FEATURE:
The Digital Mixtape
PHOTO CREDIT: David Fisher/Shutterstock (via The Guardian)
All Saint: Melanie Blatt at Fifty
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PERHAPS this birthday might not…
IN THIS PHOTO: All Saints (Nicole Appleton, Melanie Blatt, Shaznay Lewis and Natalie Appleton) in 1997/PHOTO CREDIT: Tim Roney
be on everyone’s radar. Melanie Blatt, a quarter of All Saints (with Shaznay Lewis, Nicole and Natalie Appleton) turns fifty on 25th March. All Saints were hugely important to me when I was a teenager. Their amazing debut album, All Saints, came out in 1997. I still have it somewhere. The group’s most recent album, Testament, was released in 2018. I live in hope that we have not heard the last of All Saints. Melanie Blatt has released solo material and collaborated with other artists. I will include a few solo tracks/collaborations into mix. Before getting there, I want to bring in a bit of biography from AllMusic:
“Melanie Blatt was the founding member of one of the most successful girl groups of the '90s, All Saints. Born in Camden, London in 1975 to a French mother and English father, Blatt attended the prestigious Sylvia Young Theatre School at the same time as Denise Van Outen, Emma Bunton, and future bandmate Nicole Appleton. After performing in Drive, a short-lived band featuring U.S. actress Julienne Davis, and providing backing vocals for dub-funk outfit Dreadzone, she met songwriter Shaznay Lewis and, along with Simone Rainford, formed All Saints 1.9.7.5. Following the departure of Rainford, the pair recruited sisters Nicole and Natalie Appleton, dropped the numbers from the group's name, and signed a record deal with London Records. All Saints went on to become the Spice Girls' biggest rivals, scoring five number ones, two multi-platinum albums, and two Brit Awards before disbanding in 2001.
Following collaborations with Artful Dodger on the Top Ten hit "TwentyFourSeven" and hip-hop outfit Outsidaz on "I'm Leavin'," she released her first solo single in 2003, the Xenomania-produced "Do Me Wrong," and began work on her debut album, Shine, with Aqualung's Matt Hales. However, following the failure of her second single, "See Me," to enter the Top 75, plans for its release were shelved and she parted company with her label. In 2006, she reunited with the rest of All Saints to record third album Studio 1, and has since abandoned a music career to concentrate on her TV work. Blatt also appeared in the critically panned Dave Stewart gangster film, Honest, and on ITV2 covering the Brit Awards and participating in the network's music chat show The Hot Desk”.
An artist I have always admired, I do hope that we will get All Saints back and another album from them. There is this great interest and revival of girl groups or all-female groups from the 1990s and 2000s such as Girls Aloud and Sugababes. Because the saintly Melanie Blatt celebrates her fiftieth birthday on 25th March, I wanted to assemble a mixtape with some All Saints and deep cuts together with a few solo/collaboration cuts. This is a hearty salute to…
AN incredible artist.