Bardot - The Pop Investigation Unit Special Part 4 - Demolition
Previously...

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

Now, conclusion...



The deepest human defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become.

Ashley Montagu



In November 2000, the 5 girls who formed Bardot signed a written document stating they had lost faith in Grant Thomas Management. Although this document was tended as evidence in court, two members of Bardot, Katie Underwood and Sally Polihronas, would later state in interviews that Thomas was an excellent manager, and they had full faith in him, further muddying the waters of what was going on within the Bardot camp. There was still no question at all that someone, somewhere, had already botched the best chance Bardot had to strike success. Was it the girls, ego driven and difficult, the management team, naïve and unprepared, or the record label, not doing enough to put Bardot in the right places at the right time? Perhaps the most under-rated factor in Bardot’s demise was the lack of a nationally televised variety show for them to perform on to a large audience. Hey Hey It’s Saturday had been axed the year before after a 20 plus year run, while Channel 7 embargoed their performances on other networks and restricted media access anyway, at least until the end of the year. Whatever the true portion of blame that could be apportioned to each party (and in researching the Bardot story, the truth of what really happened changes from interview to interview) by the time the calendar ticked over to 2001, Bardot, to many, were already over.

Chris Moss, one of the judges who selected Bardot (along with Jackie O and Thomas) spoke excitedly at business forums and to Business Review Weekly in early 2001 of his amazing success in tapping Bardot exactly into his vision of what the 12 year old market wanted, stating “They are not looking for something deep and meaningful but rather music that is simple, has colour, movement, personality and a 'poppy commercial hook” – however, Moss and Thomas had failed to create any of this, palpably failing to differentiate the personalities of Bardot, other than in look. In failing to get Bardot in the right media markets, failing to have Bardots personalties evolve, and in failing to build on what was at first a compelling story, Moss and Thomas hadn’t created anything like what Moss was talking about. The Bardot story had anything but colour by now, and if it did, it was only in the endless industry rumours of infighting and nastiness, and in who could squeeze in the best dig about “real music” or “which one was Sally again?” It was impossible to read Moss’s comments as anything other than a clear indication that Bardot were an experiment, one he felt had succeeded, when all other indicators suggested otherwise. It also appeared that in aiming at that target, Moss had missed the point that while Australian 12 year olds would accept poppy commercial hooks from international acts, educating them to accept a homegrown equivalent, beset with problems from day 1, would require a much more coherent management system than anyone prepared themselves to provide.

For Bardot the band, freeing themselves from Grant Thomas Management to sign with the management of David Caplice, and finally being allowed to be something approaching themselves co-incided with their first chance to make genuine cash out of the experience, as songwriters, and finally to come up with a coherent plan to crack the market that was the most logical for them, the UK. As a rough guide, according to industry estimations, as much as 80% of all earnings from the first Bardot album and singles went in costs, to management, associated agencies, live performance costs and so on, leaving Bardot, if the calculations were accurate, expected to repay their one million dollar advance with five million dollar earnings. While “Bardot” the album would clock up triple platinum sales, the girls hadn’t made a penny from the process, but if they could contribute songs to a second album, they could make themselves some solid cash out of the experience, especially if the UK market succumbed to them, and they got a foothold in a foreign market.

The UK assault was, especially by Bardot standards, well planned. Bardot got themselves in the right places at the right time, over a sustained five week assault. Cleverly, Caplice positioned Bardot as “the first Popstars”, writing True Bliss from New Zealand completely out of the picture, while the UK were forming their own Popstars, Hear’say, over a process almost exactly the same as the formation of Bardot. They got themselves in Smash Hits, in Nme, a gig supporting boy band 5ive – While in the UK, Bardot have did various performances on radio, at schools and TV. They performed on Top Of the Pops, went live on SM: TV and Live and Kicking. They got themselves in the right photos at the right time, next to Kylie and Geri, and Westlife, all ahead of the launch of “Poison”, the single that was going to launch them to UK audiences. Given their proximity to the Hear’say story, and how hard they were working, they undoubtedly were well placed to make a mark.

It didn’t happen though. Poison of course remained what it always was – a deeply disappointing, lumpen song with messy vocals. Instead of showcasing some new songs, Bardot simply didn’t have anything that special to back up the publicity. Later claims that Bardot “did well considering no one knew who they were” seemed empty, given the UK, then very much in a pop ascendancy phase, seemed like their best chance of making a mark. Simply, in showcasing Poison as “our” Popstars effort, Bardot let themselves down. By the time Poison had been released, it had been totally eclipsed musically and in publicity by the release of “Pure and Simple” by Hear’say, a much better song, and while Hear’say would later go through their own, similar disasters, Bardot were dead in the UK from the moment Poison debuted at #44, and fell to #89 the following week. Wood’s later claims “the UK charts are the hardest to crack in the world” seemed like damage control, given how hard Bardot had worked on their promotional tour. Simply, they showcased a bad song, and failed.

On the 11th of May 2001, Katie Underwood left Bardot to join a subsequently ill fated production of the musical “Hair”. Underwood always seemed an incongruous fit in Bardot, and her relations with the other girls had been seemingly strained for some time, especially with her support for Thomas. As Underwood left, and the girls came back from the UK to try and make up lost ground in their home country, Popstars re-appeared for a second series, producing Scandul’us. Scandul’us, who proved to be an absolute disaster, seemed to solidify the doubts of the critics, that this artificial process could be replicated time and time again, creating bands with no soul or history. For a country already handing out credibility based on how many gigs at a pub a band had done, the poor performance of Scandul’us rubbed off on Bardot, no matter how many interviews the girls did promoting their new, freer identity and the fact they were writing their own songs. Able to finally do interviews with other networks and put forward their own idea’s, Bardot spoke optimistically of sounding like Destiny’s Child (Wood especially) and a new party direction. The second album had to succeed domestically – as more and more countries produced their “own” Popstars, so Bardot found their unique niche and marketing angle cut off. After being cut off in New Zealand and the UK by local rivals, they now had their own local rivals to contend with, but Underwood’s departure actually worked in their favour, as the subsequent re-recording of the song and video gave them more time to get away from Popstars 2, and time to watch as the networks new toy began to crash and burn. Bardot, by comparison, were almost hip. It wasn’t hard to find criticism – Sophie Monks apparent declaration on the Panel she didn’t know who Lennon and McCartney were (she would later say she misheard the question, but by then it was too late) made her an easy target for those who like their music “real” and when Peter Holmes interviewed the girls in a horrible, mocking interview in the Age, he made mention of Wood “talking of sad songs as if she was Leonard Cohen” – obviously, what would these mere “POP” stars know - the interview was so nasty, like most, Holmes had totally missed the point – Bardot were as close to becoming a real band as they would get.

In fact, despite all of their problems, the release of Bardot’s second album, Play It Like That, released in late 2001, should have been some cause for celebration – the girls had overcome their own ego wars, horrible mismanagement, financial problems and an amazing amount of criticism, Bardot were still going, and now in charge of their own direction –there were even glimpses of their suppressed personalities, Wood emerging as the group mother hen, looking after the finances and the direction, Monk as their superstar, developing her own “motorbike” dance for the video for the second single, “I Need Somebody”, and being the group joker, while Polihronas and Chapple were valuable to the groups over all look, vocals, and dance routines. The previously muddy mixed up vocals were clean and focused, they had a definite style, which while not quite at the elite pop level, showed plenty of promise and they had advanced into a real pop band – out of the auditions, out of the mess, had come a real Australian pop band, one who with more nurturing, might actually progress into something special.

Of course, it didn’t happen – Play It Like That died, debuting at #20, and then falling to #27 after just two weeks. Kylie Minogue’s “Fever” album and the self titled “Britney” album were at 1 and 4 in the Australian album charts, that was where the “12 year olds seeking colour and movement” were spending their money, and Bardot’s time had passed. Although the first two singles from Play it Like That , ASAP and I Need Somebody, both made the top 10, and contained fabulous video clips, it was still too hard to see Bardot as anything but ordinary. They had become a very real, functioning band, but they were still a band rooted in the premise of the ordinary, that anyone could do it, and that you could have been there, in Tiffany Wood’s hat, walking down the corridor. Play It Like That just wasn’t good enough to change perceptions (it needed to be amazing, where is merely good), and Bardot, the brand, and the band, were all over.

On the 17th April 2002, Bardot officially announced their split in a carefully worded press release that bid farewell to their fans, criticised no one, and as a third series of Popstars was churning out a new winner, Scott Cain, drew a line under their career. The split came as the band made headway in a foreign market – India. There was another music show, Australian Idol, just one year away, with more hopefuls lining up around the block for a chance at super stardom. By and large, Bardot were just the pilot model. Summing up their career isn’t difficult in one sense – it’s a familiar tale, one destined to repeated in perpetuity – star struck singers pass through a series of auditions, get a big shot at instant stardom as long as they change everything that made them unique in the first place, the pub rock/credibility obsessed crowd don’t give them a chance, and once the initial buzz wears off, a management team more used to handling game show hosts at best will miss the best opportunity to promote them to the best of their ability, and no matter the quality of the single, the albums will be full of filler and not worth a 29 dollar investment. And as time goes on and the new year starts again, even those of us who love pop, or pop music shows, will begin to tire of the grind – in fact, if Idol and Popstars have done anything at all, it might have been to split Pop from the franchises – with rare exceptions like Girls Aloud, the shows have increasingly nothing to do with pop at all. For a true pop fan, there’s bands out there that you know to have been formed in the same way as Bardot, but who have a lot more magic because you just can’t be certain. Bardot just weren’t alien enough, but no one on these shows are – they lay themselves bare, show you the job they do every day, and you can’t split them from that – they have to be special talents from day 1, and more importantly, not win – winning is the new losing on these shows.

But in many ways, the Bardot story is different to anything else, it’s deeper than just “oh they were first” – it’s a very sad tale, in that they really did have a shot. They really were loved, they really did have our best wishes – the tales that have come out of those auditions of judges and producers offering a casting couch, the depressing tales of hopefuls being financially ripped off, the realisation that none of our reality TV acts are actually going to make it overseas, no matter what we say (Guy Sebastian’s embarrassing 7th on World Idol came after a hype campaign that he was going to win and be as big as, say, Robbie), we didn’t know that then. We thought everyone on the show knew what they were doing, that Bardot were going to be nurtured, cared for and promoted all around the world. The girls aren’t blameless themselves, given their own ego wars and internal bickering, but their mismanagement post show is truly dispiriting, and in many ways was far worse than Cherry’s the year before. Amazingly, they pushed through to see their own vision, their own style, but it was just too late. No one fought for Bardot in the end, and the talks of colour, movement and pop hooks – it came to nothing. They came through at the end to be a real, functioning band, the band they could have been from day 1, had the show been planned more carefully. And for those of us who truly love Pop, their failure to be what they could have been simply further made us cynical that Australian Pop could produce a group that could take on the world.

Watching Popstars, we saw, and followed, as we saw behind the levers of how the machine works. Sometimes we just want to be back to that day in 2000, screaming at the shopping mall, before we understood that they really didn’t know anything at all.

Maybe, we just didn’t want to grow up

Postscript

Katie Underwood’s production of Hair was cancelled before it’s premiere, due to poor ticket sales. Initially though, Underwood was the most high profile member of Bardot, and easily accessible to the media, and had a top 10 single with dance act Disco Montego entitled “Beautiful”. The follow up single, Magic, didn’t make the top 20, and after appearing on ill fated TV show “Ian Thorpe’s Undercover Angels”, her star dimmed. Underwood is currently negotiating with dance labels to get new material released.

Sophie Monk was the only other member of Bardot to maintain any kind of public profile. Monk scored a top 5 hit with her debut single, Inside Outside, but her album, Calendar Girl, stalled at #35 in May 2003. In addition to a worrying collapse at the Logies, Monk was also the face of Vanilla Coke and Primus Telecom, before relocating to Los Angeles, where she gained a role in a Blink 182 clip, and is currently filming a part in the new Adam Sandler film, Click, which is released in 2006. Monk also is currently dating Transporter actor Jason Statham, and is now the only member of Bardot with a realistic chance of genuine stardom.

Tiffani Wood signed for a solo deal with Warner Music in 2003, and released a single, “What R U Waiting 4”, which peaked at #27. After several fights with Warner management, Wood quit her contract, and opened her own independent label, Mudhoney Records, on which she releases her own CDs and singles. Her last appearance was on a Foxtel commercial promoting Breast Cancer awareness month. She also moved in with Australian Idol contestant Chanel Cole, and was featured in a newspaper article last year selling Bardot clothing at a market stall. She also sold a song “entre Toi et moi” (“Between You And Me”) to a French singer, Saya, in 2004. She has also since then told hopefuls not to enter shows like Popstars, due to the negative effects on your finances.

Belinda Chapple’s discussions of a collaboration with Madison Avenue came to nothing. Instead, she released two solo singles, Where It All Began (a song for the Athens Olympics) and Move Together, which made the top 30 briefly. Her official website reports only two items of “news”, an appearance in Cleo modelling clothes, and a personal holiday to the USA, with “serious gigging!” promised on return.

Sally Polihronas is currently listed as a back up/floating teacher with a Sydney dance studio, Dance Central, which also states she is working on her own solo album. She is the only one of the Bardot girls for whom we could not find an official website.

Of the judges, Grant Thomas was fired as Bardot’s boss in 2001, and successfully sued the shows producers Screentime for 250000 dollars for lost earnings. Thomas, a lawyer by profession, currently gives presentations on issues of music copyright and downloading. Chris Moss resigned as a managing director of Warner Music in March 2005, after seven years with the company. Jackie O is currently the host of reality TV show Australian Princess, and working on breakfast radio with Australian Idol judge, Kyle Sandilands. In an infamous moment, O and Sandilands prank phone called Katie Underwood, after the theft of personal photo’s from her house, to pretend to blackmail Underwood for the photos for five thousand dollars. The friendship between Jackie O and Underwood is now said to be over as a result.

Popstars ran for 3 more series. The second series produced the R&B tinged Scandul’us, who had a number one single for three weeks after the show ended with “Me Myself & 1” – however, their album, “Startin’ Somethin” “only” debuted at #3, and second single “Make Me Crazy” stalled at #29. The band disbanded quickly after that – one story has the band so far in debt, member Simon Ditcham almost had to have his family sell their local business to pay back the production company. Dani from the band appeared in an interview on fallen pop stars on Today Tonight, talking of just getting into retail and her long period of depression. Ditcham is currently a local performer in Tasmania who spoke of his dismay recently of how quickly the producers lost interest in the band once the show ended, while Tamara Jaber from the band is currently dating Kyle Sandilands, a judge on Australian Idol, and released a solo single, Ooh Ahh, which has been derided as the worst single of 2005. The current whereabouts of Anna and Jason is unknown. Scan’dulus split in 2002, barely 1 year after the show, citing management disputes (including the cancellation of a national tour at the last minute), financial pressures, and a lack of coherent promotion as among the reasons. Some also feel Scandul’us also suffered from a clip shown on the final episode of Popstars two, which showed live vocals from an instore were cut and pasted and audiotuned on the finished album. As if this wasn’t ill fated enough, Scandul’us were forced to do little more than promote Ice Cola and Mitsubishi Motors, and were quickly usurped as the reality TV show of the moment by Big Brother.

The third series, airing in 2002, was an unmitigated disaster. Featuring a phone vote for the first time, the show was only notable for host Jackie O informing the contestants who had been voted out via her being “rung” on a giant red phone, and the contestants doing little more than singing “Superstition” over and over again. Despite this, and as much as a 60% fall in television ratings, winner Scott Cain still managed a #1 single with “I’m Movin On” but was panned from day one, with album “Controlled Folly” and second single “Crazy People Rock” flopping dismally. Cain currently hosts a show on the Disney Channel, and was last year seen supporting Hilary Duff on her Australian tour, backed with his own composition, “Hilary Duff.” – runner up Danielle Spearman vanished without trace.

The final series, Popstars Live, was one of the biggest disasters in Australian TV history. After originally promising to be more positive than Australian Idol, the show began to criticise or praise the contestants in seemingly random fashion, but which either way was massively over the top to try and draw ratings. Two judges quit during the show, and the show was panned from day one for sloppy editing, poor performances and embarrassing moments such as when judge Molly Meldrum jumped on a table yelling “YOU ROCK!” to one of the contestants. Winner Kayne Taylor wasn’t allowed to do interviews after the show ended, and never released an album. The Popstars brand is now considered beyond rehabilitation.

Australian Idol is now in it’s third series, and has suffered a 27-60% drop in ratings in key markets.

The head of Channel 5 in the UK has declared reality TV is dead.

Bardot chart positions

Album

Play It Like That
20-27


Single Positions

A.S.A.P
20-17-6-18-23-24-27-39

I Need Somebody
8-22-5-11-4-12-13-14-18-26-40-50

Love Will Find A Way
28-31-18-20-20-27-34-39-50



Scandul’us Chart Positions



Singles


My Myself and I
1-1-1-3-4-7-8-18-22-27-43

Make Me Crazy
29-38-39-46



Album


Startin’ Somethin
3-4-8-8-19-30


Scott Cain Chart Position


I’m Movin On
43-1-2-8-9-15-21-29-35-39-48


Peak Chart Positions for each Bardot girl post the split


Sophie Monk 5 (Inside Outside)
Katie Underwood 7 (Beautiful w/Disco Montego)
Tiffani Wood 27 (What U Waiting 4)
Belinda Chapple 36 (Move Together)
Sally Polihronas NA



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