Somewhere in there, it seems, everyone forgot about the music. After becoming stars in 1998 when Shaznay Lewis' brilliant 'Never Ever' got to Number One the old fashioned way, slowly climbing the charts, ensnaring listeners with its circling cycle of hooks and harmonies, All Saints were recast as a caricature of a pop group.
To be fair, this wasn't entirely the band's fault, though they were certainly complicit, as countless photo shoots found Melanie Blatt, Natalie and Nicole Appleton playing up the sex kitten image for all it was worth.
But now, with the release of this unimaginatively named, shoddily packaged record, it seems almost like the music is as much of an afterthought for them as it has been to the editors and readers of the country's tabloids and lad mags.
The depressing reality is that, two William Orbit-produced Number Ones apart, there's little here to fulfil the immense promise of All Saints' effervescent debut. Some tracks are just weak, while otherwise decent ideas are submerged in surface detail.
'Ready Willing And Able' tries so hard to be En Vogue but never gets close, while Orbit's by-numbers synth/guitar trick is trotted out for the umpteenth time to smooth out the parts of
'Surrender' that dare to try to become a distinct song. And the less said about the pointless Latin dalliance of closer 'One More Tequila' the better.
There are some highs, of course, the title track being one such, a strong song which benefits from a relatively uncomplicated recording courtesy of the band's long-time collaborator K-Gee. Another, oddly, is 'Whoopin' Over You', a sort of Northern Soul-via-Edwin Collins stomp where a rap from Lewis that ought to be toe-curlingly embarrassing - "Do you like my cowboy hat?/I dance like a kitty-cat" - comes across as a rare moment of unforced, natural light-heartedness.
The Natalie Appleton-penned 'Dreams' keeps its head above the waterline too, a song that deserves a place on a better album than this, while Blatt's 'Ha Ha' has a bounce and a refreshing lack of self-consciousness that are in all too short supply.
It's desperately unfortunate, in a way, that Lewis wrote 'Never Ever' at such an early stage of her career, as she and her band will always be judged against what is unquestionably one of the best pop singles of the '90s.
To try to continue from there, while acknowledging their new place in the pop star cosmos, they've sacrificed an easygoing sense of fun and exuberance in favour of some nebulous notion of sophistication.
When these stars eventually come back down to earth, they may well make an album as good as they're obviously capable of. But All Saints haven't done it yet.
