Normal service is resumed, after the strangest of detours courtesy of Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Sunscreen’… Here’s some A-grade, late-nineties tween-pop.
Bring It All Back, by S Club 7 (their 1st of four #1s)
1 week, from 13th – 20th June 1999
I hear the Jacksons, I hear the Archies, I hear Disney themes… I hear a whole host of influences from classic sixties and seventies bubblegum. I’ve noticed that while listening to many of the recent pop number ones, I’ve ended up spending more time working out what they’re derivative of rather than hearing them as their own entities. And there isn’t a single note in ‘Bring It All Back’ that isn’t borrowed from somewhere else. Which means I want to sneer at it – my thirteen-year-old self certainly did – but dammit I can’t. It’s just too catchy, too packed with hooks, not to grudgingly admire.
Not that it’s at all clever, or that it isn’t cynical in the way it relentlessly hits each hook after hook, as if some modern day Pied Piper has designed a song that will lure in seven-year-olds across the land. I haven’t been able to listen to it for too long this morning without starting to feel queasy. Plus there’s no edge, no hint of an underlying melancholy, to the lyrics: Don’t stop, Never give up, Hold your head high and reach the top… It almost makes B*Witched sound punk. But still, as a pure pop song, it works.
Besides, I could never truly hate this. This is nostalgia. This is watching kids’ TV while still in my school uniform, looking forward to ‘Neighbours’ and ‘The Simpsons’, before, or perhaps after, playing football across the street, with my mum cooking dinner next door… Baz Luhrmann may have just warned us against the dangers of nostalgia, but I would pay a good sum of money just to spend five minutes back in that world.
This record is further evidence of a point I made a few posts ago, about British pop sounding, and looking, cheap and tacky next to the mega-watt US stars of the day. You can imagine Britney Spears’s team hearing five seconds of this, and dismissing it with a roll of the eyes and a “that’s cute”. And yet, ‘Miami 7’, the show for which this served as the theme song, was popular in the US. Clearly even their tweens had an appetite for British cheese.
S Club 7 were the brainchild of Simon Fuller, after he had been sacked by the Spice Girls in 1997. Presumably he wanted younger, more pliable charges (who wouldn’t rebel against him) which I guess fed through to the cuter, more upbeat music. It is said that the ‘S’ in the band name stands for ‘Simon’, which feels a bit cultish, but that’s never been confirmed. With Steps around at the same time, and with Hear’Say and Liberty X to come soon, it could be said that we are in the second golden age of mixed-gender pop groups, after the days of Bucks Fizz, Brotherhood of Man, and a certain quartet of Swedes (I hesitate to type out that band’s name, in case a casual skim-reader thinks I’m actually comparing them to S Club 7!)
I will happily admit, however, that S Club 7 have much better songs to come… At least two of which are genuine pop classics. Their sound matured, while their songwriters remained skilled at using strong reference points for their hits, be it Motown, disco, or even classical interpolations (see 2000’s ‘Natural’). Plus, I’ve met Bradley McIntosh – the only chart-topping artist I have ever touched – and he was cool.
The UK Number Ones Blog 
I was born on the 15th of June 1999 so this song was the No. 1 song when I was born (I almost wrote “when I was released” haha). The 2000s will be the first decade where I was alive for all the chart-toppers. And looking at the chart-toppers of the 2000s, looks like it’ll be more interesting than the 90s.
I know this song quite well, and I really enjoy it. Love the early 70s bubblegum pop-soul sound of it. It’s a very cute song, but no way could a song like this make it in the US. It’s so edgeless, so sugary, so sweet, it has no punch or forcefulness needed to compete with the Max Martin-produced hits on the BBs, Britney, N’Sync. This is something your 5-year-old-sister is digging.
strangely, despite my rabid hatred of B*witched, Westlife and Boyzone, whilst I was far too old to want to listen to/buy their music, I didn’t mind Steps and S Club 7, at least they were fun. On a side note re “this is nostalgia I’d pay to spend five minutes back in that world’, my equivalent of that period in my life was the early-mid 80’s which you pretty much maligned from start to finish 😉
That old chestnut… 😉 There were plenty of mid-80s songs I liked, and plenty of late 90s songs I’ve called out as crap.
Perhaps the one stylistic difference that does make me prefer 90s over 80s – other than nostalgia – is that mid-80s ‘crap’ tended towards the overblown and overwrought, while late-90s ‘crap’ is a bit more cheap and cheerful, like S Club and Steps. They had no illusions of grandeur, shall we say.
S Club 7 were kinda cute and nice-looking affable teen-aimed TV popstars, who would drop some good pop tunes here and there, and some good solo stuff from Rachel. Poor Paul lived post-fame down the road from me in Swanage before his sudden unexpected death as they were planning their comeback last year or so. I’ve never too much of a fan of this one much though, though if it had been on The Archies TV show sung by Ron Dante I’m guessing I would have been fine with it. Not that it’s bad as such, it’s not, just a bit jolly catchy. Kids liked it at the time though, as I recall 🙂
It’s never going to turn up in a Marvel movie a la Bye Bye Bye though!
Oh yeah, I’d say barring a couple of songs, much of Rachel’s solo stuff was better than S Club. But I do have a soft spot for a lot of their hits, mainly due to nostalgia but also because they were good pop tunes in their own right.
Me too, S Club Party and Reach are fun, plus another number one to come, I think.
This was actually decent. Factory line pop to be sure, and unworthy of their heights of Reach and Don’t Stop Movin’, but it’s a good production. It’s certainly leagues more intricate and less push-button than, say, Hear’Say’s Pure And Simple (replete with its tragic forward-shoulder-shrug dance).
Reach and Don’t Stop Movin’ are 21st century classics, and I will argue that point to death! Speaking of Hear’Say, it’s not really a fair comparison because S Club had the far better tunes (and were far better looking!)
It’s obviously manufactured but it’s better than the pure dance tracks…