to win.”
However, at the stage of the album’s release, the band were victims of intense snobbery. “We had commercial success, and had worked with Cliff Richard, but it wasn’t trendy to like us then really. The punk stuff was coming in, and you know, we were six Irish Catholic girls who sang nice harmonies, and that comes with an image, which we understood and rebelled against.
“Like, one time they wanted us to wear pantsuits on Top of the Pops, and we, as six feisty Irish women, said no. But remember the band The Skids? They once walked by our dressing room and they spat on the door! This was years ago now, but we thought… really?”
Misogyny was rife in the music industry and the wider society of that era. “People just talked over us like we didn’t really exist, or that we didn’t really matter,” says Linda. “We were so young –– like when Making Waves came out, I was just 21. And when The Nolan Sisters [1975] was released I was just 16. Coleen was eight the first time she was on telly. But yeah, as women it was bad.”
Given the recent Grammy awards, and the presence of so many women at the top of the music pile nowadays, Linda is heartened at how the situation has turned around. “In the charts, it’s all women - Taylor Swift; Dua Lipa… it’s brilliant. It’s still absolutely harder for women in the industry, though.”
Linda recalls the battles her group had with their record label. “They [our record company] expected us to go on and sing ‘Paddy McGinty’s Goat’ or stuff like that, and we wanted to be in the charts. If they'd gotten their way when we initially went to London from Blackpool, I think we would have been doing Irish songs. And nothing wrong with them, but we wanted the charts. So we had to get our big girl pants on and get to work. And the proof is in the pudding, really.”
Robert ‘Bob’ Puzey, the lead writer of many of the Nolan's most iconic hits, remembers the time well: “I lived on the eighth floor of a tower block that overlooked Leyton Orient Football Ground. One sunny Sunday morning in 1979, far-off church bells rang; I felt inspired to write a song for the Nolan Sisters and a song that might conjure up the glorious spirit of this day. I brought my acoustic guitar out onto the balcony. I soon found a chord progression I liked, and I sang ‘Mood for Dancing’ pretty much all the way through for the first time.”
Following a Christmas Top of The Pops in 1979, The Nolans soared up the UK chart to the number three spot. ‘Mood For Dancing’ was the top-selling single from the group’s self-titled album, and also marked the start of the heydays that culminated with the Making Waves record.
Life hasn’t always been rosy for the members of the group since, bedevilled by family fall-outs, illness and the tragic loss of Bernie at the age of 52. But fans will always remember Making Waves and those perfect pop moments from a happier era.
In July 2023, Coleen Nolan – the 58-year-old former band vocalist, youngest sister, and Loose Women star – revealed she had been diagnosed with melanoma, following a routine checkup. She is the fourth Nolan sister to succumb to cancer, with Bernie dying of breast cancer in 2013 and Linda announcing last year that her cancer had spread to her brain.
“It’s metastasised,” she says. “But I’m doing the best I can.” Anne was the first sibling to be diagnosed back in 2000. The 73-year-old went on to battle stage three breast cancer in April 2020.
Denise, who left the girl group in 1978 after the success of their platinum-selling album 20 Giant Hits, has been in almost 40 pantomimes and, in 2022, released her first solo album For You, My Love. “She was the first Nolan solo performer to get a number one in the jazz charts,” her sister Linda beams with sibling pride. “I'm so happy for her because she's got such a great voice. And you know what? She's got another one ready to go.”
