Bardot - The Pop Investigation Unit Special - Part 2 - Construction


For what purpose humanity is there should not even concern us: why you are there, that you should ask yourself: and if you have no ready answer, then set for yourself goals, high and noble goals, and perish in pursuit of them! I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible... - Friedrich Nietzsche



It was the idea who’s time had come.

For seven years, Australian music had revolved around rock, guitars, grunge and self pity, it was time for someone to invest in the Pop market, especially with teen pop such a viable, post Spice Girls market. Cherry’s failure had been disheartening, encouraging in that it promised at least an investment in pop, but a failure to place the right girls together in the right market, but Popstars, from what the trailers promised would be different. Not least because of the expertise involved, and the major leg up from a prime time TV show. Channel 7 had bought the rights to the format, and planned to screen it in the early months of 2000, to fill in a big chunk of it’s ratings in the months before the Olympics. The Popstars franchise was bought from it’s New Zealand creator for a very small outlay, thus making the show money in the bank before it began.

Popstars wasn’t a first for the. It came from New Zealand, where producers there came up with Popstars, a relatively benign search for an all New Zealand pop group that came up with True Bliss. Now a footnote, they would set the template for modern television pop competitions – they formed in a blaze of publicity, they had two or three departures, they didn’t get paid, and they went on to a career in minor celebrity – one of the girls would go on to lose 40kgs in a TV weight loss program. At the time, their story wasn’t well known, and besides, that was New Zealand, with a relatively limited pop tradition (aside from Dave Dobbyn, Collette, OMC and Crowded House) and it was simply a template – our show, in the best nation in the world, with a much bigger population, with the producers studying what had worked in the first show, that would be much more successful surely?

Selecting the group (at least on camera, other forces were involved) were Sydney DJ Jackie O, entertainment lawyer and manager with Grant Thomas management Michael Napthali and Chris Moss from Warner records. Moss was a strange choice, given his camp jollity and resemblance to TV chef Ian Hewitson – he seemed from initial impressions to be a blissful participant as Napthali made the big decisions. Jackie O was simply on hand seemingly to offers hugs and support. Putting these three in charge with the selection process seemed to offer only a Cherry style disaster, but after such a drought for pop, anything was better than nothing. The most heartening thing about the show was it’s ambition, it’s repeated aim to create our very own, high functioning, world straddling Spice Girls. It didn’t help that the forms to audition were included in TV Week, and no one was quite sure that a show with audition forms in said magazine wouldn’t produce a slightly worrying bogan group of Shazza’s and Cazza’s, but it was the doubt that made the show have such a buzz, because no one watching a show in 2000 was jaded and cynical – we wanted our pop group to be a success, and besides, it was the year 2000, and we had the Olympics coming up. With the eyes of the world on us, what better time to launch our own super group? My god, you don’t think they could perform at the Olympics if they are really good! Such thoughts all came back to my then 21 year old brain as I sat down with my copy of “The Making Of Bardot” to see exactly how we got to where we ended up…

The auditions, especially by current standards, were amazingly ramshackle and absolutely lacking in any kind of glamour. Perhaps what is most refreshing about watching the tape back is the lack of what you might call “famewhores” – there doesn’t seem to anyone auditioning who is “knowingly” crap or with massive pretensions – it’s more of a pure The girls were shepherded into the equivalent of a conference room and required to sing three lines from one of four songs, Wannabe, Respect, My Heart Will Go On or Aint No Sunshine, in a line up of five, and the three judges would simply pace the room watching, and then would send through a girl or send her home without any reason or explanation. It’s clearly all being done in a massive hurry, but there are interesting nuggets to be gleamed, most notably the audition of future nude glamour model Imogen Bailey (who makes it through the first round) which is crowbarred into the video, and how nice the audition process is in comparison to the modern cut and slash process. It’s ruthless only in the sense of it’s speed, but it’s typically Australian in it’s laid back casual approach. The amusing “crap” auditions are rather glossed over with a surprisingly laid back dignity – a girl visibly trembling is re-assured by being told she ‘s “just nervous” and another girl who royally mucks up an attempt to be sexy laughs the incident off. The girls who fail are whisked off the show and never seen again, with their reactions not caught on camera. In just 82 minutes of video tape, an entire culling process whizzes past, with girls coming and going with very little depth – the process of bonding with characters in the show only comes into consideration when the final 5. The other interesting aspect of the audition process is the seeming absolute lack of a budget. When they nail the girls down to a final 25 and take them to a thankyou party, it’s merely two canapés and a glass of wine in a hotel room (about four star by the look of it). The cheaper the show, surely, the bigger the budget for the video and the production of the record, so nothing to worry about – right?

The show was largely growing in momentum due to the easy speculation it provoked. It was clear that squeezing down a group of thousands to just 5 was going to be an interesting process to watch – each person in Australia seemed to have a favourite, and would back them and hope they would make it through each round. As many as 6 rounds of culling and eliminations meant each girl was constantly on the musical equivalent of death row, and as each round narrowed down the girls, the speculation grew and grew until each elimination seemed to be being debated on the front page. It is also vaguely noted that each girl has signed a confidentiality agreement so they won’t discuss their departure without consent – it would be interesting to get what really happened, say, now…there must be a book, and something other than the constant “gee shucks” shrugging that follows each cull.

It's a bizarre, genteel, lightning quick video to watch - it's a wonderfully nice document, where no ones a bad singer, and decisions are made with everyones feelings considered.

The mask slips just once in the process – large by the standards of pop singer Beth Fuddle is clearly thrown by a last minute request to dance, and forgets the words twice, and needs to stop to take a breath. When she requests the lyrics and another pause, she’s virtually shown the door then and there – after her rejection she launches into a massive tirade about how she’s too big and it’s all about the image, and how she lost a contract with Polygram Records in London because she wouldn’t lose 10 pounds. It’s a very rare, moment of tension in what appears to be a long collection of reasonably thought of decisions. Imogen Bailey vanishes without trace for instance, which is very wise. The girls, perhaps thinking that the group wouldn’t have worked, or perhaps thinking the show might not work out, are refreshingly upbeat about their departures. One of the girls in the final 10, Louise Messenger, all but says “good” when told she isn’t being put into the final group. The show’s heart is still pure however – memory failure had meant that there was a long term thought that Cherry Weston, an early front runner, had quit the show due to her refusal to remove her tongue ring, but in fact the dreaded ‘personal problems” had forced her to quit. Oddly, it’s as if all at Channel 7 were terrified that if they were up front and revealed what was actually going on, the show would suffer. So Weston simply leaves, with no real reason given, and speculation the end result that probably damaged Weston, but lifted the shows ratings – perhaps it wasn’t so nice after all…

The final five were chosen for slightly sketchy, vague reasons, as much as gathering together an image and a vocal sound – subsequent seasons of reality TV show music contests however proved without question that in the end, the industry does know best, not the public. The final 5, culled from a pool of 10, were former Marilyn Monroe impersonator Sophie Monk, Perth singer Chantelle Barry, former Adelaide choir girl Katie Underwood, professional singer and dancer Sally Polihronas, and a girl who cheerfully recounted her near death hallucinations in a Chinese theme park to the nation, Belinda Chapple. Watching the show, it’s fair to say it’s Monk who exudes the most natural star quality, with Barry’s subsequent replacement Tifani Wood not too far behind with her grumpy diva antics. It’s interesting however to see the vague hints of personality that impressed the judges being increasingly watered down as the production gathered momentum. It was a tricky balancing act to find the right mix of personalities, but still have them work a tiring timeframe within a group aesthetic.

The groups formation would have been the dramatic climax of the show, were it not for one, last twist to the narrative – Chantelle Barry, the Perth singer, was thrown out of the group. Interestingly, the video never mentions the real reason for Barry’s departure, further underlying the “nice” nature of the project. In a classic piece of Stalinist revisionism, it’s intimated that Chantelle is leaving the group for family reasons and due to stress and gives all the girls a goodbye hug– in truth, Chantelle had been caught stealing money from some of the other girls bags, the same reason it turned out she was fired from her previous job in a local cinema. Barry’s departure gave another twist to the narrative, extending further the most dramatic part of the program, the actual formation of the group, into another two shows, and spun into a well paid interview between Barry and the magazine partner of the show New Idea. However the most interesting part is that all of this happened three months before the show aired in April, and was kept a relative secret even as the show gained momentum. It wouldn’t happen now, given that somehow a group formed in December still gathered 2.6 million viewers to the episode where the judges went to the girls home’s to say who had got into the final group, not in the day and age of blogs and instand news. By the time Tiffani Wood joined the group, and had to record over Barry’s parts working 17 hour days, it was clear the scope of the operation had come way too far to worry about the small matter of a group member leaving. It was ruthless, it was uncomplicated, it was heartless, it couldn’t be stopped and it was a true peek behind the scenes of Pop. And all it did was make the show a much bigger talking point – the girls had been assembled, given a name (“Bardot” picked by Sophie Monk from a proposed list), and all that was waiting for a hooked, entranced audience, was the final piece of bait – product. And that was ready to go before the show had even ended, with the single “Poison” teased across the final weeks of the show before the final reveal, the premiere of the video clip, for a fairly average, lumpen single called “Poison” which featured a video with Sophie Monk dressed like a peacock, and Sally throwing some funky dance shapes and Belinda walking down a catwalk. The single wasn’t quite the first sign of a thumpingly good girl group to take on the world, but it didn’t seem to matter. It was out, it was done, the group was done, and now, it was time to strike, the momentum was so high, anything would have sold the 12000 copies needed to hit #1 that week…

How all this came to work, and how much excitement it generated, not to mention record ratings, is hard to explain with five years of hindsight. It might have had something to do with that natural momentum that the first incantation of a TV reality show will generate. It might have been the natural excitement of a generation finally given it’s right to vent it’s constitutional right to scream in teeny pop excitement. As the girls trailed in exhausting schedule across several shopping centres and around the teen magazine circuit, with each stop selling around 5000 copies, with the condition you could only get an autograph as long as you bought the single, and it’s fair to say that most of us were there, despite what we might say or claim now. In simple terms, Bardot was as much about the image, the speculation, the hype, and the story, than any great musical achievement, but as a pop fan, that was understandable – no one was naïve about this, we understand the realities, we knew they would get this album out of the way and keep on rolling, into the UK at least!

Right?

The post show momentum was exceptional – and duly, Poison shot to #1 in the Australian charts, as did Bardot the Album. Poison sold 66725 copies to storm to #1, kicking N-Syncs Bye Bye Bye from it’s perch. And Australia, after a whirlwind we didn’t quite understand, formed with people we didn’t really know that well, had it’s very own “supergroup” – surely Bardot were heading for the UK, to carry on the Kylie Jason legacy – and the producers duly high fived each other, sat back and waited for their glittering pile of royalties to kick in. There was just one tiny problem…

Bardot didn’t like each other…

PIU