After the news this week that Steps are set to knock Ed Sheeran off number one in the album charts, the Bananarama reunion and the realisation that Steps have now been reunited longer than they were together for in the first place, it seemed a good time to do a nothing lasts forever post for Steps.
I remember the first time I heard Steps. It was during Children in Need 1997 when they performed "5,6,7,8" and I thought it was absolutely dreadful. The so called "rapping" by the member nobody has heard of was particularly bad, maybe that's why he disappeared to the background afterwards. It was around the same time the equally dreadful "No Way No Way" by Vanilla came out and I couldn't decide which was worse. Incidentally both records peaked at number 14, quite poor for a commercial pop group. Whilst Vanilla had one further single (yes they really did) before disappearing, Steps would be torturing us for another 4 years.
The next single was their cover of Bananarama flop "Last Thing On My Mind". They wouldn't have had too much trouble getting permission as the man behind the group was Pete Waterman, the same man who was responsible for the said flop. He wasn't trying to make them the new Bananarama though, he was trying to make them the new Abba.
This became evident on the third single "One For Sorrow" which was basically "The Winner Takes It All" with different lyrics. As much as I find Abbas music awful, and I do, I appreciate there is a certain skill to writing rubbish songs so can appreciate Abba as musicians. On that basis I can't really see a manufactured pop group as being the new Abba, maybe a poor mans Abba.
Next up they hit the top spot with their karaoke version of "Tragedy" at the end of 1998 which is said to be their signature song. That kind of says it all really.
In 1999, all part of the whole marketing campaign no doubt, they collaborated with a few other pop singers on "Thank Abba for the Music" which was basically a karaoke version of Abba songs.
In 2000 I saw an interview with them on the TV where they were talking about their new album in which they had all written tracks on the album themselves. Quite often this is the kiss of death for pop groups, but fortunately for them none of these tracks were released as singles. Lead track "Stomp" reached number one all their remaining singles, including a karaoke version of another Gibb composition "Chain Reaction" made the top 5.
They finally called it a day at the end of 2001. I had learned by this point that this was not a cause for celebration because of the inevitable solo careers that would follow.
The following year gave us the duo H & Claire which was basically Steps without the others. Fortunately this didn't even last a year. Faye did some dreary crap with Russell Watson and that was it. Lisa unleashed her brothers 3SL to the world, but this was also short lived. Then she launched her own solo career which ended in 2005 when she had a reality show "Totally Scott-Lee" where she vowed to quit music if her single "Electric" didn't reach the top 10, which it didn't. To be fair though, at least she tried to do something a bit different from Steps without pretending to be a credible musician. As for the other member? well nobody knows who he is so he was never going to have a solo career.
Sadly though, Lisa's vow to quit music only lasted until 2011 when Steps reunited with a TV documentary accompanying it. Quite laughably their comeback song was a karaoke version of "Dancing Queen".
The reunion has somehow worked though and I can't put my finger on why. The successful comeback of Take That was down to the fact their new material actually had some credibility. The new Steps material is the same crap they always did, basically glorified karaoke.
This may have inspired the comeback of Bananarama, if a group that made it's name doing a karaoke version of one of their flops can make a successful comeback then anyone can.
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