S Club 7’s Paul Cattermole Dead At 46
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Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
Paul Cattermole, a member of the late-’90s British teenpop group S Club 7, has died suddenly and unexpectedly. The BBC reports that Cattermole died yesterday, just a few weeks after S Club 7 announced a reunion tour. No cause of death has been reported. Cattermole was 46.
Paul Cattermole came from the British town of St. Albans, and he studied musical theater as a young man. In 1997, Cattermole auditioned for the former Spice Girls manager Simon Fuller. Fuller picked Cattermole for the lineup of S Club 7, the new group that he started creating immediately after being fired by the Spice Girls. S Club 7 debuted with the TV series Miami 7 in 1999. On the show, they played Monkees-style fictionalized versions of themselves. The group’s 1999 debut single “Bring It All Back” was a #1 hit in the UK, and it was the first of many hugely successful singles.
S Club 7 brought a sound even frothier and more colorful than most of their teen-pop peers. For a few years, the group utterly ruled the UK charts, racking up 11 top-five singles, including four chart-toppers. S Club 7 also did well across Europe, and one song, the 2000 ballad “Never Had A Dream Come True,” made it to #10 in the US. They spun off a kids’ group, S Club Juniors, who also had a lot of UK success. In 2002, Paul Cattermole became the first member to leave S Club 7, and the group broke up a year later.
After leaving S Club 7, Cattermole got together with a bunch of his school friends and formed a nü metal band called Skua, which was unsuccessful. Cattermole took a role in a touring Rocky Horror production, made occasional reality-show appearances, and worked odd jobs. Later, he talked about his financial struggles in interviews. S Club 7 reunited for a telethon performance in 2014, and they toured the UK in 2015. This past February, S Club 7 announced plans for another reunion tour.
Below, check out some of S Club 7’s videos.