Ali Wheeler, one of the original vocalists of The Beautiful South, and current singer of The South, spoke to Leona Graham on the latest episode of her podcast, released on 12th June 2025, about life in the pop-rock band over the last 20 years, including the time they met Brandon Flowers of The Killers, only to find out he was a huge fan of the band.
“…we’re all kind of singing their praises, saying how much we liked him. Anyway, it turns out he's a massive Beautiful South fan. So Brandon comes up to Paul and he names his favourite track as Glockenspiel, which is a real kind of - you’ve gotta know your Beautiful South songs. It was never a single, it was just on the albums tucked away. And, he watched the entire set from the side of the stage.”
Ali also revealed that the band are potentially planning to release some new music alongside their busy touring schedule, including one of her own songs, which would mark her songwriting debut with the band, and the story of how they turned up to perform on Top Of The Pops, only to find that no audience had been invited to the show.
A Side.
You're best known for being the third and final female singer in the beautiful south, of course, but you had a pretty established singing career before that. Can you talk us through what you were up to before joining the band?
I left university in 1997. I came to London, gave myself three years to try and make it in the music industry. And uh, I think five years on I was still trying and I was just like, well, I know what I wanna do. Why would I stop pursuing that goal? So, yeah, kept on trying, temping to pay the rent at record companies, which was fascinating 'cause I got to see the other side of the coin and see what kind of - back in the day when people bought CDs, that kind of, the whole process of sales and stuff. But yeah, I did many, many projects. I was in a Crosby Stills & Nash trio called Virginia, which we've still got albums due to come out soon. I was in a gospel choir called Citizen K, and that was the door, that was the beginning of meeting Dave Hemingway. We were going as a, a choir for a number of years, and three of us got asked to do a session for Dave Hemingway, for his solo album. And at that point he took me to one side and said, I think your voice would really suit the band. Would you like me to recommend you? So as you can imagine, it's a nanosecond to go, uh, hello, yeah. Yes, please. And then I didn't hear anything for six months, so I just thought it was dead in the water. But I now realize just things take time. And I was about to chuck it in the towel and I'd been on holiday, and so that would've been, I had just turned 30 and I was like, oh, okay. Maybe it's time to concentrate on a career. And I came home from a holiday with an annotated, handwritten letter from Paul saying, ‘I know that you can sing. I actually completely trust Dave Hemingway's judgment on that. Come and meet the band’ and, uh, we took it from there, really.
And what was it like when you first met the band?
Um, I think having worked at record in, in the record industry for a number of years, it helped remove that fear of meeting a celebrity or meeting a famous person. So I had the joy of working with Pink and Christian Aguilera and Simon Cowell was in the same department as me. So we worked on Pop Idol and Will Young came into the office. So it's all this, this opportunities to meet these people, which were - without this opportunity, it would've been like, oh my God, you're famous.
Did you meet Simon Cowell, did you say?
Yeah, I worked with him.
And what was he like?
He's driven, there's no line between work and play. He just breathes music all the time. So yeah. Fascinating. Really, really fascinating to work with. And he really was like at the time, like ‘don't tell anybody’, 'cause he is nice. He really is nice and he is very passionate, very driven. But I think at the time, back in the nineties, it paid to be the baddy on telly. So he is like, ‘yeah, don't tell everybody I'm actually quite nice’. I was like, ‘okay.’
What, and who inspired you to start a career and who inspires you most now?
I've kind of been surrounded by entertainment all my life. My dad was an agent, if you think of working men's clubs, that was his bread and butter. So he used to handle all of his posters himself. And I would go with him to the working men's club and I'd see the magicians and the singers, the duos and trios. So it was always a big part of my life. I even tried to audition for opportunity knocks back in the day, but my parents made me call them up and cancel.
What? Why did they do that?
My dad said, ‘you have a perception that entertainment is a bed full of roses’. He says, ‘but I can tell you there's lots of thorns’. I was like, ‘I know, but at least let me discover that myself’. I was young, granted. But my dad was a singer as well. My mum was a groupie. He was in a band called The Mavericks and he was the lead singer. But yeah, always loved musicals, loved theatre. And, uh, Barbara Streisand was a massive influence on me. I love her voice and still do. And so I would always go for big voices. You name it. Any big voice, whether it's - I'm very passionate about jazz, whether it's kind of Julie London or Billy Holiday, or big voices all the way through to icons like Madonna, 'cause of her capacity to maintain herself in the kind of contemporary vein - she’s constantly changing. I love that. And you can't ignore Beyonce and the people like that with, with their huge voices. Celine Dion, you name it.
So, coming back to The Beautiful South, you had this opportunity and you met them, and then what was it like the first time you sang with them?
The first gig we did was relatively small, low key, and it was in - I mean, it couldn't have been a better baptism of fire - it was in Hull, which is obviously the birthplace of the whole band. And that was really, really special. And they were big boots to fill. Both Brianna and Jackie, they are amazing vocalists and they've carried these iconic songs, so to sing all of these songs which people associate with them was a challenge and a worry, but everybody was so receptive and it's testimony to the songs really, just how great they are, that over the years I've always received an amazing reception for their evergreen songs. They don't seem to age and the people - you can see it, the elation in the room as soon as the opening chords of Rotterdam start or Perfect 10. But yeah, people have been amazingly supportive. And I've only forgot the words really badly once, and that was in Manchester. I don't think it was the arena tour, but anyway, the words just left my mind.
What did you do?
I did the cliche, hand the mic to the audience. So they started singing it back at me and I was like ‘oh yeah, yeah, yeah’.
Is that why they'd do that? Is this a trade secret?
Maybe. Well, it was for me on that day. Yeah, I dunno where it went. There was absolutely no rhyme or reason. They were very much instilled in me by that point. But sometimes you can just - and I still do sometimes - I'm in the moment and I'm enjoying myself so much and I'm enjoying the audience so much that the whole audience and the whole band's looking at me like, ‘you should be singing now, it's your turn.’ I’m like, ‘oh, sorry. I was just having a good time.’
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