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

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Chris Herbert I knew the band were exhausted. But they were also becoming hard work as well. I couldn’t recognise whether it was pure exhaustion, whether they were suffering mentally, or whether they were just playing up. It was a combination of all those things. There was also a bit of bullying going on. 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. And then there's the fun-and-bubbly side. Any fan of the Spice Girls, Steps, Girls Aloud, the Sugababes and their ilk will have a field day with this. Almost all information is given in interview-snippet-style from the mouths of the people involved. Brilliantly, this isn't limited to the bands themselves, but also includes songwriters, producers, superfans, managers, publicists, and TV presenters. The book gives a huge amount of behind-the-scenes information on anything from a band's living situations to the goings-on behind big awards ceremonies. In short: Great read for anyone interested in the late 90s/ early 2000s pop industry in the UK - whether this is because you're a fan of the music or want to find out more about how the industry worked. (Though I imagine it's a lot less enjoyable if you don't know the bands: LOTS of names.)

At night, we'll lie down on the ground and look up really far. I'll teach you how the asteroids become our shooting stars." For being brave does not mean that nothing makes you scared. It means you never let your fear prevent the dreams you've dared." Ritchie Neville I turned up and it was a media circus. There was press there and a Spice Girls tribute band performing. I was in this queue just going, “What the hell is this?” Sean There were frictions within the band. And between the band and management. Then the band and the label. Frictions everywhere. At Kidadl we pride ourselves on offering families original ideas to make the most of time spent together at home or out and about, wherever you are in the world. We strive to recommend the very best things that are suggested by our community and are things we would do ourselves - our aim is to be the trusted friend to parents.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. Broadly chronological, the book spans ten years. It begins with the Spice Girls in 1996, ending in 2006 with the demise of three major media sources for pop music - Smash Hits magazine, Top of the Pops magazine, CD:UK on TV. 2006 marked the end of an era for myself also, as this is when I stopped following the charts, having become disenchanted with the manufactured sounds of pop music and taking an interest in music I considered more authentic and complex. I wasn't so familiar with the music discussed towards the end of the book, particularly the acts resulting from TV talent shows, which I've never watched. Most of the featured acts I remembered very well, however. I liked the chapter on Girls Aloud because of their strong personalities, even though I was never a fan of the music. I especially enjoyed the chapters about 5ive and S Club 7, my two favourites. Sadly, Paul Cattermole of S Club 7 died a week after the publication of this book. If you watched The Big Reunion on television a few years ago (or any similar programmes) or read any of the many official band books from the late 90's and early 2000's then you probably won't learn anything new from this book. That's not to say that it isn't still an interesting read but most of the interview pieces with band members are taken from past interviews or books that are already published.

To chat about Reach For The Stars, 1996 – 2006: Fame, Fallout and Pop’s Final Party, journalist Michael Cragg has worn aGirls Aloud T‑shirt for the occasion, from the band’s debut 2003 album. Expect while reaching for the stars, people to whirl by with their dark clouds and storm upon you."I hope to continue to inspire our nation's youth to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math so they, too, may reach for the stars." Sean Conlon I saw Abz at my audition. He had some sunglasses on and looked a little bit like how Peter Andre used to dress. He really stood out from the whole queue. More 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. Sean The label were in a rush and they didn’t want to wait, so they convinced the band to use a cardboard cut-out of me [in the video for Let’s Dance]. It did hurt a little bit. It was like the label saying, “Well, he’s so miserable anyway and he’s not smiling and he’s so quiet that he might as well have been a cardboard cut-out.” That’s what it felt like to me. I was very much buying pop music through a lot of this era, so it was fascinating to read the story behind the music, as told by (most of) the people who were there. The majority of this book takes the form of quotes from the people involved - with comments and context from the author inserted where necessary. Michael Cragg is a music writer, who works (or has worked) for a lot of major UK publications - so if he hasn't interviewed the people specifically for this book, he has interviews that he's done with them in the past that he can draw on. So you have four of the five Spice Girls (you can guess which one isn't in this) and members from pretty much every band that is mentioned. As a young person at the time that a lot of this was happening, I found it really interesting to read about what was going on behind the scenes and the press coverage and see how that affected my perception of the various bands and band members involved. And of course the other thing that's really fascinating is how the spotlight of fame affected the people in the bands. Many of them were very young when they joined the bands - and you get to see an array of different ways that fame - or being in a band can mess your life up. But in the early stages of this period, a lot of it was going on behind closed doors - as the book hurtles towards the mid 00s, you see the arrival of TV talent shows and people learning how to be in a band whilst on camera and making their mistakes in public.

Despite enjoying this book my reason for rating this book 3 out of 5 is because at times it felt that if you weren't a band that the author personally liked then you weren't featured or not featured very much, so bands which were very successful like All Saints barely get mentioned in comparison to bands who arguably had less success such as Triple 8 who are featured a lot. Potentially this is because some of their members were contributors to the book. There were also a few disparaging remarks about Westlife so I assume the author isn't a fan of theirs which is fine but they were one of the most successful bands of that period so to skim over them doesn't really give an accurate picture. I enjoyed the last section on the rise of programmes like Pop Idol, Popstars etc and the artists that they created but there was only one passing reference to Fame Academy which was also popular at the time. In life, all people need some kind of motivation to move ahead and dream of a difficult goal. Some search it in a book, a movie, a quote, or dreams. These reach for the stars quotes will be perfect for you. Reach for the Stars takes a delightful look at British pop music from the years 1996 to 2006. It was a more innocent time, before the dawn of the internet - radio, Top of the Pops and magazines like Smash Hits were the main ways teenagers learned about their favourite bands. CD singles sold in vast amounts and reaching the number one position in the weekly charts was still a meaningful and much-coveted achievement. Probably a robbery … Steps smile through losing out to indie’s Belle and Sebastian. Photograph: JMEnternational/Getty Images

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A lot of it, like the music itself, seems throwaway, the stuff of gossip. We learn, for example, that even in the early stages of the Spice Girls, Victoria Adams was far more interested in shopping for clothes than she was in recording vocals. “She just wasn’t there,” co-member Geri Halliwell says of the Wannabe studio sessions. “Bless her.” It’s revealed that Russell Brand once auditioned for the boy band 5ive, but has denied it ever since Sean We had a lot of moments when we really did get on but there were bits of testosterone and bits of friction here and there. Just lads living together trying to find their feet. It wasn’t always great but we did have some laughs.