From 1st July 2021, VAT will be applicable to those EU countries where VAT is applied to books - this additional charge will be collected by Fed Ex (or the Royal Mail) at the time of delivery. Shipments to the USA & Canada: Neil Tennant (!) Reach For The Stars, my debut book, was released in March 2023. An oral history of UK pop between 1996 and 2006, it features over 100 interviews with the great and good of that vibrant pop period, including popstars, producers, songwriters, video directors, PRs, journalists, etc etc and so forth. People seemed to like it, which is nice…

Reach for the Stars: Michael Cragg with Nicola Roberts - Foyles Reach for the Stars: Michael Cragg with Nicola Roberts - Foyles

Perhaps it was inevitable that, in 2002, after three albums in three years, two Brit awards, the spin-off TV shows and the spin-off mini-me band S Club Juniors, Cattermole hopped off the S Club 7 conveyor belt. Keen to focus on his pre-S Club nu-metal project Skua, he told the Sun he wanted “a change musically”. Unfortunately, success was fleeting and Skua split a year later, only for another reunion in 2014 to be scuppered by the return of S Club 7 and a subsequent arena tour. Jones said the BPI “will review our processes for the next event in 2024, as we always do, to make sure we take on board any learnings and ensure our approach is the right one”. You want the Brits to dance like no one’s watching, and to recapture the chaos that made it a must-watch in the 90s An outstanding catalogue of oral testimonies from major and minor players in UK pop in the decade before the financial crash.' -- New Statesman If you're coming to Coles by car, why not take advantage of the 2 hours free parking at Sainsbury's Pioneer Square - just follow the signs for Pioneer Square as you drive into Bicester and park in the multi-storey car park above the supermarket. Come down the travelators, exit Sainsbury's, turn right and follow the pedestrianised walkway to Crown Walk and turn right - and Coles will be right in front of you. You don't need to shop in Sainsbury's to get the free parking! Where to Find Us The bastions of '00s pop - armed with buoyant, immaculately crafted, carefree anthems - provided entertainment, escapism and fun for millions. It was a heady, chorus-heavy decade - populated by the likes of Steps, S Club 7, Blue, 5ive, Mis-Teeq, Hear'Say, Busted, Girls Aloud, McFly, Craig David and Atomic Kitten, among countless others - yet the music was often dismissed as inauthentic, juvenile, not 'worthy' enough: ultimately, a 'guilty pleasure'. Now, music writer Michael Cragg aims to redress that balance.From Girl Power to Girls Aloud (and all the glorious points in between), the definitive study of British pop music at the turn of the millennium, told by everyone who was there. The latest Ofcom figures show that broadcast viewing by 16- to 24-year-olds has dropped by two-thirds in the past 10 years. Additionally, the Brits’ viewing figures for all ages halved in the past decade, showing a bigger decline than the Baftas, and one worse than the overall all-ages viewing decline, said TV analyst Tom Harrington, of Enders Analysis. The BPI stressed the Brits’ engagement with young fans across social media and YouTube, citing 44m views across performances and highlights from the 2022 show on its official YouTube channel, in addition to viewing figures that gave ITVX its best single day of 2022 until Love Island started in June.

The Guardian Books | The Guardian

A book that does justice to an extraordinarily fertile period for British pop - Michael Cragg's assessment of new millennium bubblegum is top rate storytelling.' -- Bob Stanley Having written for the likes of The Guardian, Vogue and Popjustice (as well as being a few years older than me), Michael Cragg is in the perfect position to deliver an authoritative tome on this period in pop music, as well as making sense of the pitch battles between the poptivists and the real music bores. In the introduction, he makes the case that:I’d been on Irish Popstars in 2001. They had an over-18s limit and I’d just turned 16 at the time. I got disqualified. I went to Scotland to audition. You don’t think you’re going to win these things.

‘There were fist-fights down at CD:UK’ – 90s pop remembered

Adele’s acceptance speech for best album (for 21) was cut off to fit in a live performance from Blur (whose frontman Damon Albarn would, years later, accuse her of being “insecure”). Adele flipped the bird to “the suits, not the fans”, and ITV apologised. The Guardian review is here . Here’s a nice one from The Observer. Another from The Times , and one from its weekend sister, The Sunday Times . Classic Pop gave it 5/5, which was lovely. I wrote something about it for the Daily Express , while The Mirror ran this extract . Heat did one too . As did The Guardian . I also wrote this piece for The Guardian about how bonkers some of the pop was.There was a relentless onslaught from Leigh Francis, which I could never quite understand. The impact it had on me was I was trying to save face and be like the music is the thing. Alongside Ian Winwood’s excellent ‘ Bodies’, ‘Reach for the Stars’ acts as a love letter to music and also as a cautionary tale of how the industry consumes, adapts and sets the agenda without any regard for the artists. I never wanted to be on TV. I was very naive to television. But I think it helped that I was naive.