The list of contributors, made up of performers, producers, moguls and journos, will be mostly familiar to anyone with a passing interest in this topic, to the degree that you’re left with an impression of just how small the British scene is. Fun to see Alex Needham (Chart Music podcast) and Peter Robinson (Popjustice). If I were to quibble, I’d say I’d have preferred less channel 5 talking heads and more analysis but I’m not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. In the period covered by his book Reach for the Stars, Cragg said, pop stars wanted to win Brits “because it was a shot at recognition that they weren’t getting elsewhere. It was pop versus indie, and winning offered credibility.” But two decades later, pop is taken seriously by critics and every popstar can reach fans directly online. What is a Brit award worth in 2023?

Reach for the Stars By Michael Cragg | Used | 9781788707244 Reach for the Stars By Michael Cragg | Used | 9781788707244

Most of the acts Cragg covers straddle the years either side of the millennium, and many burst through in 1998: Steps were a five-piece made up of would-be children’s TV presenters with a yen to sound like a Home Counties Abba; the laddy Five were launched on the TV show Neighbours from Hell; the charismatic, 15-year-old Sylvia Young student Billie Piper went straight in at No 1 with Because We Want To, a single that was pure Grange Hill ; Irish four-piece B*witched were formed with the terrible idea of marrying the Spice Girls’ brightness and energy to another contemporary craze, Michael Flatley’s Riverdance. Such was the appetite for bubblicious teen pop that B*witched scored four consecutive No 1s in a matter of seven months. Beneath the shiny exterior is the treatment of S Club 7 as chattels or the racism suffered by Jamelia and Mis-Teeq It’s from Redbubble,” admits Cragg of the Sound of the Underground-branded tee. So, not an original piece of tour merch. ​ “I’m not ahuge fan of all the songs [on the album], but Brian did his best to rescue it,” he adds, the namedrop typical of Cragg’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the period. Formed in May 1997, Five, AKA Ritchie Neville, Scott Robinson, J Brown, Sean Conlon and Abz Love, released their debut single Slam Dunk (Da Funk) just six months later and found themselves living in a house together as teenagers. The band’s 11 UK Top 10 singles, three Top 5 albums and two arena tours spanned less than a four-year period. That it ended in burnout, depression and fist-fights was hardly surprising given their light-speed ascent. In recent years, there has been a happy ending of sorts with Neville, Robinson and Conlon reuniting as a three-membered Five and releasing a new album last year. But it all started out via five lads standing out from an initial crowd of 3,000 wannabes that featured a pre-fame Russell Brand among their number … Mark Beaumont If you see the indie versus pop thing as a bit of a battle, which to some degree it was, it woke the pop world up to the potential of what could be done with the internet. Over time, they certainly weaponised that.

Using the oral-history format, Cragg goes beneath the surface of the bubblegum exterior, speaking to hundred's of the key players about the reality of their experiences. Compiled from interviews with popstars, songwriters, producers, choreographers, magazine editors, record-company executives, TV moguls and more, this is a complete behind-the-scenes history of the last great movement in British pop - a technicolour turning-point ripe for re-evaluation, documented here in astonishing, honest and eye-opening detail.

Paul Cattermole was the endearing wild card in S Club 7’s

The late nineties to early noughties was the golden era of TV talent shows making sudden pop stars of ordinary people, writes Natasha Wynarczyk. Nobody buys books. No one's going to read this. No one's going to read these sorts of things. They just don't.' -- Louis Walsh An outstanding catalogue of oral testimonies from major and minor players in UK pop in the decade before the financial crash.' -- New Statesman Using the arrival of the Spice Girls as a jumping-off point, this fascinating new narrative will explore, celebrate and contextualise the thus-far-uncharted period of British pop that flourished between 1996 and 2006. A double-denim-loving time before the glare of social media and the accession of streaming.Elsewhere, it’s revealed that Russell Brand once auditioned for the boy band 5ive, but has denied it ever since, “which is funny”, says member Scott Robinson, “because he’s done some dodgy things in his career, and auditioning for 5ive isn’t the worst”. Ritchie At the time, pop bands had always been five people, so they wanted to do something different and have four people. But they couldn’t decide which one of us to lose, so they kept it as five. Which is one of the reasons we called ourselves Five. He said: “Sorry, girls, I don’t think you’re quite right,” and went into his office. We’ve both laughed about that since because he was so very wrong. It still has PR value, though it is less a long-term sales driver than a desired co-sign,” said a publicist for several Brit-winning UK pop acts. “If you win a Brit there is heightened belief within a label that other territories will engage more.” Artists still campaign around the Brits by “building to a crescendo in [their] ongoing release and touring plans that run parallel to the well-known voting window”, they said.

Reach for the Stars: The perils of being a 90s pop star - BBC Reach for the Stars: The perils of being a 90s pop star - BBC

Perhaps it was inevitable that, in 2002, after three albums in three years, two Brit awards, the spin-off TV shows and the spin-off mini-me band S Club Juniors, Cattermole hopped off the S Club 7 conveyor belt. Keen to focus on his pre-S Club nu-metal project Skua, he told the Sun he wanted “a change musically”. Unfortunately, success was fleeting and Skua split a year later, only for another reunion in 2014 to be scuppered by the return of S Club 7 and a subsequent arena tour. Described in 7 Heaven as “a bit of thinker”, he was often the one who cared about the band’s perception. After the excellent, disco-tinged Don’t Stop Movin’ earned them a slither of credibility – helped by Cattermole, McIntosh and Jon Lee being arrested for smoking weed in central London, leading to copious “Spliff Club 7” headlines – it was Cattermole, realising the chance the band had to move beyond DayGlo kid-friendly pop, who pushed for the follow-up single to be equally as exciting. He didn’t get his way. About the Author: Michael Cragg has been writing about pop music for over a decade and has interviewed everyone from Lady Gaga to Lorde, via Little Mix, Shawn Mendes, Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry and Britney Spears. He has written for outlets including Vogue, The Guardian, GQ, BBC, The Observer, Popjustice, Dazed and Billboard. During his three years as contributing editor at The Guardian's Guide! newsletter, he interviewed '00s pop luminaries such as Steps, Emma Bunton and Nadine Coyle. He also edits the independent biannual music magazine BEAT. Beyond the stories of fame, fortune and turning up to the CD:UK studios still pissed from the night before, Reach… finds itself in some pretty dark places. The music industry was far less monitored than it is now, with conversations about mental health, racism and misogyny barely audible within the four walls of the music industry, let alone in the tabloids.

Mercury made his last public appearance to collect the award for outstanding contribution to British music alongside his Queen bandmates. Looking gaunt, his only words were: “Thank you … goodnight.” He died just under two years later. According to producer Pete Waterman, the proudly cheesy Steps were supposed to be “Abba on speed”, a claim to which Abba might well take offence: their debut single, 5, 6, 7, 8, was ostensibly a nursery rhyme based around line-dancing. “One of the girls who auditioned [for the band originally] was quite deep and spiritual, and said it hurt her soul to sing that song,” Steps’ Claire Richards says. “I’m not that deep.”

The Guardian Books | The Guardian

Ritchie They wanted a band with edge and that’s what they bloody well got. We’re all very strong characters so eventually there’s going to be those eruptions. We were young, we didn’t have that level of maturity. It was extremely hard on us and our families. They were equally thrust into the spotlight with no idea of how to deal with any of it. We were told we were the fattest band in pop countless times so we made a point of eating numerous bars of chocolate and fast food in defiance. We had a No1 and were the most famous band in the country but we were all pretty broke and I was still paying off my student debt.

Summary

Brian Higgins is the British mega-producer who, along with Miranda Cooper and the rest of his Kent-based pop factory Xenomania, was the brains behind some of the most celebrated, most innovative and frankly best pop tunes of the past two decades: Girls Aloud’s Biology, The Promise and the aforesaid Sound of the Underground; Sugababes’ Round Round and Hole in the Head; Rachel Stevens’ highly underrated album, Come and Get It – acommercial failure, but so good it landed on The Guardian ​ ’s list of 1000 Albums to Hear Before You Die. A brilliant, celebratory, gossipy history of 90s pop. Great stories and interviews. If that's your era, you'll love it.' -- Richard Osman From 1st July 2021, VAT will be applicable to those EU countries where VAT is applied to books - this additional charge will be collected by Fed Ex (or the Royal Mail) at the time of delivery. Shipments to the USA & Canada: