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The Sun
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Dark side of 90s pop from crack addiction to boozy brawls and sex for money revealed
THE 90s may have been the decade that brought us Brit pop, but it was also the time when pop music had a huge resurgence. After the Stock, Aitken and Waterman-led assault on the charts in the mid to late 80s, pop music fell to the wayside somewhat in the early part of the next decade. 8 8 8 But soon, the likes of Take That, Spice Girls, Steps and S Club 7 brought the genre back to life. While young fans adored the upbeat, smiling and colourful pop stars - many complete with dance routines they could copy - behind the facade, it was often a much darker story. While a number of female pop stars from that time have spoken about their struggles with eating disorders and body image at the height of their fame, for their male counterparts, their demons often presented themselves in substance abuse. Indeed, for every Reach for the Stars or Bodyshakin' hit, there's a dark story to be told. Here are five male pop stars who have bravely spoken out over the years about the struggles they faced after finding fame. Jon Lee - S Club 7 8 S Club 7 burst onto the music scene in 1998 with their own TV series, Miami 7, followed by catchy debut single Bring It All Back. They went on to sell 10 million albums worldwide and win two Brit Awards. However, Jon, 43, recently revealed he was blowing £250 a week on crystal meth and then trashing his flat with a hammer while out of it. In fact, his habit was so bad it nearly killed him and even saw him sectioned back in 2019. Speaking to the Daily Mail, Jon revealed that he got into crystal meth - a highly addictive 'party' drug that can cause psychosis, hallucination, paranoia and mania - when he was in his thirties - long after S Club had gone their separate ways. He revealed: "I didn't even recognise myself at that time. Sometimes, in the midst of one of the psychotic episodes where I'd be smashing my flat up with a hammer, I'd catch sight of myself in the mirror and say: 'What the f***?'. "I'd have a moment of lucidity, thinking: 'I was a successful young man, I had a brilliant career, incredible life. What am I doing?' "I'd be standing there, holes in the walls around me, cuts all over my knuckles, my eye swollen from where I'd been punching myself in the head. I'd shaved my hair too. I didn't look anything like Jon-from-S Club – or what people would expect Jon-from-S Club to look like." Kavana 8 Kavana - real name Anthony Kavanagh - became a teen heartthrob in the late 90s aged 16. The star had hits including I Can Make You Feel Good and Special Kind of Something, but his squeaky clean image was soon replaced by a drug and alcohol addiction that left him homeless. With an army of young, female fans, Anthony was forced to hide his sexuality and started to use alcohol "as a comfort". The singer has revealed all about his battles in a new memoir, Pop Scars, including how he ended up smoking crack in a skip in Hackney with a homeless woman he had just met. He also recounts a moment he woke up in another stranger's flat, having realised he had been paid for sex. He told The Guardian:"Alcohol was the start and the end. I would never have taken drugs without alcohol. But yeah, I was like a loose cannon for some of those times, got myself into some situations.' AJ McLean - Backstreet Boys 8 The Backstreet Boys became one of the biggest boybands worldwide in the 90s thanks to hit songs including I Want it That Way and Everybody (Backstreet's Back). The five piece - consisting of AJ, Nick Carter, Brian Littrell, Kevin Richardson and Howie Dorough - have sold over 130 million records worldwide. But despite their huge success, AJ, 47, hid a dark secret from fans and his bandmates. AJ battled a drug and alcohol addiction for two decades, and revealed that when he was at rock bottom, he was "never sober, not for a second". But his bandmates staged an intervention and he went to rehab, but it wouldn't be the only time. Having previously described himself as a "chronic relapser", he told Fox News Digital. "I don't have another relapse in me. It will not end the lucky way it has ended in the past when I've dodged bullets and never went to jail, never got a DUI. "I'm pretty sure the last time I did drugs, there was fentanyl in there. I'm still here talking to you. I've dodged more bullets than I'd like to." Jimmy Constable - 911 8 Another UK boyband that was big in the 90s was the trio 911, consisting of Jimmy, Lee Brennan and Spike Dawbarn. During their five-year career, they had 10 Top 10 hits including Bodyshakin', Party People and Night to Remember. But last year - following the tragic death of One Direction star Liam Payne - Jimmy opened up about his addiction to pills and booze. He told The Sun: "The problem was, the best way to secure us was to lock us in our rooms, and what is in the room? A mini-bar. "So I had a party-for-one that seemed to carry on for years. It was wild but the only way you could get frustration out." Due to the constant pressures from their record company, Jimmy descended into alcoholism, infamously appearing drunk on SM:TV Live - the Saturday morning kids' show hosted by Ant and Dec and Cat Deeley. After the band split in 2000, Jimmy sought solace in drink, downing 10-12 bottles of wine every day with his then-girlfriend. "I felt it was easy just to drink all day, and then when the drink didn't numb it anymore, I turned to the drugs.' Thankfully, Jimmy has overcome his demons and is now a paramedic. Ritchie Neville - 5ive 8 Known as the bad boys of pop, 5ive were signed by Simon Cowell in 1997. They had a meteoric rise to face and topped the charts with hits including If Ya Gettin' Down, Keep on Movin' and Everybody Get Up. But as with other boybands, the pressure of their hectic schedule, being swarmed by fans and press and still being so young was a melting pot of disaster waiting to happen. In 2000, Ritchie, 45, and bandmate J Brown, 49, were arrested in Dublin after getting into a fight with a man who had said Irish boyband Westlife were better than 5ive. When the band imploded in the early Noughties, Ritchie spiralled. He told The Sun's TV Mag: "After the band, you know, I hit an epic low. "I just didn't know what I wanted to do. I was completely emotionally and spiritually lost.
The Sun
12-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
8 fashion, beauty & bonkers trends we can't believe we subscribed to in the 90s… how many unlock childhood memories?
DO YOU clearly remember Oasis and Blur battling for supremacy in the music charts? Were you wracked with sobs when Ant McPartlin's character PJ got blinded by a paintball in kid's show Byker Grove? If so, you probably went to school in the nineties, and your childhood will be very different to those of youngsters today. There is certain to be a long list of nostalgic items that take you straight back to those days - pining for your misspent youth. Here, Nikki Watkins lists eight things you'll almost certainly remember if you were at school during the 1990s, that will bring a lump to your choker-clad throat. 1. Butterfly clips, Sun In and hair mascara Hairstyles in comprehensives up and down the UK, in the 90s, was certainly a 'vibe.' The ideal look for barnets was not subtle - the gaudier the better. Multi-coloured plastic butterfly clips scattered through your locks? Check. Hair mascara in a plethora of garish colours streaked liberally? Check. Sun In, the spray-in product designed to lighten hair, but dyeing it a specific tiger-hued orange? Check. What a time to be alive. 2. Jelly Bands and tattoo chokers 7 These were heady days when the most sought-after jewellery was cheap, garish and plastic. Want to look like you have a tattoo the circumference of your neck? No worries, the most popular choker around looked exactly like that. And alongside this tacky neck adornment, 90s kids were stacking their arms with plastic bracelets. The colour of these thin bangles were imbued with, mainly sexual, meanings that were different from school to school, but the basics were if the opposite gender snapped one of yours: they fancied you. 3. Alcopops, the sweeter the better 7 So drinking is illegal until the age of 18, sure. But there was always a naughty lad who had a house party- and this get-together was always, inexplicably, filled with the sugariest alcopops known to man. If us 90s kiddos ever catch sight of the alcopop big hitters: Reef, Hooch, Breezers or their more sophisticated cousin Archer's peach schnapps with lemonade, we are sent spinning back to a nostalgic world filled with the ghosts of terrible decisions. 4. Just 17, Bliss, Smash Hits and More magazines 7 A glimpse of the nostalgic cover of 90s mags Bliss or Just 17 sends the mind of anyone over the age of 34 flying back to breaktimes, poring over print. And there is not one millennial worth their bucket hat who can deny having their mind blown by racy teen magazine More's sex position of the fortnight. The illustrated sex advice made schoolgirls fall about laughing. Sex, gross! With the benefit of hindsight, the images are about as saucy as a cave-painting. 5. Puffer jackets with basic wording If your parents had enough money to buy you a cool jacket for school - you were flying in the popularity stakes. And nothing had more street cred than a plain, shiny black polyester bomber jacket with the name of, inexplicably, a construction brand like Caterpillar. But for extra street cred you had the OG of jackets - Mr. Spliffy. The coat was adorned with an embroidered small man smoking a suspicious looking cigarette. Sadly it would inevitably be confiscated by the first teacher to catch sight of it - but the street cred would remain throughout your tenure at school. If you've got an old jacket from school lying in a box somewhere, a savvy Vinted seller has revealed the brands that make the most money online now. 6. MSN Messenger The sight of the MSN Messenger logo is enough to send your brain screaming back to the 90s. This was a basic instant messaging platform by Microsoft that you could use on the dial-up internet of your family computer to contact people you knew from school - in a time when there were no mobiles or 'texting.' It was a great way to waste hours after school- until you were kicked off because your parents needed to make a phone call. Back in these dark ages you couldn't use the blower and the internet together. There really was nothing quite like dashing home from lessons to hop on MSN to talk to the mates you just spent the entire day with. 7. Jane Norman placcy bags to hold your PE kit Aside from being able to recite the words to Wonderwall - there was nothing that would set you up as the epitome of cool quite like carrying your PE kit in a Jane Norman carrier bag. The clothes shop may have disappeared from high streets in 2018 - but 90s girls that carried one in a garishly bright colour in the 90s were the bearers of social clout. 8. Record Of Achievement It was implied heavily by our teachers that if we did not fill this hefty folder with a range of achievements from academic successes like GCSE certificates to lesser scholastic merits (hello, white swimming badge)- that we would never be welcomed into the workforce. And hasn't it served us Millennials well? Want a job in a pub, aged 18? The pleather-clad folder came with. Trying for your first office job in your 20s? of course they want to see that you got your Duke of Edinburgh bronze award in 1997.
