Cragg

Cases are regularly made for this or that period of pop history to be recognised as a “golden era”, and random chunks of the 1950s to the 1990s have been widely exalted. It is to Michael Cragg’s great credit that his new book, a thoroughgoing oral history, focuses on a period until now almost entirely shunned by critics: British millennial bubblegum.It was an era created by the Spice Girls, who had been a much-needed breath of fresh air when Britpop started to go stale in 1996. “Friendship never ends” sang the Beatles of…

In 1996, Take That, Britain’s biggest pop act, broke up. This was headline news. It prompted tears, the rending of garments and, according to Michael Cragg, left a vacuum that needed swiftly to be filled. Britpop still reigned, of course, but Britpop “was a bloke-heavy swirl of guitar-led authenticity, coke-sweat and lad mags”.Cragg craved the more giddy delights of pop and, courtesy of the Spice Girls, Steps, 5ive, Blue and S Club 7, duly got it. Its ubiquity carried him through adolescence, and later facilitated his…

Last September Ed Sheeran’s Bad Habits was finally dislodged from its seat at No 1 in the UK singles chart after 11 long weeks. Its replacement? Ed Sheeran’s Shivers, which subsequently nestled at the top for a month. That’s nearly a quarter of 2021’s singles charts ruled by one man. The streaming stats for both songs are mind-boggling, with combined Spotify plays at the time of writing soaring past 2bn, while their parent album, = (Equals), hasn’t left the UK top 5 in eight months.It’s hardly surprising, then, that this…