Just call him Mr Diversity.(Interview)

Prolific and internationally-renowned songwriter Wayne Hector talks to Music Week about his career

By Paul Williams

IF YOU DON'T WANT TO FEEL SUDDENLY VERY OLD look away now: this coming spring it will, incredibly, be 10 years since Westlife first impacted on the UK singles chart with their debut release.

For songwriter Wayne Hector the anniversary will be personally significant. He was the co-author with Steve Mac of that very first hit, Swear It Again, which not only landed him another number one, but was also the trigger that opened up his songwriting talents to the industry on the other side of the Atlantic.

"That first song we did for Westlife was quite a large sales record out there; then we did Flying Without Wings, which was covered by an American Idol winner [Ruben Studdard]," says Hector. "But I'd also written a couple of big country records for Aaron Lines and Rascal Flatts, so people got to know me for the hits we were having with American artists."

His status in the US as a hit songwriter is now so high that an already- impressive list of artists that he has written for - among them Fergie, Il Divo and Lionel Richie - has recently been swelled by cuts he has claimed on new albums by Britney Spears and Pussycat Dolls. He co- penned new Pussycat Dolls single I Hate This Part, which was yesterday (Sunday) expected to spend a further week in the UK Top 20, while his song Out From Under gives the Sony/ATV-signed writer a presence for the first time on a Britney Spears album. Part of Spears' Circus album, released today (Monday), the song has taken some time to see the light of day.

"We were approached a little while ago to do a song for Britney," he says. "This was just before she had her little bump in the road and it was meant to be on the last album. The A&R person was always saying, `This is one of her favourite tracks. We definitely want to cut this at some point' so it just turned into this album."