Ever wonder what happened to your favorite pop idols after they fell from grace and the Billboard Chart? At Pop Hunter, we waste a disproportionate amount of time thinking about such things and so we present Tiger Beating, a recurring column to profile the pop stars of yore and what’s left of their cultural legacy. This week we take a look at Five, the UK’s contribution to the late 90s boyband craze.

Five from L to R: Sean Conlon, J Brown, Richard 'Abs' Breen, Scott Robinson, Ritchie Neville

Five (also known as 5ive) were a manufactured sensation from London who broke the boyband mold by deviating from the sad-sack ballad route and created their own brand of bad boy power pop anthems. Instead of soundtracking episodes of tween heartbreak, Five encouraged us to “slam dunk da funk” on the dance floor and/or basketball court, while making their young fan base ponder what they actually meant when they posed the burning question, “do you wanna get freaky when the five of us make one?”

However, no one knows better than Jason “J” Brown, Sean Conlon, Ritchie Neville, Scott Robinson and Richard “Abs” Breen that just because you were created by the same management company as the Spice Girls, doesn’t necessarily mean you will reap the same success. After a short but sugary sweet run from 1997 – 2001, like many of their pop peers, Five disbanded when the tides in the music industry changed and my all-time favorite genre, nu metal, reached the pinnacle of its short-lived popularity.

While technically “Slam Dunk Da Funk” was the boys’ debut single from their self-titled album, 5ive, the first taste of Five to be imported across North American soil was a soulful jam called “When The Lights Go Out”, the first and only track to crack the Top 10 in the US. Coincidentally, this gem was co-written by Tim Lever and Mike Percy, overshadowed members of another UK group who once catapulted to One-Hit Wonder status in America:

While many girls my age in 1998 may have practiced making out with their pillows while envisioning Ritchie’s lips or fantasized about running their hands up and down Abs’ washboard abs after their initial exposure to Five, all I wanted to do was gel my hair like Scott.

As Scott’s spikes grew, so did Five’s popularity. The band rode their fame wave back to the recording studio, churning out Invincible barely a year later. The album’s lead single “If Ya Gettin’ Down” showed a more mature side of Five, and a now 20-year-old Abs announced to the world his firm resolve to finally get laid at a party.

Five were on fire – Invincible spawned 4 singles, including a cover of “We Will Rock You”, performed with the surviving members of Queen, cementing itself as the group’s best selling album of all time. But if Guns N’ Roses have taught us anything as consumers of pop culture, it’s that nothing lasts forever and we both know hearts can change.

Trouble was beginning to brew at Camp Five after the recording of their third and final album, the suggestively titled Kingsize. Wanting to burst free from his boyband bubble, Sean Conlon departed ways from his brethren, attempting to fly solo. Five, who were now down to four, attempted to sally forth unscathed, but ultimately disbanded one month after copies of Kingsize began to lay dormant on shelves.

Life after Five was a rough transition not only for the band, but for their rabid fan base as well. Hoards of girls worldwide had to cushion two back-to-back blows – the tragic demise of God’s gift to boybands on September 27, 2001 and Scott’s breakup coping mechanism, a rebound marriage the very next day.

In a post-boyband era, the members of Five were left displaced. Abs reached a minor level of fame refashioning himself as a solo artist, J Brown finally took out his eyebrow ring and the others slid into relative obscurity, putting their showbiz days behind them, until one fateful press conference, five years to the day after their breakup.

In a bold move in the summer of 2006, Lance Bass of *NSYNC fame graced the cover of People magazine, liberating himself from the trope of the closet. The remaining members of Five appropriated this idea and ran amok with it, opening their press conference with all four of them coming out as a joke, as a publicity stunt to rejuvenate interest in the music career they so desperately wanted to relaunch. The foursome, who still insisted on being called Five, planned an elaborate comeback – a new album, world tour, even an MTV documentary, but all of this turned to shit when they failed to secure a record label to invest in their reconstituted manband.

You’re probably thinking, whatever happened to Sean Conlon, the baby of the group who selfishly tore Five apart to further his own career? Let me point you in the direction of the premiere episode of The Voice UK which aired last week. Warning, this clip may not be suitable for an audience with a low pain tolerance. Watch as Conlon is ultimately rejected by all four judges and feel the mortification level rise as he reveals his true identity while his sister weeps backstage.

As Tiger Beating comes to a close this week, it’s time to weigh in: are Five still culturally relevant today?

Verdict: You’re probably not going to hear them outside of a 90s nostalgia dance party, but their legacy continues to live on in the bedrooms of the nation.

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