17 February 2001
Kerry Katona still features on the record and in the sleeve photo (above) for ‘Whole Again’ but she had left Atomic Kitten by the time it topped the charts in the UK and Ireland. Her replacement, Jenny Frost, appears in the re-shot video below. Also a previous member was Heidi Range, but she had left before they had released any singles. So, in Liverpool band-speak that made two Pete Bests for Atomic Kitten.
Another Liverpool band, pretentious ’80s synth-poppers Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, were Atomic Kitten’s writers and producers. Further to that, I remember OMD lead singer Andy McCluskey making quite a big play of being their Svengali, which struck me as a graceless and desperate attempt to grab all the chart-topping glory for himself. (OMD had seven UK top ten hits but never a number one, you see.) Suffice it to say, little glory accrued from the writing and production on ‘Whole Again’. Its opening line is a poor-quality photocopy of the first line of ‘Walk On By’, and the rest is fairly contrived and cobbled-together too. The group themselves do what it is they do, but this surprisingly dreary track affords them little energy or individuality; in the video below I can only tell the three members apart by the tops they’re wearing. Still, despite being only number one in Ireland for a week ‘Whole Again’ was an omnipresent radio hit. Maybe its bland teen-next-door familiarity hit a mainstream sweet spot. Personally, I have to stifle a cringe at its insipid naffness.
What of those two former Kittens who missed out on ‘Whole Again’ at number one? Turns out their judgement was sound. Kerry Katona found her niche as a tabloid-friendly floating celebrity, and was always more famous than the Kittens individually or as a group. As for Heidi Range, we’ll see her here in a couple of chart-years from now, as a new member of one of two thrilling girl groups, the Beatles and the Stones of ’00s UK pop, who between them blast Atomic Kitten And The Pacemakers back to the Stone Age.
