When I have been taking a look back at 90s pop music, I am surprised at how many girl groups there were, and how many of them ended up not doing very well. For every successful group, the history of pop music features plenty of failures by comparison. Not every group can be All Saints, can they. When I was wondering if any of the less-successful groups are worth featuring in this series, I came across this one.
Now I must admit that I don’t remember them from the time, but they do seem to have an interesting story, which contains a good “before they were famous” as well. Paperdolls were a British female group (not to be confused with British female group The Paper Dolls, who had a hit with “Something Here In My Heart (Keeps A Tellin’ Me No)” in 1968, and in September 1998 “Gonna Make You Blush” was released.
This was a time when I was probably still reeling from the end of The Chart Show the previous month. Who knows, if they had released their single a few weeks earlier, about ten seconds of their video could’ve appeared on that show, which was considered to be an honour by many I’m sure. They were a trio who consisted of Hollie Johnson (probably not the one who was in the chart-topping Frankie Goes To Hollywood), Debbie Cresswell, and Lucy Pargeter.
Now that last name might be familiar to people, and even though I have never been a regular viewer, even I know that she went on to join the cast of ITV soap Emmerdale as Chastity Dingle (one of the seemingly hundreds of members of the Dingle family) in 2002, although before this, she briefly appeared in one of the many ill-fated revivals of ITV soap Crossroads.
Their only TV appearance that I’m aware of was on CBBC show Fully Booked, where apparently they did make a lot of people blush with their performance. “Gonna Make You Blush” reached only no. 65, and that was it. There were no further singles released, and I don’t know if an album was planned or not, but this didn’t happen, and this was another flop project. But it was interesting to discover this attempt at fame from 25 (!) years ago now.
ADAM'S NOSTALGIC MEMORIES 