CHART-TOPPER Nadine Coyle is set to receive an Irish Post Award in London next month.
The Derry native shot to fame in 2002 as one fifth of chart-mauling, award-winning, expectation-shattering girl band Girls Aloud.
The group, which also featured bandmates Cheryl Tweedy, Kimberley Walsh, Nicola Roberts and the late Sarah Harding, launched on the now defunct TV talent show Popstars: The Rivals.
And if each member of the band had a role, then Nadine’s was to provide the voice - with the Irishwoman’s stunning vocals a much relied on strength within their many hits.
Together the band enjoyed a hugely successful 10-year career, in which they racked up an incredible twenty-one UK Top Ten singles, twenty of those consecutively.
In 2009 the band won the Best Single Brit Award for their song The Promise, and their hits, think Sound of the Underground, Love Machine and Biology, are still dancefloor fillers today.
Cheryl Cole, Nicola Roberts, Nadine Coyle, Kimberley Walsh and Sarah Harding of Girls AloudCareer driven Nadine, whose family claim they spotted her vocal talents at the tender age of just two years old, was the second member of the band to launch a solo career, with her debut album Insatiable released in 2010.
Following the band’s split in 2013 Nadine moved her family out to join her in Los Angeles, where she opened a restaurant named Irish Mist.
The star kept busy stateside for a number of years before eventually moving back to her homeland, claiming she was “homesick for Northern Ireland”.
The mother-of-one, who continues to make music, was back in the public eye in 2019 as a contestant on I’m A Celebrity, a move she admitted was her attempt to show the world that she wasn’t “afraid of trying something new”.
“I really hope that by doing this, it pushes me so far out the comfort zone and that I learn to be comfortable, feel relaxed and do the things that I didn’t used to be afraid of,” she said at the time.
Nadine Coyle will receive an Irish Post Award as the glitzy ceremony returns in London next monthAlthough she admitted it was hard to leave her daughter behind to take part in the show, the singer proved a popular contestant with fellow campmates and the audience alike and went on to place fifth in the competition.
A couple of years later Girls Aloud was unexpectedly drawn back together again following the death of bandmate Sarah Harding.
The devastating loss of the singer to cancer in 2021, aged just 39, prompted the remaining former members of the group to come together in her name.
In October 2022, Nadine, Cheryl, Nicola and Kimberley hosted fundraising gala the Primrose Ball in Sarah’s honour. It marked the first anniversary of her death.
Over the years Nadine has never stopped making music, with her most recent recording, a cover of Snow Patrol’s Chasing Cars, titled If I Lay Here (Chasing Cars) released in July of this year.
And at just 38 there is no doubt plenty still to come from the original Derry girl.
Nadine will be joining us at the Irish Post Awards in London next month where she’ll be honoured for her remarkable achievements so far.
