Music with Eddie Rowley

SINGER and songwriter Una Healy leads a busy life, juggling her solo career with the demands and joys of motherhood.

Chatting at her home in Northampton, England, our conversation is interrupted by her young son, Tadhg, who will be three years old next month.

Mum might be a big star in the world of pop and country music, but a hungry boy looking for his yogurt treat can command attention like no performer on earth.

Tipperary beauty Una — who also has five-year-old daughter Aoife Belle with rugby star husband Ben Foden — takes it all in her stride, tending to Tadhg while carrying on her conversation about her year ahead in music.

First up is a trip back home to Ireland on Monday, February 5, to perform at the Sunday World Country Music & Entertainment Awards in Mullingar, Co Westmeath.

Una (36) is set to receive an award at the glittering event, where 25 artists and groups will perform in a concert setting.

After her girl band, The Saturdays, took a hiatus in 2014, Una decided to continue her music career, which had begun as a singer-songwriter in Ireland, and released a successful country-tinged album, ‘The Waiting Game’.

“The genre of country is certainly in my music, and it’s great to be regarded in that because it’s huge,” she tells me.

Una is currently working on a new album, due out at the end of the year.

“For my new album, I flew out to Sweden to work with Eric Bazilian, a great singer and performer in his own right,” she says.

“As a songwriter he has written some classics, including One of Us, which was a huge song for Joan Osborne back in the 1990s.

“He also played on Cyndi Lauper’s tracks like Time After Time, and that was his hook in Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. He loves the Celtic folk sound as well, which is good for me.”