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

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The music industry was far less monitored than it is now, with conversations about mental health, racism and misogyny barely audible within the four walls of the music industry, let alone in the tabloids. Told through interviews with those at the heart of the pop industry, both the pureness of the joy and enthusiam at being caught up in that world but also the brutalness of the schedule and urgency for success came across so well. Using the oral-history format, Cragg goes beneath the surface of the bubblegum exterior, speaking to hundred's of the key players about the reality of their experiences. We were in a tiny rented office in west London, we had two teenagers working for us and that was it. I had had a couple of jobs as a pot collector at a local social club, then I ran a burger wagon, so I was always trying to make money.

FLO are great, and that feels more exciting than any girl band that has been launched more recently,” he says. 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. I’m not ahuge fan of all the songs [on the album], but Brian did his best to rescue it,” he adds, the namedrop typical of Cragg’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the period. That it ended in burnout, depression and fist-fights was hardly surprising given their light-speed ascent. Most of the acts Cragg covers straddle the years either side of the millennium, and many burst through in 1998: Steps were a five-piece made up of would-be children’s TV presenters with a yen to sound like a Home Counties Abba; the laddy Five were launched on the TV show Neighbours from Hell; the charismatic, 15-year-old Sylvia Young student Billie Piper went straight in at No 1 with Because We Want To, a single that was pure Grange Hill ; Irish four-piece B*witched were formed with the terrible idea of marrying the Spice Girls’ brightness and energy to another contemporary craze, Michael Flatley’s Riverdance.I will concede though that the arts have become a playground for the rich and what I do notice—and indeed I have heard Girls Aloud’s coolest member*, Nicola Roberts, say this—is that since we no longer have moguls plucking teenagers from a Maidenhead Pizza Express and launching them into stardom, nor can artists claim support from the state (H from Steps went straight from Blue Peter to the dole office, lol) we no longer have working class pop stars, and pop music is poorer for it. Such was the appetite for bubblicious teen pop that B*witched scored four consecutive No 1s in a matter of seven months. Oh what a time to be alive, when books are published and reviewed in broadsheet newspapers about music that would get me sneered at by dull boys in trilby hats. We recommend that these ideas are used as inspiration, that ideas are undertaken with appropriate adult supervision, and that each adult uses their own discretion and knowledge of their children to consider the safety and suitability.

Backstage at a festival, having been snubbed by Noel Gallagher for reasons of uncoolness, Liam invited them to sit and drink with him: “Liam then got a Bop It! Man stands alone in the universe, responsible for his condition, likely to remain in a lowly state, but free to reach above the stars. A celebration of love and shared discovery, this book will encourage readers to reach for the stars! When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either. The way that the book is written is so sharp and insightful, it was such an easy read that I literally couldn't put it down.I also learnt lots about the music industry and songwriting, depressing as many of the reveals proved to be.