Kidadl cannot accept liability for the execution of these ideas, and parental supervision is advised at all times, as safety is paramount. Anyone using the information provided by Kidadl does so at their own risk and we can not accept liability if things go wrong. Sponsorship & Advertising Policy Overall, the REACH FOR THE STARS audiobook is wonderful! I am eager to get my hands on a copy of the physical book because I imagine the illustrations are out of this world! Ritchie Neville I turned up and it was a media circus. There was press there and a Spice Girls tribute band performing. I was in this queue just going, “What the hell is this?”

Brian Higgins is the British mega-producer who, along with Miranda Cooper and the rest of his Kent-based pop factory Xenomania, was the brains behind some of the most celebrated, most innovative and frankly best pop tunes of the past two decades: Girls Aloud’s Biology, The Promise and the aforesaid Sound of the Underground; Sugababes’ Round Round and Hole in the Head; Rachel Stevens’ highly underrated album, Come and Get It – acommercial failure, but so good it landed on The Guardian ​ ’s list of 1000 Albums to Hear Before You Die.Mark Beaumont (writer for Melody Maker and NME) It was the first show of strength of the internet because the Brits were the establishment stronghold and here was Belle and Sebastian using the weight of their fanbase to break the stranglehold of pop. I think it was the first high-profile example of the internet being used to shift culture.

If you watched The Big Reunion on television a few years ago (or any similar programmes) or read any of the many official band books from the late 90's and early 2000's then you probably won't learn anything new from this book. That's not to say that it isn't still an interesting read but most of the interview pieces with band members are taken from past interviews or books that are already published.

I try to reach for the stars because if you say you want something small and it happens, you don't believe it. So I try to say something wild and crazy." Oh what a time to be alive, when books are published and reviewed in broadsheet newspapers about music that would get me sneered at by dull boys in trilby hats. This oral history of millennial British pop—interviews edited together as though you’re watching talking heads speaking on 100 Greatest Y2K Music Moments on Channel 5—contains Boston Tea Party levels of spillage, spanning the ten year pop boom between the Spice Girls and the demise of TOTP, Smash Hits and Simon and Miquita’s Popworld. It takes the subject seriously from a poptimist perspective, but is still light, fun and brilliantly gossipy. From the moment we are born, we reach out. We reach out for our loved ones, for new knowledge and experiences, and for our dreams! I could see myself gifting this to new mamas at baby showers. I wish I had this to read when my kiddos were just babies!