Nothing Lasts Forever - B*witched

You may have read recently that B*witched will be headlining a tour of pop groups from the 90s and 00s in Australia. They are most likely billed as the headline act because they are the only group to have all its original members there. Joining them is Atomic Kitten (the Kerry Katona version with Michelle from Liberty X taking the place of Liz), East 17 (without Brian or Tony but with one time UK Garage singer Robbie Craig) and S Club 3 (no that is not a typo, it really is S Club 3).

I thought this would be a good opportunity to look back on the very brief career of B*witched which follows on nicely from the post I did on the Spice Girls a few weeks ago.

When the Spice Girls said Goodbye at the end of 1998, they seemed top have a ready made replacement to lead the world of girl groups in B*witched who had already hit number one with their first three hits. Whilst the Spice Girls were all in their early 20s when they started out 2 years earlier, B*witched consisted of 3 teenagers, Lindsay (17) and twins Keavy and Edele (18), whilst the other member had already hit her mid 20s, Sinead (25). Their unique selling point was that the twins were sisters with Shane from Boyzone and their love of denim.

The start of their chart success did pretty much mirror that of the Spice Girls. It began in the summer of 1998 with the annoyingly catchy debut everyone remembers, "C'est La Vie", followed up by the you had to be there to remember "Rollercoaster" and then the Christmastime ballad "Too You I Belong" which was knocked off the top spot Christmas week by the Spice Girls. They also managed to get to number one with their fourth hit "Blame it on the Weatherman" which unlike the Spice Girls fourth hit, didn't have the comic relief single tag helping it to number one, instead it knocked off the comic relief single "When the Going Gets Tough" by brother Shanes group Boyzone.

By this point B*witched had set the record for the first act to have their first four singles go straight in at number one and were all now old enough to have a celebratory drink. With the Spice Girls now out of the picture, this was the opportunity to truly dominate the world of girl groups.

They recorded their second album which was said to have a more mature sound. In October 1999 the first single from the new album was released, "Jesse Hold On", which didn't really sound too different to "Rollercoaster". This would be their first single (excluding the Abba tribute thing they did with other groups) that didn't reach number one, it reached number four. Then in December 1999 they had the Christmastime ballad "I Shall be There" which failed to even make the top 10. With the twins turning 20 that same month, maybe they were now seen as being too old. Another blow came the following week when Westlife equalled their record of first four singles going straight in at number one.

At a last ditch attempt to get back to the top, they ditched the denims and tried to sex things up with a FHM photoshoot. Along came the single "Jump Down" which only made number 16 and that spelled the end. That same week, Westlife went straight in at number one with their 5th single therefore beating the record set by B*witched a year earlier.

They didn't split up until 2002 and afterwards the twins attempted a comeback as Ms Lynch and Barbarella without any success. Then in 2013 they reunited for the Big Reunion, so their reunion has now lasted longer than their glory days did.

So their chart career including their flop singles towards the end lasted less than two years and one of them was still a teenager when they were finished.

In terms of girl groups, the next big thing created by Simon Cowell was waiting in the wings in early 2000. Much hype was made about them, they were going to dominate the world of pop music and be even bigger than the Spice Girls. The band was called Girl Thing. Who are they? I hear you ask and many people asked when they appeared on the Big Reunion. Well when they finally released their single, "Last One Standing", it failed to make number one, reaching number eight. The follow up, "Girls on Top" was an even bigger flop and that was the end of them. Sadly as we all know,it wasn't the end of Simon Cowell.

Fenech Soler return as a duo

At the start of last year, Fenech Soler announced on their social media they were working on a new album. After numerous updates throughout last year saying it was nearly done, they went pretty quiet this year.

A couple of weeks ago they announced the album was complete and they were going to be playing some gigs in the near future. The new promo photos only had Ben and Ross on them though which raised the question, have Dan and Andrew left the band?

It was confirmed a couple of days ago that they have both left the band and Ben and Ross would carry on as a duo, with additional musicians for the live shows.

Ironically the band named themselves after Dan's surname, which is Fenech Soler. They are keeping the name though, Ben and Ross's surname is Duffy and that names already taken.

Aside from festivals, I believe the last time they played a gig in the UK was in 2013 when I went to see them at Shepherds Bush Empire. I would highly recommend going to see them, they are very good live and sound better than they do on the albums. They are also a band who don't do encores which is a good thing in my opinion.

For those in London, they will be playing at Oslo in Hackney on October 27th. Sadly I won't be able to go myself, but if you're free that night then get yourself down there.

3rd Wish - I Am

So I've blogged a fair bit so far about the singles chart, but it would be fair to say my contribution to the charts (i.e. the number of singles I've bought) is quite minimal.

I've never bought a download and own considerably more albums on CD than I do singles. As a rule, I would buy singles if I didn't think an album would follow, I like the tune but don't like the artist enough to buy their album, it cost me pennies to buy second hand, because of the CD Rom video (remember them?) or it was by Alisha's Attic/ The Honeyz when I was a big fan.

So it got me thinking, maybe I could do a series of posts about my CD singles which contributed towards the outcome of the charts. So this will exclude the cheap second hand ones.

I'm beginning with the last CD single I bought, 3rd Wish - I Am.

I first came across 3rd Wish towards the end of 2004 when I saw "Obsession" on the music channels which featured rapper Baby Bash. I'd always watch the video when it was on without really knowing what it was, but I liked it. A few months later I heard the same record by Frankie J which also featured Baby Bash. I had already heard of Frankie J so was easy for me to remember who this was, but had forgotten who had done the other version by this point.

Then whilst watching the music channels in the summer of 2005 "I Am" appears, I now know who did the first version I heard of "Obsession". I wondered which one was the original, turns out neither of them were, the original was by a group called Aventura.

Back to "I Am" though, I liked this song just as much and it appeared plenty of times on the music channels. Then one day I go to HMV and see it under the new releases and find that "Obsession" is also on the CD. Not really knowing anything about 3rd Wish and conscious of the fact they will soon disappear from the music channels, it seemed a no brainer to buy it.

As it turned out, that was the last I heard of 3rd Wish. Some internet research has shown that they had a decent following in Germany but not much elsewhere.

Its probably no coincidence that the last time I bought a CD single was the same year YouTube was invented, so knowing that once a tune has its day on a music channel it will still be there on YouTube making paying for a CD single somewhat pointless.

As for this records chart performance, well it actually failed to even reach the top 100. So that rules it out of being my record of the year for 2005.