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

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Ritchie Neville I turned up and it was a media circus. There was press there and a Spice Girls tribute band performing. I was in this queue just going, “What the hell is this?” At Kidadl we pride ourselves on offering families original ideas to make the most of time spent together at home or out and about, wherever you are in the world. We strive to recommend the very best things that are suggested by our community and are things we would do ourselves - our aim is to be the trusted friend to parents. It’s from Redbubble,” admits Cragg of the Sound of the Underground-branded tee. So, not an original piece of tour merch. ​ “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. Stars are echoes of the past. It's important to look to them for guidance, but as long as people reach for them, they never realize the beauty and potential awaiting just in front of them."

When reading this book, you're likely to vanish down a YouTube wormhole, revisiting forgotten gems or favourite songs from the likes of A1, Billie Piper, Sugababes and Steps, or discovering that the music of certain groups still sounds awful more than twenty years later (Atomic Kitten...) I should note that it's not exhaustive, which is OK as the book is long enough without going into even further detail. The focus is on Britain, with occasional references to Irish groups popular in Britain, but not much context outside of this, or else we would certainly be hearing about Aqua, who were massively popular. Perhaps the British band Scooch could have had a mention, as they did moderately well in the early 2000s. I would've appreciated a little more about B*Witched, as the way I remember it, they were almost as popular as the Spice Girls. Regarding the Spices, the chapter would've have more appeal if I hadn't recently read Melanie C's memoir, which more or less covers the same territory. The book begins with the Spice Girls, who changed everything. Their cheeky attitude and catchy tunes made pop music exciting again. They influenced so many new bands around that time - All Saints were seen as edgier version, whereas Five were imagined as a male equivalent. But we also hear from other groups that didn't make quite the same impression - the likes of A1 and Girl Thing. It's fascinating to hear them discuss their reasons for not quite succeeding. The central thesis of this book is that this period was a golden age for pure pop (slippery as that term is) before many of its platforms like TOTP collapsed, competition shows obliterated the landscape, and social media drove expectations of performative authenticity. But I have my doubts—for a lot of reasons, but I’ll limit myself to two. Firstly, the current Y2K pop boom is a classic example of how nostalgia warps our perspective. Between the Spice Girls and Girls Aloud, quite a bit of this music doesn’t hold up. Secondly, Cragg understandably wanted to limit the scope of this book to the UK but in doing so he’s made 2006 look like the end of the line. The UK is no longer at the forefront of innovation in pop and that is regrettable but not because we were left without stuff to listen to. You simply cannot mourn 2006 as the death of big silly pop artifice when Katy Perry and Lady Gaga were just around the corner. We think of pop in eras because it’s neat and to a point it can be done but in reality it is a continuum. The market was becoming increasingly globalised, and we were not able to compete at that level.

Reach For The Stars Sayings That Can Make Best Captions

Expand your reach throughout the globe to cities all around. Take risks and do the scary things. That's where the stories will be found." REACH FOR THE STARS is such a sweet story and was an absolute joy for me to experience with my children! I love the tenderness each precious moment of the story offers from the view of the caregiver. It evokes so many emotions as you go through the different experiences and shared discoveries, with hope and wisdom bestowed along the way. Fun bonus: There are several parts that made me grin wider and think "That is SO Emily!" Late 90s and early 2000s British pop music gets an on-trend reappraisal in this entertaining, meticulous read, subtitled Fame, Fallout and Pop's Final Party. If you're in your thirties, this is probably the music in the charts when you were growing up, so there is a definite nostalgia market for this book. It's not exactly light reading, however, going deep into the music industry of the era, with just as many interviews with songwriters, journalists and A & R people as with the pop stars themselves. The format is an oral history, with an impressive array of contributors and occasional commentary from the author to link the themes together. The author looks at what made certain bands successful and what it was really like to be a pop songwriter, or to be a pop star with a relentless schedule and little protection from media scrutiny. What surprised me was how nearly all of the bands featured were kids themselves, really, often under eighteen when they first started out. To me, at the time, they looked like adults and I never realised how young they were.

Dream big; at least you will have the joy of reaching for the stars instead of living in a box filled with unopened gifts." Reach for the clouds up in the sky... I'll teach you how that pretty light came from the sun to you." It's really well edited, unafraid to be savage at times, although I feel with a little more time and prodding that some interviewees might have been even more savage (looking at you, Louis Walsh and Pete Waterman). However, somewhere around the chapter covering Blue, I started to get the feeling that the narrative was incredibly repetitive. Although I appreciate that Cragg wanted to cover the length and breadth of his subject - the fact that most of these bands split after several years meant that all the chapters ended similarly. Although some of these chapters did include some intriguing titbits; such as Blue being in New York during 9/11 and the swift production of the S Club 7 movie, there were few memorable moments. I thought the smaller chapters covering the rise of Garage music and the anecdotes about being hungover on kids' TV could've been cut completely. The exception to this rule is the chapter on Sugababes; an act that the author clearly has a love for and could've probably written an entire book about. In short: Great read for anyone interested in the late 90s/ early 2000s pop industry in the UK - whether this is because you're a fan of the music or want to find out more about how the industry worked. (Though I imagine it's a lot less enjoyable if you don't know the bands: LOTS of names.)

Most Famous Reach For The Stars Quotes

Ritchie At the time, pop bands had always been five people, so they wanted to do something different and have four people. But they couldn’t decide which one of us to lose, so they kept it as five. Which is one of the reasons we called ourselves Five. 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. Such was the appetite for bubblicious teen pop that B*witched scored four consecutive No 1s in a matter of seven months. Beneath the shiny exterior is the treatment of S Club 7 as chattels or the racism suffered by Jamelia and Mis-Teeq Chris Herbert It burned them out. In hindsight, I would never do that again. We took on too much too soon. Claire I remember Pete Waterman going crazy and causing a real stink because if it wasn’t us who should have won, Five were in that category, Cleopatra. It was all the new pop of the time. No one could believe it. According to producer Pete Waterman, the proudly cheesy Steps were supposed to be “Abba on speed”, a claim to which Abba might well take offence: their debut single, 5, 6, 7, 8, was ostensibly a nursery rhyme based around line-dancing. “One of the girls who auditioned [for the band originally] was quite deep and spiritual, and said it hurt her soul to sing that song,” Steps’ Claire Richards says. “I’m not that deep.”

Kidadl provides inspiration to entertain and educate your children. We recognise that not all activities and ideas are appropriate and suitable for all children and families or in all circumstances. Our recommended activities are based on age but these are a guide. 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. Cragg’s central thesis is that, essentially, they don’t make pop like they used to. It’s a convincing one. Acts today are neither quite as DayGlo nor as recognisable. There’s no Top of the Pops for them to appear on, no Smash Hits magazine to feature them. Mental health is now centre stage, and there is at last slightly less objectification. The book reminds us of the treatment towards Kym Marsh, member of reality TV band Hear’Say, about whom producer “Nasty” Nigel Lythgoe said: “Christmas is coming, and the goose is still fat.” It points out, too, that Sugababes’ Mutya Buena was required to work throughout her pregnancy, and then, in time to film a new video just a couple of months later: “I was the skinniest I’ve ever been.” You'll reach for your boogie board and catch a wave or two. I'll teach you how the lunar pull made those tides for you." Each bookmark features a cute design that we hope will help to inspire your children and encourage them to read even more often! Our cute printable bookmarks are also editable, allowing you to make them even more personal for your students by adding their name or a little dedication. These cute printable bookmarks are designed to help encourage all your young readers to reach for the stars!I'll teach you how to reach for things that are very hard to do. You may succeed, and that is great, but failing's common too." The definition of a “golden age” is elastic and is usually defined by whatever was going on when you were between the ages of 12 and 22. I promise you there is just as much amazing pop music being made right now. You just might not be able to truly perceive it, because your fully developed prefrontal cortex is in the way. Reach for the stars. Although you will never touch them, if you reach hard enough, you will find that you get a little stardust on you in the process." Reach for the Stars is a story about a mother's love for her child, watching her as she grows and wishing for the best for her future. In an attempt to keep a lyrical quality to the book, the author chooses to rhyme, even when the word choice might not be the best. Additionally, there are words like curiosity embedded in the story which children will not know. I am not a fan of children's books with complicated words, as it takes the reader out of the story to explain the meaning to their young ones. The overall message of the story is one of hope and positivity, which is not unlike many other stories but well done, just the same. I was very much buying pop music through a lot of this era, so it was fascinating to read the story behind the music, as told by (most of) the people who were there. The majority of this book takes the form of quotes from the people involved - with comments and context from the author inserted where necessary. Michael Cragg is a music writer, who works (or has worked) for a lot of major UK publications - so if he hasn't interviewed the people specifically for this book, he has interviews that he's done with them in the past that he can draw on. So you have four of the five Spice Girls (you can guess which one isn't in this) and members from pretty much every band that is mentioned. As a young person at the time that a lot of this was happening, I found it really interesting to read about what was going on behind the scenes and the press coverage and see how that affected my perception of the various bands and band members involved. And of course the other thing that's really fascinating is how the spotlight of fame affected the people in the bands. Many of them were very young when they joined the bands - and you get to see an array of different ways that fame - or being in a band can mess your life up. But in the early stages of this period, a lot of it was going on behind closed doors - as the book hurtles towards the mid 00s, you see the arrival of TV talent shows and people learning how to be in a band whilst on camera and making their mistakes in public.

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