Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Pop's Golden Era: Success & Scandal

Episode Date: April 28, 2023

What made the decade between 1996 and 2006 a pop breeding ground? And what was this time like for the pop stars involved?From the Spice Girls to Girls Aloud, and Take That to Blue, Kate is Betwixt the Sheets with journalist Michael Cragg to look at the success and scandals during the golden age of pop.You can find out more about Michael Cragg's new book here.Senior producer: Charlotte Long. Producer: Sophie Gee. Mixed by Stuart Beckwith.Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society. A podcast by History Hit.For more History Hit content, subscribe to our newsletters here. This podcast includes music from Epidemic Sounds. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. You know my lovely bit Twixters, it's me, Kate Lister. I am here with your fair do's warning. Fair do's, everybody. This is an adult podcast, spoken by adults to other adults in an adulty way, and you should be an adult too. And if you can see any non-adult people in your vicinity,

chase them off, get them out of here, tack them with a broom if you need to. They can't be listening to this nonsense. And if you persist in listening to this and you get offended, well, fair do's. We did tell you. So actually, I don't think that this is the rudest one that we've ever done. I think that what will offend people quite greatly is that we are discussing the period 1996 to 2006 on a history podcast. Oh, no.

I've offended myself. But that's what we're doing, people. time marches on. So you might well be offended by that one. In which case, I absolutely support that completely. Go away, listen to something else. You don't need this today. You don't need us making you feel hideously old.

But if you're staying with us, let's get into it. It's 1996. Underworld are demanding laag, laag, laag, laag, laag, remember that one? Inborn Slippy. An oasis, well, they have decided that Sally can just blimmin well wait. But wait, what's this? Five girls, and they know what they want. Oh, they know what they really, really want.

A zig, a zig,a. Did you live through this era? I bet you did. How could you not have been aware of the Spice Girls? Like, were you living under a rock? A new era has begun. I'm having flashbacks already. Double denim, overly plucked eyebrows,

ice blue, eye shadow. And those really chunky highlights and super straightened hair. Oh God, it's all coming back to me. Low-rise jeans. No, no, no, don't make me do it again. Well, today, we are going to dive into the delicious, sometimes scandalous, golden age. What do you look for a man?

Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the button. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, my beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Dary. Oh, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets,

the history of sex scandal in society. With me, Kate Lister. The Spice Girls, S Club 7, Bewitched, Five, Hansen, Jamelia, The Sugar Babes, Girls Aloud, and Blue. And if you haven't heard of any of those, well, if you haven't, I think that you're lying.

But if you haven't, then you are in for a treat. It's bright, it's energetic, it's catchy and it's just earworm a plenty. Seriously, it's almost impossible to get an S Club 7 song out of your head once you've heard it. But what made the decade between 1996 and 2006 such a bubblegum pop breeding ground? What makes this era of music different from music before and since? What was it like for the pop stars that were involved? And what notes in these merry tunes might have fallen flat?

Today I am Betwixt the Sheets with Michael Krag, author of Reach for the Stars, 1996 to 2006, Fame, Fallout and Pop's Final Party. Are you ready for a bit of nostalgia because I know I am? Let's go. Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Michael Krag. How are you? I'm good, thank you. Did you have a nice Easter? We're recording this just post-easter. I have not been very well since the book came out,

which I think is a sort of typical response, because it was very busy, and then it was very like, oh my God, the book's out, and then my body was like, I can relate to that one 100%. You just kind of crash, don't you? Like, you get sort of swept up with this.

Oh my God, it's a book, it's a book, it's a book! And then it's like right now it's the, and how are you feeling about it? Good, yeah, the reviews have been good. People have said nice things. People seem to sort of be enjoying it. We need to talk about your book, really. I think we do.

We can't just be here talking about how you feeling. Yeah. Let's talk about colds. That's a whole other podcast. Your book is Reach for the Stars, 1996 to 2006, Fame, Fallout and Pop's final party. Yes. Good title. Thank you.

What was it that made you think this is the period, 96 to 2006, this is Pop's golden age? Yeah. Well, it definitely felt to me like the last golden age of UK pop, especially. So many bands, so many pop acts around that time. Spice Girls kickstarted that whole thing, which is why it starts in 96. And there was just so many. There was so many acts, so many magazines, so many TV shows. Everyone has a nostalgic feeling about going to Woolworths and like buying a CD single.

And I just thought no one had really written about it in a semi-serious way or given it any sort of credit. It was a very like pop versus indie time. It's manufactured. it's very cheesy in places, it's very upbeat, and so people weren't chin stroking about it, which is fine, but also I thought, well, it'd be quite funny if I did it as a big oral history because it felt to me like oral histories are usually quite serious

and on weighty topics or The Wire or Radiohead or something. And so I thought it would be funny if I just got a bunch of the people that were involved to just tell the story in a way that they'd never really told it before. I think as well that you probably need a... the distance to be able to do it because it's quite recent history, isn't it? And there are many people listening to this going, oh, for fuck sake, that's a history book now. Is it shit? It's a historical term from, you know, 20 years ago.

Your teenage years are now the subject of historical research. Yes. That's a fabulous age to get to, that one. Well, also, the Spice Girls was 25 years ago. We cannot get away from that. I know 96 doesn't sound that long ago, but it really was. What was it about the 1990s? Because we've had pop for a long time. We've had bubble gum pop and we've had manufactured. The monkeys were quite famously manufactured. And I'm sure you can tell me chapter and verse about other bands that were. But what was it in the 90s that changed for you anyway? I think it was just supercharged in a way. There were so many of them. There were so many avenues for them to go down. So I think we felt like there was so much more as well because there were so many magazines, so many TV shows. Top of the Pops really came into its own when all these acts were around.

You had all these big markers as well, like the Spice Girls did seem to just breathe new life into a pop world that was quite indie at that time, Brit Pop, Cool Britannia. Take That had just split up. The book starts with Take That splitting. Then literally two months later, out of nowhere, a girl band of all things at a time when people didn't think girl bands would be successful were not only successful, but worldwide 20 million album sales, merch, product. placement everywhere. I think it really went in line with that as well. The commercialisation of it as well, you know, they had lollipops, scooters, everything. I do remember that. I remember being in the middle of this spice mania. I remember not really liking the spice girl that much and just feeling like being deafened by it. Like it was literally everywhere. It was on everyone's clothes. It was obviously the music, but it was on TV. It was in films. It was like you couldn't

escape this spice onslaught. You know, in the book, Mel C says that in the end, that's why they got rid of Simon Fuller, their second manager, because they were a bit worried about the overexposure, about the fact that it was less about the music. It was more about where they were in terms of product placement, where can we fit their faces, you know, all of that sort of stuff. And it was so quick. Jerry had left the band within two years. They only released three albums in four years. And then they were completely done. Like, people don't really remember the third albums. So they were done really after sort of two albums in terms of the peak. And everything was so quick. And then I think they set that template as well of let's make as much money and do as much as we can

in a short time because we don't know how long this is going to last. And often it didn't last that long. When you said it like that, it was only two years and really two albums. It doesn't feel like that. No, because they were literally everywhere. They changed so much of what came after, you know, Steps and S Club 7 and all these bands were in their wake in so many ways. The industry has, had so much money to spend, you know, innocent records got started off the back of Virgin just having a lot of money swelling around. And they were like, let's just do a pop record label. And that's where Billy Piper was signed, an atomic kitten and blue. And like, you just have all of these people that span off of the Spice Girls. This is a sneaky question. You might not be able to answer it.

But how do you define pop? Everyone thinks that they know what it is. But like, what does a band have to do to be pop? Is it that it has to be that they're all vocalists? They're not actually playing instruments. They're just singing or is it, what is it for you that you look at it and you go, that's pop. That's different from different genres. I think especially in this period, it was pop as in popular. You had to be in the charts. The singles charts were hugely important. If you didn't make the top 10, you were screwed.

If you didn't make the top five, you were in trouble really because they were spending so much money. So yeah, pop as in popular was big then. Now, I think you can be a pop star in the old mold of being a pop star and still not really making the top. 40. Like so much has changed in that time. But then you did have to be popular. You did have to probably do a dance routine. You did have to wear matching clothes, not necessarily matching, but of a type. Even five who was sort of the bad boys of pop, they would be dressed similarly or there would be a theme going on. So you need that, you need a dance routine. If you've not been in a songwriting session, that probably helped as well because there wasn't time. They needed to churn out these

songs they needed to have people come in, sing them, you'd then go on and do your next thing. Your schedule is mad. I'm not sure hanging out in a studio waiting for a song to arrive is necessarily on that schedule. And it was manufactured. The Spice Girls were auditioned. Steps were auditioned. S-Club 7, obviously, nearly all of them, basically. And then obviously later in the book, it's manufactured in front of our eyes on TV talent shows. So I don't think you can get away from the idea that this was a period of manufactured pop. I do have vague memories of there being bands that would be on top of the pop, and there's like, oh my God, it's bleh.

And then you'd never hear from them ever again. I remember one called Juice, I think. There for like a week and then vanished. I don't know if people remember V or Triple Eight, who were two boy bands of that time. I think between them, you know, they had three or four top ten singles. But that was the thing. You weren't an album artist, obviously, at that point.

We'd release maybe four or five singles. A CD was 13 pounds. I'm not sure your mum is going to let you spend that kind of money until you know that you're a fan of this band because you might change your mind and be like, oh, actually, I don't like bewitched anymore. I'm going to go and like Girls Aloud now or whatever. So it was a short-term thing for a lot of these bands.

And also because they couldn't physically do it for that long. It was exhausting. The schedules were crazy. We are kind of in a bit of a period now of historical reflection, I suppose, which is when you've come out of something, everyone looks back at it and goes, oh shit, actually, that was a bit bad that was. Like what happened to Britney Spears and we're realising now that this level of manufactured fame and celebrity and sounds really brutal, doesn't it?

But something that comes out in your book is these singers and artists, they're just like products. Yeah, when people think of this period, they do think of S Club 7, because it was the epitome of a manufactured but really, really high gloss, reach for the stars, climb every mountain. The lyrics are so up, the style was up. The videos had this sunshiney sheen on it. They obviously had a kids TV show that ran alongside it, so it was really aimed at young kids. And there were seven of them, so it was how do we appeal to everyone by, let's not have a girl band, let's not have a boy band, let's have a mixed group of seven, not five, so that there's more of them for everyone. And that is just a marketing dream

come to life. Like in the book, it was literally sort of meeting of Simon Fuller, Simon Cowell, and Chris Herbert, who put the Spice Girls together in a big villa in Italy, all licking their wounds after various things hadn't happened. And then coming up with this idea of how do we build on what's gone before and just take it to the next level. And then the band didn't really find out that they were going to be doing a TV show until the last minute. It's like, oh, you're flying to Miami to film for three weeks. You've got to learn all these lines. You've got to learn all these lines. you're also in a TV show. By the way, you're going to be recording music,

going on tour, doing press, doing another series. So they're young, they're excited, this is the dream, but it is also a lot of work. It sounds really brutal. Now, obviously, the ones that made it really successful, and I suppose that millions of pounds

is some small compensation, but looking at it from the outside in is it does seem really, really brutal, that it was basically music managers and moguls getting together going, we're going to create something, like pop wizards of like, we'll have a bit of this and we'll bit of that, and then we'll see what happens. And the people that were in the band, they're in a precarious position as well, because they can't really survive outside of it, because it's not like they've got talent like Jimmy Hendrix. Do you know what I mean? They've been

put together to harmonise and sing. Yeah, and also not each band can have the talented one. We've seen it before when the band split up, it's rare that all five of them go on to have solo career. know that when you're in this band, this is your chance. And yeah, they were very young. Some of them couldn't sign their own contracts because of their age. So their parents would sign them. I mean, if I read a contract, I wouldn't know what it says, what it means. I would also be like they were, probably a bit bored in a meeting with a lawyer because you're 15 or 16 and you're like, okay, well, when does it start? When do I get to go and be a pop star? And they're like, well, let's read through all of this and blah, blah, blah. So five will give a.

$100 a week, I think, at the beginning to just live on. But obviously a lot of their stuff was paid for. So this was just money that they would have to spend. But a lot of these bands were working class. It wasn't the typical drama school route with all of them. It was more doing a lot of additions up and down the country, trying to catch a break. Maybe they've done like one or two jobs before, but probably not.

This is like their first thing. So any money is quite exciting. And then obviously you start to realize that if you're being ferried around in an Addison Lee, that money is coming out of your budget, or if you're all living in a house together, that money is coming out of your budget. And I sort of compare it with some of them to going to university, and this was their university years in a way. But imagine going to university and it being exciting,

and then suddenly being dropped and being told that you have to leave and that you have to leave within a week. And then also you go out into the world after and you are that person to a lot of people still. Lee from 911 talks about being Lee from 911, the kind of heartthrob to kids outside a shop shouting at him because 911 weren't together anymore and he was just sort of Lee but not from 911 anymore. It was hard and I do get why people focus on that and I wanted to include it. But I also wanted to show how fun it was. well. And they have had, as you said before, enough time away from it to maybe forget some of

the darker times, but also to realise how lucky they were in a lot of ways or how much fun it was in pop at that time. I suppose, yeah, we forget that, don't we? And I think that comes out in your book is that it's very easy to think of pop as like silly and dismissive. But it did have quite a spectacular impact on the cultural landscape, didn't? You can't escape that. I still love dancing to S Club Seven's Reach for the Stars. And so much music from that time is still loved today, and so much of it brought proper joy to millions of people that still do that. Like, the nostalgia thing is a thing of its own, and it's obviously not completely a good thing. But especially with everything that's going on now, I just think some people want to be able to go back to that time.

And those songs are like transportative, that's a word. You know, immediately you're just like, oh, I'm back. You know, lyrically, they're not heavy. They're not about things. if you're in love with someone, if you're not in love with someone. I mean, I controversially don't really listen to lyrics as such. I mean, I do, but I don't care. Like the melody's amazing, the chorus, everything about them is so well constructed.

All of that stuff, I'm just like, this is great. Don't stop moving immaculate. My other favourite one from that era, Hansen's oomboop. Not even vaguely ashamed. What on earth is that song about? Like, who knows? But it's... An umbop.

In an unbop we're gone. I think about mortality and grabbing your life while you, still can and all of that good stuff. So great, but also it's just a silly song. I'll be back with Michael and pop music after this short break. We're about to witness the first coronation at Westminster Abbey in 70 years. And gone medieval from history hit is your perfect companion for the event. From the earliest English coronation records to what the royal regalia used in the ceremony means. From the surprising origins of the recognition part of the service. To the lavish banquets that took place afterwards. I'm Matt Lewis and I'm Dr Kat Jarman and on Gone Medieval in April we'll be

exploring the medieval origins of this feast of pageantry. We'll try to pick out the key moments for you to watch and trace their origins back into the mists of time. We've got some great guests and fascinating topics to lift the lid on a moment when let's face it, people all around the world will have gone medieval. Subscribe and follow Gone Medieval from history hit wherever you get to your podcast. We are in a strange period at the moment where enough time has passed where, as you said, people are being nostalgic about it, but quite troublingly. If you've spent any time on TikTok, you'll know that the 90s and the Y2K are back in fashion, which is utterly terrifying for the people that lived through it. I remember my mum saying, you know you're old when what you were as a teenager comes back round. But it's really interesting to see what is a classic 90s look, because I do remember being in the 90s, I'm thinking, what will be the classic 90s look? And no one could answer it at the time, because you're in it. You don't know what. fashionable. In 20 years from now, people are going to look back on 2023 and go, oh my God, that look is so 2023. But if you try and think what would that be, it's quite difficult to do it. I think the 90s especially, the turn of the millennium or the start of the millennium is slightly

easier. I was looking obviously at old girls allowed pictures when they were on pop stars, the rivals. And it was just sort of strappy tops, jeans. Strapy tops. Strapy tops, low-rise jeans. And then if it was like a bit more. more glam, it would just be a sort of silk dress that you might wear to a prom or like a school thing. But yeah, I really think a simple strappy top and some low slung jeans. And those circle belts. Yeah, circle belts with the metal studs in them. Yeah, just a random Roman centurion's belt over a pair of jeans. Yeah, and then maybe like a sort of jaunty hat. And then like a flip phone. I'm having flashbacks. And then frosted tips in your hair and really, really, really.

nude lips. What were guys wearing in the 90s? There's definitely the curtains haircut. I remember that one quite distinctly. Yeah, take that all had curtains. Why do you think people look down on pop? What is it about pop that makes people a bit sneery? All right, it's manufactured, but all music is manufactured, isn't it? It's all a business. It's all a business. All of these indie bands are still signed usually to a quite big record label. There's money flowing around. Typically, there's songwriters as well. If the band doesn't have a a songwriter or there's one and then someone else is brought in to help with that process, which is not dissimilar, but obviously it doesn't have the sort of gravitas of the lone wolf,

usually a man, with a guitar, just being like, oh my God, I'm really in my feelings and I'm writing this song and it sounds awful and there's no chorus and actually it's really bad, but because I've done it in a shed and there's a whole story about heartbreak, people just think that's genius. and I don't think that is genius. I think geniuses make a song that will stand the test of time and that lots and lots of people can enjoy and not just three sad, sad. Have you watched the new Lewis Capaldi documentary on Netflix?

I haven't actually. I need to watch that and I need to watch the George Michael one and I need to just go back to sitting down and watching TV. What I thought was interesting about the Lewis Capaldi one, it's brilliant, it's a fantastic documentary, because everyone go and watch it. But the reaction on social media I thought was quite interesting because obviously there's a lot of love and sympathy for him and all the rest of it.

And there should be. But a lot of people were saying things like, it's ridiculous that the music industry just expects people to be creative on command. It's ridiculous that he's under this much pressure to produce music. And I'm kind of looking at that. And I'm not a musician, but I am a writer. And it's a business, this idea that you sit around and wait for the muse to show up. And that's genuine creativity.

And it's not, if you're any kind of creative writer, musician or anything, you have to learn how to do this on command. and it's kind of brutal. Yeah. Now we still have long debates about when a song comes out and there's lots of people on the credits and it's like, oh, what have we come to, blah, blah, blah,

the Beatles, there was only four of them, yada, yada, yada. And like, that's fine. But, you know, as you say, they're once in a lifetime. These people don't come along that often and so to actually be able to create on demand. Like, he'll have to have an album in, Lewis, by a specific time.

His first one has sold so many copies. He's on the brink of that Adele stage and going from one level of success potentially another, the pressure of that is immense and why shouldn't he maybe just call up three songwriters who were sitting around waiting to do their job, which is to help people write songs, why not? But also, yeah, imagine that pressure of how do you follow up those hits with more while also battling your own mental health issues and various different things. I mean, if I was a pop star, I would quite like to just slide into the studio and be like,

okay, what have we got? Great, this sounds amazing. I'm going to sing my bits. You're the producer, you know what you're doing. Great. Next. And like, that's quite fun. But also, within this era, I think it's important to point out, you did have some of the biggest pop producers who are working now. They started in this period. So you did have Stargate, who've done Rihanna and Beyonce, start with S Club 7 and 5, Mystique. You do have Max Martin, who's basically the biggest pop producer ever. He started doing five. He did some of West Live stuff. You do have all these big people. Like Steve Mack, who's done all of Ed Shear and stuff, he started with Westlife. So as much as the pop stars weren't necessarily sitting, putting pen to pad and like pouring all

of their emotions out, you have these incredible songwriters who either sit with the pop stars, look at the pop stars, what they're about and try and fashion songs specifically for them, or that basically just have the songs done and someone walks in and they're like, here you go. But that's sort of amazing to me. I don't mind that. I mean, I don't mind that an oombobs, not particularly deep. Yeah. I can cope with that. I want to sing me umbops. Would we live in a world without girls aloud? I just don't think we would. Because, you know, they had Zenomania, this incredible bonkers writing team and production team in this weird country house in the middle of nowhere, and they would get bust down there to just record these absolutely insane songs

line by line in different keys. It would be stitched together after they'd left the studio. But they'd be made with their vibe in mind. Like they would be made for those girls because those girls were sort of all these big personalities and they would come careening in and talk about life as a pop star. And all these people would sit and be like, right, okay, well, let's make pop songs that suit them. And they had 20 top tens or whatever. And you've got the sugar babes as well. As much as it was manufactured, the sugar babes were friends. They were in a studio together at the age of 15 just singing and someone was like, oh, you should be in a girl band. And yes, it didn't go brilliantly well for all of them. because they've kept being swapped out.

But they're back together now, the original three, and that says a lot, I think. I think so. And of course, one of the things that's particularly unique about this era of pop, especially in the 90s, and kind of as you're going into 2000s, is the rise of the internet and social media,

because when the Spice Girls dropped, I think the internet existed, but, you know, there was Ask Jeeves and there was like a couple of travel blogs. Yeah, it took about half an hour to dial up. Yes, and all of that stuff. So they were viral before viral was a thing. Yeah, because you needed all of these magazines, TV shows.

You had to go and do the TV. Like, how would anyone know your singles coming out? You used to sign up to mailing lists and you get the little card in the post that would say To Become One is out in December or whatever and you'd be excited. But otherwise, you'd have no idea. You couldn't just go on Twitter and be like, FYI, my new singles out next Friday, pre-save. You'd have to do a six-week lead-up time to that song coming out. And then the internet, because someone was saying that when the Spicey,

girls went on hiatus. They kept checking their official website to see if there was any comments. So it was definitely around like 2000 that more homes started to get it. And it was kind of before social media had really kicked it. Do you think that social media has shifted pop? Because now pop stars have, if they've got a social media account, they use it themselves. They have a way to talk to their fans. And that might be slightly out of the control of the record producers because everyone's one tweet away from disaster. They could say something or do something. Has that changed pop, do you think? Yeah, there are two things. One, if Lee Ryan had said what he'd said about 9-11 in the era of the internet and Twitter,

that ban would have been done. They were done in America, obviously, after that, but they would have been, that was only their third single. It would have just been over. So people could get away with more in terms of being fully cancelled or something following them around online, which was good for them. And yes, I think now you can voice. your own opinions. And I think that's good. You know, if someone's written something about you and it's not true, you have such an easy way to just say, that's not true. And here is the evidence, I'm on holiday or whatever. But also, I think sometimes people, not forced, but I think there's a lot of pressure now to tweet about certain things, to be more involved in things that pop stars didn't have

to think about back then because they were pop stars, you know, you do now need to have a lot of opinions on a lot of things and be ready to talk about them, to be asked questions about them. If you say I'm not political, then that's quite bad now. Whereas I think before, you'd be like, well, I'm not going to talk about that. Why do we need to speak to S Club 7? Yeah, like I'm in steps. Why are you asking me that? There was a lot in the book about mental health in the way that it wasn't talked about really then. You know, you weren't encouraged to talk about it or even have anyone to talk about it with, really. And I think the way we view fame has changed. So back then it was like how lucky you are to be this famous. Why are you upset? Why aren't you happy? This doesn't make any sense.

You should be grateful that this has happened to you. You know, it's all you've ever wanted and now you've got it and now you don't like it. Yeah, so that has changed, which is great, because people do now have outlets to talk about it. But I don't know how helpful it always is for someone like me as a journalist to talk to a pop star about mental health for a piece. How is that going to help them talking to me about it? Or even just me bringing it up, especially with Twitter. If I see a tweet or someone sees a tweet and it's sort of, oh, I'm in a bad way or like I'm just not really feeling it, blah, blah, blah, my label her making me do this or whatever. That's like a moment maybe. And then they might delete the tweet, but it still exists. And so then three weeks later, they're sat in

front of a journalist who's then like, what was that tweet about? Are you okay? Like, what's going on? And they might just be like, oh, you know, it was a moment I was pissed off with my label. I'm fine now. Or actually, there's a really deep, rooted issue here, and I'm not that keen to go into it with a non-professional person like yourself. So I think there's a lot of heaviness around it now, and people are expected to talk about quite heavy things quite publicly, whereas I think it's better if they get to talk about that to someone off camera. That's a very good point. And do you know what else I've been noticing?

And Jen Z, who are coming through, have noticed this a lot. When you look back at pictures from the 90s and the early 2000s, fucking hell they were skinny. Oh my God. And not to, you know, body shame anyone who's just naturally thin, but looking at the pictures now. And at the time, people are going, oh, they're very thin. But now you look back at them with more hindsight,

different perspectives on bodies. there are people walking down the red carpet who look like they're about to drop dead, like literally gaunt and frail and bones. And I remember all of that. This insane pressure to be not just thin, but super duper, duper thin, when we were all supposed to think that Bridget Jones was massively overweight or that people were saying Kate Winsler on the Titanic was dead fat. And you're looking at it and how going,

Jesus, no wonder we're all insane this generation. Yeah. And Claire from Steps, who has talked about this publicly, as well, I don't want to sort of tell her story, but in the book, she does say about in an audition, I think, someone saying that she was overweight and that never leaving her for the entire time that she was in the band. And obviously, you had Kim Marsh in hearsay on TV being told, The Goose is getting fat after Christmas, blah, blah, blah, you need to lose weight. And this wasn't something that happened and someone heard it and then reported it. It was put in the TV show. That clip was

edited into a program to be put out to show her reaction. And then I don't think they did show her reaction. She did react. She did talk to them about it. She was upset. But I think it was just shown as him saying it and her leaving. So yeah, it was, in a lot of ways still is beautiful people in a sort of norm way in bands doing lots of dancing, being sexy, being attractive. This was also the period where you would be on the front of smash hits one week and then at the same time on the front of FHM in your underwear, those two things were just different avenues of promotion for a single or an album in the same newsagents on the same wall. Rachel Stevens could be on the cover of both of those magazines. Or Louise. Yes. I mean, as a closeted back then,

I was like, oh my God, I fancy Louise. I fancy Rachel from S-C-Cube-7. Of course I do. I mean, what are you talking about? We should talk about people being closeted in this era as well. And there have been boy band members who have since come out, Duncan from Blue. So yeah, I'm gay, totally gay, I'm gay. And they must have felt that they couldn't say that at the time. Yeah, the two ingrained ideas were girl bands won't be successful because boys don't buy music by girls. And you cannot come out.

Well, actually, there were three. You cannot come out in a pop band and also black artists don't sell magazines. They were the three things. and so hate from steps would have to deflect attention when you're asking who do you fancy he would be like Britney Spears because Britney Spears is gay icon as he says in the book

you can say Britney Spears and not want to play with her boobs which is what hate says or they would say the Queen Mum if you knew you knew like if someone said the Queen Mum or the Queen it's like okay we know what's going on but you couldn't come out at that point and not risk the success of the band so either they would tell their story

because someone was going to do it for them or someone would do it for them and that was obviously not great. Kevin from V he was gay, he was out to his family, he was out to everyone, but the idea was, let's just not talk about it. But also like, you know, you don't have to keep it secret, but also don't bring it up. And obviously Stephen Gaetley and Will Young and Duncan, as you say, like a newspaper had the story of a man that he had been with. And they were like, look, you know, we're not going to do anything with it. We just have this full interview that we've done. But if Duncan wants to tell his story, then he could tell it with us, and that would be great. And so obviously he had to in the end, because they wouldn't have left him alone if he had done it in another way. They would have come

for him in some way at that point. It was such a brutal time about sexuality, wasn't it, that it would even be a story. I've spoken to the students that I teach 18 years old now, and they were genuinely confused by the Rebel Wilson story, remember she got outed by some shit in Australia. They were genuinely confused as to why that would be a story, why somebody could be blackmailed. It was really weird to them. It would be like trying to break a story about, oh my God, such and such is heterosexual. It was that weird to them. But it was hugely problematic for these people in the 90s. And it's this idea that the public deserve to know that this is a secret. You're sort of projecting one thing but doing another. And it's like, well, yeah,

because they want to do it on their own time in their own way. And also they're doing it because it wasn't great. In this period, George Michael, the whole Sting thing happened in L.A. And all of that, not with Sting. The thing happened. And he did lose money. He wasn't as successful in America. Mary J. Blyge's record label wouldn't let their duet on his greatest hits in America because of what had happened. He wasn't played on the radio anymore. So I think some pop stars did see that and think, well, maybe they're right.

And also how horrible if you're gay and your bandmates are straight and there's five of you and you finally got signed and you finally doing this thing. And then you think, God, if someone finds out about me, about who I am, you all could lose your. your livelihoods or this dream of yours will be done. I mean, even when Stephen Gately did come out, the line was something like fans are still supportive or the industry thinks they're still going to be successful or something, as if it was going to be the end for them. But actually, they were just as successful as it afterwards.

Have there been any women that have come out of the girl bansed and just been like, I'm a lesbian? I wanted to try and talk about that. Obviously, Mel C., there was a lot of stuff around Mel C about her sexuality, and she did sort of touch on that. She is straight, but I think she did have a lot of gay fans, and there were lots of stories about her. And I think it is more tied into, like, bodies and sex

and all of that somehow with women. Yeah, it was more like a titillation, weird fantasy, wasn't it? Yeah, I did want to include some of that. But, I mean, Alex Parks, actually, from Fame Academy. I don't know if you remember Fame Academy. I remember Fame Academy, yeah. She won the second series of that, and she was openly gay, which I think at that time was amazing.

Groundbreaking. Yeah, that's the word. And I do think maybe reality TV happened in this moment as well. You know, Big Brother started in 2000. And as much as some of it was not great, it did expose people to all different types of people. You know, Nadia won that show and she won like 75% of the vote. And we were just like, yeah, we love her. And like, we want her to be the winner of the show.

And obviously you had a lesbian nun in the first series of that show. And it did expose a lot of people to things that they didn't. see or think about and actually it showed that, you know, guess what? Gay people are amazing. Amazing. And the backbone of the pop industry, quite frankly. Well, yeah, that's the other thing. It's like, who's buying your records? Who's going to GAY to watch Atomic Kitten be suspended from the roof? What happens in 2006? Because you got this chunk, 1996, 2006. What was it about that area that made you get? This is the chunk. I'm going to kind of cut it off. I'm out. I'm out. That's it. We're done now. No mop up for anyone. Well, smash hits closed. Top of the Pops ended. CDUK ended. Simon and Makita left Pop World. So all of that like infrastructure that was there. All in 2006? Yeah, just collapsed. I wish that I was clever enough to have realised that. But it was while I was talking to Peter Robinson of Pop Justice fame, that he was like, oh, you should end it in 2006. And I was like, oh my God, it's such a genius. I'm going to steal that. So I did. X Factor was really big at this point. And it had changed.

everything, how A&Rs work, how labels work, where pop stars even come from, Christmas number ones. So that's the reason why is because all of the things that had been at the beginning were basically gone. And you'd go from auditioning via the stage and like doing it all behind the scenes and each of those bands did to just being a very sped up version of that process was being shown on TV to millions of people every week. So everything had changed. And is that why everything closed down in 2006? Was there something else? The internet, Smash It's moved. There were fewer pop stars.

It was Girls Aloud, Busted and Sugar Babes, really, and McFly. That was it, really. And so what you had was Smash It had moved towards doing a lot of TV stars. So they'd have people from Hollyoaks on the cover or reality TV people. Heat magazine was now, why would we do one of McFly when we can do like Jade from Big Brother? And they'd sell millions and millions of copies. So you didn't have that anymore. And the internet just meant that you could just.

get a lot of the stuff from there. And obviously Simon and Makita and that brand of speaking to people, pop songs coming out of the X Factor were media trained to the point of nothingness. And so you can't go on Pop World and have Simon being like, let's do a thing where I pretend I'm a horse or whatever, or like hand you a bit of cheese and you have to like react. So I just think all of those things sort of fell away and X Factor took over. But the book does actually go up to, there's a bit of 2009 in there because that's when the Joe McHaldry Rage Against the Machine thing happened. God, yes.

Which was an internet thing. I did purchase Rage Against the Machine that year. Poor Joe. So digital downloads had completely changed it because you could now have a thing where you can get this campaign going where you could stop this song from getting to number one and you could think that you had hurt Simon Cowell or Joe McHaldry.

I mean, why you'd want to hurt poor Joe McHaldry. I feel mean about that now looking back. Rade Against Mears. machine are fine. And also as he points out, they were both published by the same people or the same label. So that label would just make loads of money and they were like, this is great. And also he got to number one the week later and I think he's sort of fine with it. Out of all of them, he is absolutely fine. That's good to hear. So final question, which is again, it's a mean one one. What is the current state of play and what's the future of pop? I mean, I don't think we've

seen the end of the big manufactured boy, but I'm thinking of One Direction. I mean, they melted the will, didn't they? Yeah, one direction happening in 2010, I think. Fuck, was it 2010? Oh my God, I'm so old. I guess interestingly, that was unexpected. A boy band or a girl band had not won the X Factor until Little Mix later on. And so they didn't even win. They came third. So it was completely like unexpected that they would take off around the world like the Spice Girls had done. So I don't think it's beyond the realms. And obviously you have super manufactured stuff with K-pop. BTS are the biggest boy band and Black Pink are the biggest girls. band and they're from the stable of K-pop where no one pretends that it's not manufactured.

It's super high glossy. The videos are expensive. The songs are really upbeat. They're very throwback in a way. And they're absolutely huge. The charts are very confusing. I think that's the main thing. It used to literally be like, I've sold enough songs to get to number one.

Therefore, I am the most popular of that week. Whereas now it's a bit like, what is popular now? What does it mean? like how do you say that you are popular or not popular? Do you think that we've seen the end of the era of the boy and girl band? No. I don't think so. There is a new girl band called Flo, who are really good. They've had their first top 40. It's much slower now. As you say, like, TikTok is really important. You need to build that up. You need to build streaming up.

Streaming will only place you high on a playlist if you've got enough behind it, blah, blah, blah. But they're sort of doing sold-out shows in America, in London, in Manchester. they've done a song with Missy Elliott, they're quite cool, it's more sort of real, I guess. I don't know if a TV talent show type situation can work, but then if the songs are amazing, then anything can happen. Could still happen, couldn't it? Michael, you have been so much fun to talk to.

And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? At Michael Craig on Twitter, or I have an official website, which talks about my many journeys in the music industry, supporting Lily Allen on stage at Shepard Bush Empire, bleeding in front of Usher, meeting Rihanna, Jerry's dog once farted in my lap. Tweet me and I'll tell you more.

Thank you so much for talking to Rita. On that note. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Michael for joining me. And if you like what you've heard, obviously, please don't forget to like, review and subscribe wherever it is that you get your podcasts. Join me again, The Twix the Sheets, the History of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast included music by Epidemic Sounds.