It must be excellent being part of a successful young pop group.
You get to travel the world, stopping occasionally to jump around on stage, then, in the evening, you can wile away the hours brainlessly passing groupies around, necking gin. You don’t have to think for yourself, which makes certain popstar decisions near impossible to understand.
Below are four maniacs who decided to brave the world on their own, only to realise that they’d probably just made a massive mistake…
1. Robbie Williams
Granted, Williams could – should he wish to – sprint around town hurling money into the air like it was confetti at a local wedding. But where is his joy? His genuine popstar joy? That’s right, he hasn’t got any. While his old Take That buddies swan around enjoying a second phase of fame, with nice haircuts, children and long term lovers, ?Rob? spends much of his time presumably staring silently into a mirror waiting for his beard to grow. Shivering. Needs friends.
2. Mutya Buena
It was 2005 when Mutya decided that she was far too cool for the Sugababes. What a mistake that was. Since then, she has covered herself in strange tattoos, most of which look like entire extracts from Harry Potter books, replaced her front tooth with an unopened Oxo cube, and baffled the nation by WALKING OUT of the Big Brother house, without anyone realising that she’d ever walked in. As for her reinventing herself as a street version of Amy Winehouse… yeah, didn’t really happen, that.
3. Dane Bowers
Face it, Another Level were actually good – even Jay-Z thought so. They were also one of the few UK boybands who didn’t appear to be fashioned from the mind of an overweight and embittered gay man, desperately hunting for kicks. They enjoyed a big hit with Freak Me – American for Have Sex With Me – before Dane Bowers, the podgy lead singer, thought it best if he trod his own weighty path to stardom in 2000. Uh-oh. After a string of singing disasters, he ended up humiliating himself on Totally Boy Band – a very bad MTV show, where five has-beens once again smelt the stench of career failure in their ravaged noses. And, unfortunately, Dane is now widely considered to be a poor girl’s Dean Gaffney.
4. Kerry Katona and Bryan McFadden
These two share a joint place, thanks to their brief stint as a twisted version of Posh and Becks that didn’t last long. In the case of Katona, since going it alone away from her charming sing-a-long sisters in Atomic Kitten, she has been on a steady decline into total mania, topped off with a genuinely tragic appearance opposite Schofield and his goons during the latter stages of last year. The girl. Was. Wasted. McFadden, meanwhile, bade a cocksure farewell to his Westlife cohorts in 2004 – fully expecting to emulate Robbie Williams’ chart success – only to smash the hit parade with all the impact of a flea hurtling into a flannel. He has since decided that he might marry that skinny girl who used to be in Neighbours.
This has been a guest blog by the marvellous Josh Burt from the exceptional Interestment. Go and be his friend.
Shooty* says
Go on, do the slurred scouse Katona accent again. :)