Pop Essays #34: The Faders, ‘No Sleep Tonight’

Delving deep into the archives for more lesser spotted pop gems, I welcome you to this week’s Pop Essays. This week: the second coming of girl groups with guitars arrives…

• Artist: The Faders
• Song: No Sleep Tonight
• Released: 21/03/2005
• Writers / Producers: Sara Eker / Jeff Taylor / Mark Taylor / Cheryl Parker / Metrophonic
• Highest UK Chart Position: #13
• Chart Run: 13 – 18 – 22 – 40 – 49 – 72 – 85 – 82 – 97

Some ideas in pop music just simply fail to catch fire in any significant way; either it’s the right idea at the wrong time, or worse still, it’s a misjudged idea met with crippling indifference. But what about if an idea fails to inspire on a larger scale not once, but twice?

In 1999, record labels and pop had gone through a very brief period (of about 6 – 9 months) post-Spice Girls of wanting to make a girl group who wrote and played their own material and instruments happen. See Hepburn, 21st Century Girls and Thunderbugs (two of whom I’ll write about later in this series, in fact).

But despite initial success for all (except poor old 21st Century Girls. And we bought their eponymous debut single on cassette week of release), they all barely lasted past a debut album (only in Hepburn’s case, unless you count the contractual low key shuffling out of Thunderbugs’ only album on MiniDisc. Again, more on that in a blog later down the line) and in a time when pure pop was still big, there wasn’t the appetite there.

Fast forward to six years later, in 2005, and the landscape had changed completely. Pure pop in the smiley, shiny Steps / S Club 7 et al sense of things was very much out, but pop bands playing and writing their own material? Very much in. True, Busted had unexpectedly imploded at the height of their imperial phase just 14 days into January of that year, with Charlie Simpson flouncing off to Fightstar. But their natural successors, McFly, were flying high, with a successful chart topping debut album, Room On The 3rd Floor, a sell out tour, a BRIT Award and a string of number one hits to their name.

There was also a litany of sub-Busteds emerging in the wake of their split, most of whom were truly awful and barely dented the top 10 (The Noise Next Door and Freefaller, we are looking at you). So if boys playing guitars and drums and leaping about on stage was doing the business, then surely, record companies reasoned, it was time to see if that could be true of the girls again?

Universal Island, who had been home to Busted and still were to McFly, thought so, as they launched a four piece girls with guitars band from the Midlands called the Love Bites, to the sum total of one in-out top 20 hit that autumn with “You Broke My Heart”. But Metrophonic, the production studio behind hits for Cher, Shania Twain and Enrique Iglesias, also certainly thought so. And they were the team who had been appointed to work on the material of Polydor Records‘ attempt at the formula, a three piece all-girl band with guitars and drums called The Faders.

All in their late teens, they had formed a year previously in January 2004; there was flame haired guitarist and lead singer Molly Lorenne, the daughter of Midge Ure (yes, that Midge Ure off Ultravox and Band Aid), bassist, backing vocalist and keyboardist Toy Valentine, and drummer Cherisse Osei, who was likened in an early Music Week piece to being “the young female version of Keith Moon”.

The fact you are probably only hearing about this now, and the fact we are writing about them here, probably gives some indication as to what direction their career ended up taking. But let us state facts; The Faders had some absolutely blinding songs written and recorded for their debut album, titled Plug In + Play.

And its first single – and their debut – “No Sleep Tonight” is surely the finest example of this. It helps that it is tied to a musically familiar pedigree, even if we’re surprised that some sort of lawsuit didn’t come thumping on Polydor’s door as a result. In just the first 10 seconds, you understand for why, when you hear its distinctive rolling bass line.

Because it sounds almost identical to the same rolling bass line that was heard in “Lust For Life” by Iggy Pop, and which had more recently been utilised by Aussie rockers Jet, in their 2003 top 20 hit “Are You Gonna Be My Girl?” Certainly, it established The Faders with a degree of notional credibility that might not have otherwise been immediately forthcoming.

And the song itself is a sassy beast of a song, with Molly, one eyebrow cocked, opening the song in a playful yet withering tone with Toy providing snatches of spoken adlibs: “I’ve got you, I’ve got you on my mind / And it’s time to make you see (what I want) / So I’ll just make this a little more obvious / Cause I get what I want, and I want you to get with me (You wanna get with me?)”

The bridge verses build the suspense (“Don’t think you know how far I’m gonna go”) as the chorus explodes with some impact, punctuated by pounding bass drums: “You can’t stop this (BOOM BOOM) feeling / You can’t run away / Baby I was on your mind / You can’t stop this (BOOM BOOM) feeling / There’s no escape / No sleep tonight, you won’t get no sleep tonight”.

It’s all over and done in just under 3 minutes, but it has the desired effect of announcing that this is the sound of a major new pop rock outfit making their debut. So too, did the video, filmed in Los Angeles at Venice High School – yes, the very same school that served as both Rydell High School in Grease, and as the backdrop of Britney Spears‘ iconic video for “…Baby One More Time“.

It sees the girls show up at the school (after incurring a hefty black cab bill), intent on tracking down a hapless young chap who they drag out the loos by his feet, intercut with them performing the song to a moshing crowd outside the steps of the school, the building draped in a red flag daubed punk-style with their band logo. It was a fun concept with attitude and edge that certainly commanded replay merit – which it was going to need a lot of in the run up to the single release.

For even though The Faders were a lot less polished in style than say, their label mates Girls Aloud were, for instance (they more resembled a trio of glamorous goths who might have passed for playing the moody older sister hanging around the skate park in a CBBC sitcom about a dysfunctional family unit) they were still promoted just as heavily as they were, with numerous TV and radio appearances and magazine interviews.

So when the single did finally hit the shelves in late March 2005, and landed just on the fringes of the top 10 at #13, suddenly a question mark hung over The Faders. A top 20 debut is a respectable start for most bands, but when you have what you suspect was a hefty amount of record company coin invested in their launch, we would imagine Polydor’s idea of success was at least a top 3 or top 5 debut, and that nothing else would suffice.

It was mitigated in the short term by the song being licensed out for use in numerous TV soundtracks – the angsty Channel 4 teen drama Sugar Rush here in the UK, and over in the States, on teen mystery series Veronica Mars and medical drama Grey’s Anatomy (they even reshot parts of the video to be intercut with clips of them for the former show, and appeared in one episode performing at a prom night). All the while, their debut album was released in the Far East first to great success, ahead of what was intended to be its full UK release in the summer.

Cut to late June of that year, however, and when second single “Jump” (neither a Van Halen or Pointer Sisters cover) did even worse, just stalling outside the top 20, the panic button was pressed and their career suddenly entered a tailspin from which it never recovered. A third single, “Look At Me Now”, released on download only, coupled with a support slot for Kelly Clarkson on the UK leg of her world tour in the spring of 2006, both came and went without event, and Polydor dropped them from the label, with The Faders’ dream, er… fading not long after that.

But it didn’t end there, because there was one more bizarre twist in the tale to come; Molly signed a solo deal with EMI Records in 2007, which was even more short-lived than her band’s career had been, this time under the name Molly McQueen, after being invited to record a single for the soundtrack of the superhero romantic comedy film My Super Ex-Girlfriend, starring Uma Thurman.

And her debut single was… “No Sleep Tonight”. Yes, Molly’s first – and only – solo single was the exact same one her band had debuted with just shy of two years ago, a move which – to our knowledge – has never been attempted by anyone else before or since (although we are happy to be corrected).

As I write this, just this week, new four piece all-girl band, the highly touted The Last Dinner Party, have debuted at the top of the album chart with their first ever album, registering the biggest first week sales for a new British band since 2015. True, they appear to be operating more from the alternative / indie vein of things music wise.

But it does at least prove that, done right, all female fronted bands with instruments do work. As for why The Faders failed to catch on is anyone’s guess. At the time they debuted, the music industry was going through a weird time of change when legal downloads started to be incorporated into the charts, which leant more in favour to more credible artists and genres. But there was, it has to be said, some underhand sexism they had to face that girls couldn’t write and play their own material that absolutely wouldn’t fly today. And there was no need when, on the strength of this and their album that ultimately never saw the light of day in Britain, The Faders proved they could – and should – have been huge.

Don’t forget to follow our Pop Essays playlist on Spotify, which includes this and all the songs we’ve written about. What are your memories of this week’s featured song or band? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below or message us on our Instagram.