If boybands were chocolate bars then Take That would be the posh 85% cocoa stuff, East 17 would be the rough and ready Yorkie bar, and Five? Well, Five would be a supermarket own-brand Kit-Kat rip-off.
And guess what? Five are back, baby! Five announced yesterday that they were going to shamelessly ride on the coattails of Take That, East 17 and All Saints by reforming for an opportunistic comeback album. Except only four of Five wanted to reform, which means that not only is the Five comeback likely to be an under-rehearsed parade of flabby middle-aged men joylessly going through the motions, but Five are going to look for all the world to be a bunch of dyslexic nobsacks as well.
Even though they split up 10 years ago, there are still many reasons why people should dislike Take That enormously. As well as foisting Gary Barlow and 'boo hoo I'm so upset that I'm rich and famous' Robbie Williams on us, when Take That decided to reform last year, they did it so successfully that every other broken-up piss-poor mid-nineties pop act decided to score themselves a piece of the comeback pie – and we mean that literally about the East 17 comeback, where the band became so vastly overweight in their time out of the limelight that their onstage choreography involved them being toppled onto their sides and rolled about the stage by a gang of burly roadies. And then there's the All Saints comeback, but that depresses us too much to think about.
So it was only going to be a matter of time before Slam Dunk Da Funk muppets Five decided to reform, and we were all put out of our misery yesterday when Five made their big comeback announcement, even if it was full of bizarrely defensive statements like this one from Five member Ritchie Neville:
"We're not clutching at straws. We don't need the money. We're going to be back bigger than ever."
Five – who somehow managed to sell 20 million records in their time – are having to self-fund their comeback, which looks set to take the form of an album written with former Robbie Williams collaborator Guy Chambers. However, the signs are already looking ominous because, even though the group's name is Five, there are only four of them reforming; bandmember Sean Conlon's day manager at McDonalds wouldn't give him the time off work, or something. Jay Brown, the nearest thing to a leader that Five had, explained the Five comeback further:
"I just hope everybody is going to want to hear our stuff and see what we are doing now. Five years later it's going to be a little bit different – not kind of arms in the air – but we are still a full-on pop band, and we are really looking forward to it. We're just coming back because why shouldn't we have another crack at the madness?"
Why shouldn't you? Jay Jay Jay, you're making this way too easy for us.
Read more:
Five become four for pop comeback – BBC
[story by Stuart Heritage]
alyssa says
wat r all five of those guys names?