Songoftheday 9/2/22 - Everybody's got something they had to leave behind, one regret from yesterday that just seems to grow with time...

"Never Had A Dream Come True" - S Club 7

from the albums 7 (re-release, 2000) and Sunshine (2001)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #10 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 12

Today's song comes from the vocal group S Club 7, who were brought together by Simon Fuller, who had managed the Spice Girls and would go on to create the Idol music television show franchise. Much like the British group Steps, this group would stand apart by having both male and female singers, only two more this time. After auditions, original propositioned member Rachel Stevens would eventually be joined by Tina Barrett, Paul Cattermole, Jon Lee, Bradley McIntosh, Jo O'Meara, and Hannah Spearritt. Trying to go farther in the promotion than the Spice Girls, Fuller signed them up for a TV show, Miami 7, which placed the group in the titular town with fictional sitcom premises much like The Monkees of way long ago. The sole season on CBBC (the children's version of the BBC British broadcaster) as well as the Fox Family network in America aired in 1999, and sported all the songs that would be on the group's first album S Club on Polydor Records. Their debut single, "Bring It On Back", featured in the tenth episode and which sounded like a more infantile "The Love You Save" by the Jacksons, nevertheless went all the way to #1 in the UK, as well as in New Zealand. It was also an international success, reaching the top ten in Denmark (#2), Switzerland (#2), Belgium (#2F/#5W), Australia (#3), Ireland (#3), The Netherlands (#3), Spain (#4), Germany (#6), and Sweden (#9). That was followed by the act's "theme song", "S Club Party", which hit #2 in Britain, as did the follow-up, the double-sided single "Two In A Million" and "You're My Number One". The S Club album went to #2 on the British Albums chart, and even made the Billboard 200 sales tally in America at #112.

The act continued their Monkees-like TV tie in the following year moving to Los Angeles for the second series dubbed LA 7 which had Linda Blair of The Exorcist in the cast as the requisite "adult". Another album came promoting the show, simply titled 7. The bouncy retro-pop lead single "Reach" scored yet another #2 hit in the United Kingdom, as well as reaching the top-40 in Ireland (#8), Spain (#20), New Zealand (#28), Switzerland (#30), and Australia (#38). That was followed by "Natural", which rose to #3 in the UK and #2 in Belgium as well as #17 in Ireland. Both of those songs were co-written and co-produced by Cathy Dennis, who had a pop career of her own in the early 1990s with three top ten lead-artist hits in America in "Just Another Dream", "Too Many Walls", and "Touch Me (All Night Long)". You can tell her "sound" hasn't changed much, just interpreted for a younger crowd.

At the close of 2000, S Club 7 were recruited to record the annual charity single for the long-running Children In Need campaign on the BBC, which had been collecting money for the poor since 1980 using TV marathons as well as record tie-ins. The result this time was "Never Had A Dream Come True", which was written by Dennis with Simon Ellis, with Cathy producing the song with Oskar Paul. The ballad had Jo O'Meara taking lead singing about a failed romance, not moving on and pining for her ex even when dating others (those poor guys!). It's more 'grown up' than their previous fare, though an odd choice for a holiday-timed charity single, but hey, it did the trick since they were on top of the business at the time. The popularity of the single even caused Polydor to re-release the 7 album with this tacked on, as well as put it on their following album, as it somehow became the group's first and only single success in America the following spring...

"Never Had A Dream Come True" became S Club 7's first and only hit on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart, reaching the top ten in May of 2001. On the radio, the song reached #8 on both the Mainstream Top-40 and the older-skewing Adult Contemporary airplay charts, and got to #36 on the dance-oriented Rhythmic format. Internationally, the single became the group's second British #1 hit, while rising to #2 in Ireland, #10 in Sweden, and #31 in New Zealand. The 7 album, which was originally released in June of 2000 and re-worked with the new hit, went to #69 on the Billboard 200 sales tally in America, selling over a half-million copies, as well as topping the British Albums list for a week. Oddly enough looking back, as the single was peaking in the States, the three male members of S Club 7 were caught with marijuana by police at a club, which caused a huge stir especially in the British press, predicating a flood of "apologies".

The song would also appear on the group's next album Sunshine, which came out in the fall of 2001 and correlated with S Club 7's follow-up TV series, Hollywood 7, which now sported Brady Bunch kid grown up Barry Williams as their manager. The album got a great reception internationally, with "Don't Stop Movin'" spending two weeks at #1 in the UK (their only single to do so). That was followed by another UK #1 with "Have You Ever", which was also commissioned for the Children In Need charity. The Sunshine album went to #3 in the UK, but by then the U.S. left it alone.

During that time, proving the juggernaut status that was the brand in their home country, Fuller's company created a spin-off group called S Club Juniors that was even younger. They released two albums, the second changing to "S Club 8", in 2002 and 2003 and scored six top ten hits in Britain, starting with "One Step Closer", co-written by Cathy Dennis. Two members of the group went on to join the Saturdays.

Back to S Club 7, they went on tour, and also filmed yet another series, Viva S Club, which had the group in Barcelona. But Paul Cattermole left the act, which was incorporated into the show oddly, as they rebranded themselves as just "S Club" as it aired in the autumn of 2002. Their fourth album, and first without Paul, Seeing Double, arrived near the close of the series. The first single from the record, "Alive", stopped at #5 on the British singles chart, with the album stopping at #17 on the UK Albums sales tally.

The act had one more gasp of air in 2003 when they starred in the "kids-scary" movie Seeing Double that spring, just as they were about to split up. A compilation, Best: The Greatest Hits Of S Club 7 was released in June of that year, and hit #2 on the chart, as did the pair of songs that were issued as a single together with new song"Say Goodbye" and Seeing Double track "Love Ain't Gonna Wait For You".

After the break-up, McIntosh, Lee, and Barrett released solo albums to little notice, while Jo O'Meara managed to have a British top-20 hit in 2005 with a version of the country-pop hit "What Hurts The Most" (UK #13). But her stint on Celebrity Big Brother two years later, where she was involved in alleged racist bullying on the show, nipped that whole thing in the bud.

Meanwhile, Rachel Stevens had the most fruitful career of them all, with her debut single in 2003, "Sweet Dreams My LA Ex" going to #2 on the British singles chart, the first of five top ten hits and two more that hit the top-40 in the UK. She also has periodically dipped her toes in the reality show world but with better choices like Strictly Come Dancing and mentoring on X Factor UK.

The seven original members of S Club 7 reunited for a one-off show in 2014 for Children In Need, followed by a reunion tour the following year.

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A second version of the music video was filmed for the American market, which removed the wintertime fashions and scenes from the British Christmas-time release...