There ain't no party like an S Club party

Continuing my trip back through the 1999 album charts.

10/10/99 : S Club - S Club 7

Well this is a bit of a change of style from the previous two entries (but they all have something in common - as you'll find out later).  As I mentioned earlier in the year, I've always viewed S Club 7 in a kinder light than Steps - but I did go as far as to describe the latter as "surprisingly unannoying", so I'm now intrigued as to how overboard I'm going to go with my praise in this review.  Despite my obvious love of the S Clubbers, this isn't an album I've ever owned - 5/12.

Well, it's not a GREAT album but there are definite moments of quality on there -  "Bring It All Back" is a high class opener and wouldn't sound out of place recorded by the Jackson 5.  "S Club Party" is an odd track because it has all the ingredients to be SUPER annoying ("woo woo - wave your hands in the air like you just don't care" - seriously?!?) but somehow it avoids it and is really quite catchy.  The rest of it passes tolerably enough - the singing ain't great, but it's not terrible either.  

It's quite an interesting album because it steals so many elements from a load of tracks going all the way back to at least the 60s. If I had a more encyclopaedic musical knowledge, I'm sure I could get very boring on the matter but you're spared that because I just spent quite a lot of time thinking "oooh - where's that from?".  There's no danger of me ever listening to this album again but, whilst in theory I should have hated it way before it ended, I found it surprisingly tolerable (and the fact that it was 40 minutes as opposed to Steps' 55 really helped them here).

And, once again, we're at #2 with a new entry (the thing the last three albums all have in common) in the charts this week on their first week of a 47 week run (because obviously this album is three time better than either of the offerings from The Charlatans or James!).  The rest of the top five are Shania, Tom, Travis and David Bowie (a new entry - Hours, which I don't remember at all!) and there are no more new entries in the top ten, but the next two are Paul McCartney (#12) and The Clash (#13) so it's a bit of a week for the oldies!

Wikipedia reminds me that the group started life on a kids TV show (Miami 7 - did you know they each had their own "S Club colour"?) which was actually a big thing (it was shown in over 100 countries) and they were still filming it when this album took off, which meant a lot of transatlantic flights.  Because of this, the album did way better globally than you might imagine - top thirty across most of Europe (#4 in Hungary!) and even reached the dizzy heights of #112 in the US.  It also tells me that the group are actually now known as S Club (following the departure of Paul Cattermole in 2002 to rejoin his school metal band) and they're out on a 25th anniversary tour later this year, although there will only be five of them there after the untimely death of Paul and Hannah's decision not to join the tour.

"Customers also listened to" B*witched (they're going to pop up soon, aren't they?), Five, Atomic Kitten and (surprise, surprise) Steps.  And this album has definitely cemented my opinion that S Club 7 are the lesser of two evils - and that was without them having to call on the genius of "Reach" (which as everyone knows, is on 7, the follow up album).  It's not a masterpiece to be revered, but it's not supposed to be - it's a fine example of what it is and I'm sure there will be plenty of smiles (and maybe a few tears) at the reunion concerts.

03/10/99 - Doesn't quite click for me
17/10/99 - Another fine album