S Club 'Alive'

Chart Peak: 5

YouTube

Rachel, Jo, Hannah, Tina, Jon and Bradley tamed up for another Top 5 hit in late 2002 with 'Alive'... 2003 will see the long-awaited release of their film Seeing Double in which they try to stop a wicked scientist from cloning them!

There's a connection here, as a young(er) Zoe Birkett had failed the audition for S Club 7 - apparently she was in the final 12, which seems quite close and in hindsight makes me wonder whether she was "encouraged" onto Pop Idol, given Simon Fuller's involvement in both projects. As that description implies, S Club 7 were seven no more, this being their first release as a sextet after the departure of Paul Cattermole to revive his teenage metal band. With hindsight and possibly even without it, it was clear that they were at the beginning of the end of their career and this ended up as their penultimate single, with the band officially over by the middle of 2003 after the film and soundtrack album failed to do good business, whilst Jo O'Meara suffered a back injury that reduced the act to S Club 5 for much of this single's promotion - Rachel Stevens had to re-record O'Meara's vocal parts in order to mime them. By this point a single only going in at 5 was considered a failure and the writing on the wall.

Although as a tail-end-of-their-career single 'Alive' doesn't get much mentioned it's actually one of their better ones. I was about to call it a good of-its-time pop song but actually it sounds more modern than I expected, with traces of the Scandinavian/American pop sound that has dominated this century. In fact its main flaw is that it sounds so much like an attempt to repeat the success of 'Don't Stop Movin' with even the same pseudo-vocoder effect at the end. But 'Don't Stop Movin' was a good song so I don't mind a second helping.

Also appearing on: Now 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 51, 52 [all as S Club 7], 55
Available on: Seeing Double

S Club 7 'Reach'

Chart Peak: 2

YouTube

'Reach' is the fourth single release from top popsters S Club 7... The song is featured in the band's brand new TV series LA7 (follow-up to Miami 7) which follows the trials and tribulations of the seven friends as they seek their fortune on the West Coast of America.

No, it's not really called 'Reach For The Stars', that's just the lyric. And no, it wasn't really written by Ronnie Hazelhurst, despite his obituaries: mind you, the actual truth, that it was written by Cathy Dennis and one of Republica, isn't really that much less odd if you didn't already know they were in the songwriting game. It's a good upbeat realise-your-dreams kind of song, although for a cynical old grump like me that kind of sentiment has to work harder to impress me and I've always thought this song was only about 75% as good as it needed to be.

Also, that vamp that runs through the song always sounded distractingly familiar to me and I never worked out where from. I thought it was from the music Jasper Carrott used to use in his TV sketches, but none of the ones I found on YouTube were anything like it.

Also appearing on: Now 43, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 51, 52, 54 (as S Club), 55 (as S Club)
Available on: "7"

S Club 7 'S Club Party'

Chart Peak: 2

YouTube

It seems only fair to warn people that this song contains the lyric "Hoochie Mama, show your nana!"

In October 1999, my brother was (jokingly) castigating me for not buying this group's debut album, plumping instead for an album by Gorky's Zygotic Mynci that was released in the same week. Although this was in fact the second S Club 7 single, following up their TV theme tune 'Bring It All Back', it sounds sort of like a debut. Not only does it (obviously) have their name in the title, it also introduces each member of the band by name (helpfully captioned in the accompanying video); beyond this exposition, it's a catchier song than its predecessor too.

That said, this is one track that's disappointed me here, because it has dated a lot worse than I thought. The hip-hop affectations are a lot more prominent than I remembered, and inevitably unconvincing. It sounds far more dated than I expected too (although of course those big "HEY" chants in the background are still to be heard in this week's chart thanks to TI). Unsurprisingly, the harder it tries to sound cool, the less it works. Still, if you agree that "Their aint no party like an S Club Party" {sic} then you can always book them. Well, three-sevenths of them. If they're all available that night.

And of course the great question that remains unanswered: how would I go about waving my hands in the air if I did care?

Also appearing on: Now 43, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 51, 52, 54 (as S Club), 55 (as S Club)
Available on: S Club