Reach for the Stars: 1996–2006: Fame, Fallout and Pop’s Final Party: A Times Summer Read 2023

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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. 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”.

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

Cases are regularly made for this or that period of pop history to be recognised as a “golden era”, and random chunks of the 1950s to the 1990s have been widely exalted. It is to Michael Cragg’s great credit that his new book, a thoroughgoing oral history, focuses on a period until now almost entirely shunned by critics: British millennial bubblegum. 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. Really interesting and informative. A fascinating look at what was going on behind the scenes from the people that were there, delivering these massive moments of my youth. Explores in fascinating detail the dizzy, competitive, lost world of nineties and noughties “manufactured” pop”Scott There would be rows that would break into fights. And J would always be in the middle of that. There were points where a couple of us would be recording and then we’d go and the other three would come in. I didn’t have a great relationship with them because I said Nadine was the best singer. So, obviously the other four hated me. It shifted abit but then, obviously, The XFactor came along,” he continues. ​ “And that machine was so big and so powerful that you then did have to sort of take what was going on. It was areal rollercoaster, as they say, of people not being able to say what they wanted. Or if you did, you were branded abitch, or difficult, or rude.”

Reach for the Stars by Michael Cragg review - The Guardian

I LOVED this book! It tells the ‘story’ of British pop music from 96-06 starting with the explosion of the spice girls in 1996. As someone who was 10 in 96 and an avid pop fan throughout the late 90s this was a brilliant read. Lots of insight from producers, band members, journalists (eg smash hits, totp magazine( it flows right up to the emergence of pop idol, X factor etc and how that changed the world of pop music , as does streaming and the closure of high st record stores. When reading this book, you're likely to vanish down a YouTube wormhole, revisiting forgotten gems or favourite songs from the likes of A1, Billie Piper, Sugababes and Steps, or discovering that the music of certain groups still sounds awful more than twenty years later (Atomic Kitten...) I should note that it's not exhaustive, which is OK as the book is long enough without going into even further detail. The focus is on Britain, with occasional references to Irish groups popular in Britain, but not much context outside of this, or else we would certainly be hearing about Aqua, who were massively popular. Perhaps the British band Scooch could have had a mention, as they did moderately well in the early 2000s. I would've appreciated a little more about B*Witched, as the way I remember it, they were almost as popular as the Spice Girls. Regarding the Spices, the chapter would've have more appeal if I hadn't recently read Melanie C's memoir, which more or less covers the same territory. Sean There were frictions within the band. And between the band and management. Then the band and the label. Frictions everywhere. A book that does justice to an extraordinarily fertile period for British pop - Michael Cragg's assessment of new millennium bubblegum is top rate storytelling.' -- Bob StanleyMore than that though, it dug right into some really thoughtful aspects when it comes to the treatment of pop; the inherent sexism and homophobia that is attached to the critical snobbery when it comes to music genres that predominantly appeal to women and gay men. Oh what a time to be alive, when books are published and reviewed in broadsheet newspapers about music that would get me sneered at by dull boys in trilby hats. This oral history of millennial British pop—interviews edited together as though you’re watching talking heads speaking on 100 Greatest Y2K Music Moments on Channel 5—contains Boston Tea Party levels of spillage, spanning the ten year pop boom between the Spice Girls and the demise of TOTP, Smash Hits and Simon and Miquita’s Popworld. It takes the subject seriously from a poptimist perspective, but is still light, fun and brilliantly gossipy. 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 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.