![]() ![]() That message is a thread which runs through so many of S Club 7’s songs. In other words: persevere, try your best, and demonstrate your quality. The first verse of S Club 7’s first song tells you all you need to know: The lyrics are brimming with contagious hope and optimism, which can’t help but uplift even the most stoic of listeners. In the video for ‘Bring It All Back’, the S Club crew are seen full of youthful energy as they dance around Miami, bombing into pools and swimming with dolphins in the cutaways. They looked nice, sounded nice, danced nicely – they were just nice. ![]() The song bore all the hallmarks that would see the band become enduring darlings of British pop culture, and it propelled them to instant success. This week in June 1999, the UK Top 40 was topped by S Club 7’s debut single, ‘Bring It All Back’. All at once a tempest fell upon the world, and the winds of change ravaged every part of our lives, our finances, our films, and our music. And it was all going well until when, on September 11th 2001, 19 hijackers commandeered passenger jets and crashed them into the World Trade Centre. History was over, and each new moment promised to be even better than the last. It was the ascendant age of conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones and David Ike who refused to believe the steak was real. This was a time when people were excited by questions like, ’Who shot Phil Mitchell?’, as opposed to, ’Will the Ukraine conflict escalate into thermonuclear Armageddon?’ Even the films, like Wanted, The Matrix, and Fight Club, were all about how everything was so nice and peaceful that the world had got boring. The Cold War had ended, peace was brought to Northern Ireland, and everybody became middle-class overnight. We had this young guy named Tony Blair who swept into Downing Street on the back of D:Ream’s promise that ‘Things Can Only Get Better’. It was a vibe for the age, the soundtrack for our esprit de corps as we marched into a new millennium. Artists weren’t these tortured types they were enjoying themselves, and so were we. It doesn’t take itself too seriously – its videos are bright and colourful. There’s so much fun being had in the music of the late 90s and early noughties. You know – the good stuff – Westlife and the Spice Girls, Boyzone and Bjork, and it was like being taken by a fever dream. I didn’t realise how wrong a turn modern music had taken until I went back and listened to some classics. We examine how the upbeat, bubbly optimism of 90s music, such as S Club 7, gave way to sombre, sometimes aggressive number ones, such as Central Cee. ![]()
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