Parlophone

Major

Pop, Club, Other

Both Blatt and Lewis began their career by doing backup vocals at the ZTT Recording Studio on All Saints Road, London, England. In 1993, Blatt, Lewis, and the former member Simone Rainford made a decision to record together. According to Rainford, they thought of Spice as the name of their group, but the decision was not good enough as it was in relation to Spice Girls, so they called themselves All Saints 1.9.7.5. after their street where they met and the year they were born. They were signed to ZTT Records.

In 1994, All Saints 1.9.7.5. performed for their first time at the Touch Magazine stage at the Notting Hill Carnival. They recorded three songs together, but they were not successful. Additionally, the views of music Rainford had against Blatt and Lewis caused tensions in the band.

In the summer of 1995, Rainford left the band and ZTT Records dropped the band from their label. Regardless, Blatt and Lewis set out to find a replacement for Rainford. Conducting many auditions, Blatt's father met Nicole Appleton whom Blatt knew from her days at the Sylvia Young Theatre School. Lewis encouraged Appleton to join the band. Her sister Natalie Appleton was reluctant to join the band, since she had given birth to her daughter Rachel two years prior and did not want to abandon motherhood. However, Nicole and Natalie's parents decided to help raise the baby, enabling Natalie to pursue a career in music.

After being united as a newly formed group in May 1996, the four met with Karl Gordon, a former bandmember of Outlaw Posse, who recorded a demo for "I Know Where It's At". The next task was searching for a new record deal, but most record labels wanted to turn them into a Spice Girls duplicate. Fortunately, the demo made its way to London Records, where John Benson finalised the recording deal in November 1996.

In 1997, I Know Where It's At, their debut single, went to #4 on the UK Single Charts. The next single, "Never Ever", launched their career as stars, selling a million copies in the UK. The song won them two BRIT Awards in 1998, for Best Single and Best Video. Many others included: Breakthrough Artist at the MTV Europe Music Awards and "Pure Shores", their chart-topping collaboration with William Orbit from the Leonardo DiCaprio feature film The Beach, becoming the second best-selling single of 2000.

A lowlight for Melanie, Nicole and Natalie was their performance in the universally panned film, Honest, directed by ex-Eurythmics member Dave Stewart, which featured saucy nude scenes by both Appleton sisters. [1]

In their five year career, the band scored a total of five #1 singles. They split acrimoniously in 2001 after much speculation and rumour. Nicole and Natalie went on to form duo Appleton, whilst Melanie and Shaznay enjoyed moderate solo success.

On January 24, 2006 it was announced that the band had reformed. All Saints signed a deal with Parlophone [2], and they released their third studio album titled Studio 1 [3] on November 13, 2006. [4] The first single to be released is "Rock Steady" [5] and was released on November 6, 2006. The song was given its first ever radio airplay on The Chris Moyles Show on BBC Radio 1 on 21 September 2006. [6]NME announced that the newly re-formed band will be launching an extensive UK wide tour in 2007, to promote their new album.[7] The reformed group performed their single Rock Steady, for the first time since splitting on ITV's Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway on 21 October 2006. They will be participating in Mobile Phone company 3's series of shows "3FrontRoom". These are a series of intimate gigs with well-known bands. All Saints performed on Wednesday 25 October 2006, at the Shepherds Bush Pavilion in London. They appeared on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross on 27th October.

Melanie Blatt, Shaznay Lewis, Nicole Appleton, Natalie Appleton