Five (sorry, 5ive) return for album number three, and in boyband years three albums equals… Well let’s just say it’s almost time to go to that big boyband concert in the sky.
Let’s Dance, by Five (their 3rd and final #1)
2 weeks, from 19th August – 2nd September 2001
‘Let’s Dance’ is a swansong, then, and as a swansong it ticks all Five boxes. Rapped verses, catchy chorus, a hint of disco, cheeky swagger, Abs’ bucket hat in the video… Job’s a good ‘un. There’s even a spot of very du jour Daft Punk-influenced vocoding, perhaps borrowed from S Club 7 (and their far superior disco reboot) a few months earlier.
It’s a decent enough tune, then. But it’s all a bit calculated, fairly 2001-pop-song-by numbers. It lacks the personality, the vim and vigour of Five’s earlier hits, and again I’m left to lament that they had to wait so long for a #1, and that the likes of ‘Everybody Get Up’ and ‘If Ya Getting’ Down’ fell short.
It has the feel of a boyband on their last legs, basically, and that’s before you get to the fact that one of them, Sean Conlon, had already left the band due to exhaustion. This hadn’t been announced to the fans, and so he’s represented by a cardboard cutout in the video. Something that Conlon felt was a bit insulting, and that’s probably fair enough.
And on their last legs they were, as the split was announced just a month after this record had been sitting at number one. Various reunions took place over the next couple of decades, but always with one or two members missing. Earlier this year, though, they announced they’d be getting properly back together for a tour. News that was greeted more excitedly than most pop reunions, because I think Five were generally well liked by everyone, even those who were usually immune to boybands’ charms. They were fun, they were fresh, and they were – let’s be real for a moment – all pretty fuckable. And, most importantly of all, praise be: they kept the ballads to a minimum!
The strange, mockumentary official video:
The actual song:
The UK Number Ones Blog 
5ive were always likeable, they didnt look like theyd been put together by a committee judging pretty faces, they looked like lads having a laugh, which is ironic as the recent TV documentary on boybands of the 90’s showed it was anything but by the end. Well worth watching. Given what was going on at the time, this track is something of a very sad farewell so it’s amazing it comes out of it so well: I think it’s a great pop track one of the best of the year, and is one of two of their tracks to top my personal charts, Keep On Moving the other one. Their early stuff was fun, but those two were a cut above as pop productions for me, though opinion seems to be split amongst those who were school-age at that time (it’s come up recently as a discussion elsewhere). Shaggable? I would struggle to name any boyband members of any era that I thought hot, including when I was at school 🙂
That’s interesting. I just think this sounds like a rehash of what they’d done before. Keep On Movin is their classic, but the irreverent energy of their earlier hits was also fun. This sounds a bit lifeless by comparison, to me…
To clarify my somewhat tasteless comment: Five looked like sexual beings. Unlike Westlife, or Boyzone, or most other boybands. Not that they were especially hotter than other boyband members – though Abs was very cute – but that they’d know what to do in the bedroom!
5ive always seemed to me like the successors to East 17, normal blokey blokes that you could imagine seeing in the local pub. Which made them very likeable.