S CLUB 7 – "Never Had A Dream Come True"

key-change enthusiasts

Thesis: the ubiquitous key-change – which can make a song genuinely hard to play & makes the simplest chord sequence at least mildly challenging* – represents an unconscious reaction by chart-oriented pop mass-producers against the ironed-flat blandness of the music they were turning out: as if to say, let’s get something in there…

Antithesis: actually you’ll hear a lot more ironed-flat blandness, musically speaking, in the work of Lou Reed (say) than that of SAW; Matt Aitken was never one to rest content with a I-V-IV progression if he thought the song was asking for I-vi-IV-ii-V7-vi, or something equally fancy. (And he was going to be playing the thing, so no skin off anyone’s nose.)

Synthesis: a lot of thought often (usually? always??) goes into purpose-built chart pop, which means that it’s more complicated than it sounds – purposely so, as a lot of work goes into keeping the complicated stuff below decks where it won’t scare anyone away. So: yes to fiddly chords, no to fiddly tunes and a definite no to fiddly words or ideas (unless you’re Pete Sinfield writing for Bucks Fizz, that is). And jacking everything up by a full tone – turning a user-friendly D/G/A chord progression into a more thought-provoking E/A/B – is a perfect example of musical sophistication which doesn’t sound it.

*Unless you (a) play guitar and (b) play absolutely everything with barre chords, as Pete Shelley and Steve Diggle (and probably many others) used to. Vini Reilly said once that when he saw the Pistols (presumably at the Free Trade Hall) this was the main thing that struck him: not Rotten’s attitude but Steve Jones’s barre chords. Even on the sandpaper album I don’t think that was all he was playing, though.

I suppose the most remarkable thing about this song is that we’re discussing it at all. After Bring It All Back S Club 7 managed a hat trick of number two hits (including their most enduring song) and a number three I’d completely forgotten about. So Never Had A Dream Come True did at least restore their chart fortunes and kicked off theior most fertile phase chartwise – their biggest hit at the time comes next.

There is something else interesting about this one; according to Wikipedia it made number 10 in the US charts; their only hit over there. Given that America scarcely needed rather limp balladry performed by British stage school kids I’m at a loss to explain why this one song of theirs took off so strongly there.

See even though I don’t remember “Independent Women Part 1” at all I do remember this from the time, which I guess means it’s objectively better by the Rules Of Pop or some su

So, what this means, is that they never had a dream, if you apply the “Happy Talk” dictum.

“Given that America scarcely needed rather limp balladry performed by British stage school kids…”

I would suggest that the crop of current British ‘pop’ successes in America somewhat give the lie to that statement – but ‘fortunately’ for us there’s a lot of bunnying involved in discussing that further 🙁

Re 13: We’ve reached the shiny peach/brown era, hair and skin exactly the same colour and all sort of greasy. Rachel Stevens and a bunch of Feline Bunnies were exemplars of the look. It made me feel physically ill at the time, like they’d been dipped in Sunny Delight that had gone off; now it looks like a particularly bad fake tan.

This is, for me, their best song by a distance. Yes, it could have been Westlife; it could also have been a melismatic nightmare in the hands of a “better” singer. But, as has been said, it was aimed at children who didn’t want or need gymnastics, just a memorable tune, and that’s to the record’s advantage. Racist Jo plays it very well and doesn’t sound like she’s talking down to anyone – it’s a sincere performance.

The leap up to “I pretend…” on the chorus is an exemplary bit of songwriting, perfectly handled by Jo with a slight crack in her voice, barely detectable, yet just enough to make the chorus hit home.

(As for its lack of endurance, they really underplayed the production. It’s no less Christmassy than Stay Another Day – given a few sleigh bells and chimes on the last chorus it could still be a TOTP2 regular. Were there two videos, or do I have a shameful false memory of S Club in eskimo outfits?)

Re15: There’s an imminent bunny that is definitely a story, and indeed like a lot of traditional ballads, something of a cautionary tale (and also, for that matter, uses a literary device favoured by many of Sterne’s contemporaries).

Re 15: Billy Don’t Be a Hero and (possibly) Seasons in the Sun were consecutive death ballad number ones. 1971 had a pair of murder ballads – Indiana Wants Me and I Did What I Did For Maria – both covered on Lena’s MSBWT.

That’s a very good question about the changing meaning of ‘ballad’. I feel I should know, but I haven’t a clue. One for Lord Sukrat?

Thanks Mark. Yes, Tin Pan Alley must be responsible. Maudlin songs from the 1890s like After the Ball fit both definitions.

The moment Jo O’Meara became to S Club 7 as Gary Barlow was to Take That, only without the songwriting.

I think it’s fair to say that O’Meara was the only one of the seven who’d have been a serious contender in the pop game shows that were to start soon after this, but after the split it was (ex-model) Rachel Stevens who got the quality material and the hits (though they’re all unbunnied). This is an interesting counterpoint to the Destiny’s Child discussion – for all that the lyrics might be forthright and independent in at least some bits of pop (like millennial R&B), was it coincidence that the women singing them were nearly always conventionally attractive with obvious male-gaze appeal?

(Giving the solo career to the ex-model rather than the best singer was just the beginning in that department for the S Club brand. S Club begat S Club Juniors, if memory serves a larger posse comprised of stage-school types from the show’s target demographic, and we will meet some of its members in the distant future.)

Abiding pop memory of this one is from my university, and surprisingly enough I’m not talking about my beloved karaoke at the student union pub on a Thursday night. (I went to university from 2006 to 2009, and the 2006 freshers’ cohort were mostly – I was an exception! – Year 8 or 9 depending on the presence or absence of a gap year when this came out, so if they weren’t in S Club territory the next two cohorts certainly were, but I only ever remember “Reach” being done there. Though I imagine this and the next bunny got the odd spin too.)

The music department at Southampton – and, I presume, counterparts elsewhere – have an end-of-year recital programme, whereby students’ performance examinations are open to the public, free and unticketed. Southampton specifically had a semi-permeable divide between classical and “jazz and pop” within the department; the former group would perform at the campus concert hall, the latter would usually perform at a live music pub in the student quarter but one year it had to move to one of the union venues, and in amongst the latter in that particular year was an already-active touring singer-songwriter, Luke Leighfield, throwing himself into touring tiny venues around the country with his Christian-left piano pop.

And in his examination set was a cover of this. Irony or otherwise, I think it worked. Which I think is something I could generalise to most of the set, which combined covers with his own material. It was certainly a change from the very technical material of most of the jazz and pop vocal recitals of that era, about 90% of which contained a Regina Spektor song. (The other 10% were by male performers.) In fact, this context for the song rather nicely illustrated how flamboyant it isn’t.

It also showed it was a pretty excellent recipient of a quasi-ironic revival treatment, come to think of it, given its melodic strength and lyrical blandness – like others, I can imagine it as a Westlife song, but it’d be comfortably in the top tier of them. Considered a 5, bumped up to a 6 for avoiding most of the vocal tropes of this style even if it avoids absolutely none of the lyrical ones.

I’m pretty sure The Ballad of Reading Gaol has never made it onto any of those compilation albums, although the Celine Dion version would be a thing to hear.

Zzzzzchhhhhhhhrrrrrnnnnnbazoingazoingaboomtishplonkzzzzzzzzzzzzz. 3.

At least it’s not the Changing Rooms team claiming “It’s fun to stay at the YMDF.”

# 4 There was some buzz at the time about Jo sounding like Karen Carpenter which helped push the single. Richard Carpenter was interested in working with her after S Club split but she was too sunk in depression to take up the offer which leads on to …
# 14 Jo was clearly not in a fit mental state to be on the programme at all – as Davina McCall acknowledged later though not at the time – and her poor behaviour should be viewed in that light.