Shayne Ward has revealed the brutal way he was dropped from his record label following a mysterious three-year career freeze that derailed his rise to superstardom after The X Factor.
The Manchester-born singer shot to fame in 2005 when he won the second series of the ITV talent show, mentored by Louis Walsh. His winner’s single That’s My Goal went straight to Christmas number one, selling more than 700,000 copies in its first week and becoming one of the decade’s fastest-selling singles. His self-titled debut album followed in April 2006, topping the UK chart, while 2007’s Breathless debuted at number two and went platinum in the UK and five-times platinum in Ireland.
Then, without warning, the chart success stopped. Speaking to Westlife star Nicky Byrne on his Nicky Byrne HQ podcast, Ward said his label, Sony Music, “took [him] away for three years” after the second album and, to this day, he is “still not too sure why”.
“You’re the first I’ve ever spoken to about it,” he told Byrne. “After the second album I was taken away for three years, and I’m still not too sure why. When I came back, the first song was a Nickelback cover — after all that time. I remember thinking, please don’t let me come out with a cover.”
During the hiatus, Ward continued recording and worked with leading pop producers including RedOne and Savan Kotecha. Several of those tracks later leaked online, among them Black Box, which was eventually recorded by boyband Blue in 2013.
His absence did not go unnoticed. Throughout those three silent years, fans launched online petitions, flooded social media with hashtags and even staged protests outside radio stations demanding his return.
When Ward finally re-emerged in 2010, it was with said cover and his third studio album Obsession, but after so long out of the spotlight, the momentum that had once carried him to stardom had faded.
The day he was dropped by Sony, Ward said, was one he would never forget. “It was a lovely conversation, really relaxed,” he recalled. “And then they told me they were letting me go. I broke down — I remember saying, ‘Please don’t take it away from me.’”
As he left the office, he looked around the floor one last time. “I remember looking across — marketing, international, everyone — and not one person looked up,” he said. “Maybe they’d been told not to, to stay professional. But it stayed with me. For years I used to dream about that moment.”
Not long after, he and longtime manager Louis Walsh also parted ways — another blow that left him questioning his place in the industry. “When I lost Louis, that’s when the doubt crept in,” he admitted. “Maybe I have lost something… which now looking back, I hadn’t — it’s just the way the industry can go. It’s a conveyor belt.”
The Standard have contacted representatives for Simon Cowell and Louis Walsh for comment.
The combined impact left him unable to face performing. “For many years I was lost and didn’t want to sing,” he said. “I’d lost myself for so long.”
He went home to his east London apartment and spent “years” trying to work out what came next.
Over time, Ward rebuilt. A triumphant West End debut in Rock of Ages earned rave reviews for his powerhouse vocals, followed by a National Television Award-winning turn as Aidan Connor in Coronation Street. He later starred in Channel 5’s The Good Ship Murder and appeared on Strictly Come Dancing last year, broadening his TV audience.
Lockdown proved a turning point. Encouraged by his fiancée, actress Sophie Austin — with whom he shares two children, Willow and Reign — Ward returned to writing and producing at home, vowing to release the music he’d been sitting on “over the last three or four years.” “If people like it, great — if not, it’s OK,” he said. “It’s about being true to myself now.”
Fatherhood, he said, reframed everything. “I don’t want my kids to see me doubting myself,” he explained. “I want them to see that Daddy’s proud, that he’s present, and that he never gave up on what he loves doing.”
Now 40, Ward has returned to his musical roots with self-released single Through The Night, marking his first new music in several years, and a UK tour that includes London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire on October 16 — his birthday.
Speaking to Byrne, it feels like a full-circle moment for the If That’s OK With You hitmaker, who supported Westlife at Dublin’s Croke Park in 2012. On social media, he has also said he would “never say no” to joining Boyzone when they play their Two for the Road shows at London’s Emirates Stadium next year.
For fans who have waited nearly two decades since his X Factor triumph, it sounds like Shayne Ward’s story is far from over.
