Offering up yet more untapped poptastic nuggets of goodness, this is Pop Essays. This week: after a long gestation period, a solo Saint finally goes it alone…
- Artist: Mel Blatt
- Song: Do Me Wrong
- Released: 24/08/2003
- Writers / Producers: Melanie Blatt / Brian Higgins / Miranda Cooper / Lisa Cowling / Niara Scarlett / Xenomania
- Highest UK Chart Position: #18
- Chart Run: 18 – 41 – 60 – 95 – 92
Although, as the two biggest girl groups of the 90s, the Spice Girls and All Saints were oft compared and pitted against one another, they were two entirely different propositions, and not just in terms of their music and image whilst they were together in their first reigns of success.
If one looks at the length of time taken between the release of the first project outside of the Spice Girls (Mel B’s chart topping “I Want You Back” with Missy Elliott in September 1998) to the last (Victoria Beckham’s collaboration with True Steppers and Dane Bowers on “Out Of Your Mind” in August 2000), it was just a little over 23 months.
All Saints, by contrast, rolled out their respective solo – and, in Nicole and Natalie Appleton’s case, duo – ventures at a slightly more leisurely rate of well over two and a half years. And one could argue that no one was more leisurely than one of the band’s de facto lead vocalists, Melanie Blatt.
Melanie, by her own dry and self deprecating admission, would heartily agree that she was part sloth (indeed, she once cheerily admitted to forgetting the entire words to “Pure Shores” when the band reformed to support Backstreet Boys at the O2 Arena in London in 2014, ad-libbing to the crowd, zero fucks given, with “Sorry, I am nearly 40”) and was also, as she would say herself, a reluctant popstar; she’s often said that for her, most of the group’s best songs were ones that were just tucked away as album tracks or B-sides.
Strange to relate then, that she was the first out the blocks with a project outside the band following their dissolution in January 2001; eight months later, she provided a guest vocal to garage gurus Artful Dodger on their single “Twentyfourseven“, which peaked at #6 that September.
This was then followed six months later, in March 2002, with another guest vocal, this time on the UK version of “I’m Leavin’“, for US hip hop collective Outsidaz, which just narrowly missed the top 40. Jumping forward almost 18 months later, to August 2003, and she was finally ready to unleash her solo debut proper. To say that she was doing so with no real clear objective of what it was leading to wouldn’t, we would hope, be being unkind.
An album had been recorded, with her still being signed with London Records, where All Saints had released, most of the songs from which was with her then husband, ex-Jamiroquai bassist Stuart Zender, at the productive helm. But unusually, it was only referred to in passing in interviews. And the only single that ultimately emerged from the album, “Do Me Wrong”, wasn’t actually one with his involvement at all.
Brian Higgins and Xenomania were instead at the controls on this one, although those who haven’t heard it (which I suspect will be most people reading this post) may be in for a shock. Neither was it a futuristic guitar driven banger like the ones they were giving to Girls Aloud, nor was it a sassy and soulful club anthem like the ones they were giving to Sugababes.
In fact, a better – albeit more obscure – point of sonic reference would be to “Who’s My Baby“, one of two album tracks they produced for the Belgian-Egyptian singer Natacha Atlas, for her 2003 album Something Dangerous, it’s roots leaning into R&B and soul and featuring guest vocals from one of Xenomania’s then chief in-house songwriters and former vocalist with The Cinematic Orchestra, Niara Scarlett, who had had a hand in “Sound of the Underground” for Girls Aloud as well as “Round Round” and “Hole in the Head” for Sugababes and this single as well.
“Do Me Wrong” carries along that same vibe, a twangy, almost middle Eastern sounding riff that sounds like it was recorded in searing heat, ushering in the cool and laidback intro, which gets going with the chanted refrain: “A-E-I-O-U, nothing baby / Long time gone since I’ve been your lady / All the time that you been away / You never had nothing good to say”.
Mel’s vocal is at its sultriest and most dismissive sounding, as she sings to her no-hope fella seeking redemption with all manner of withering putdowns (“Boy I can’t help but wonder why / You said that if we weren’t together, you would die / Well, you started digging your own grave / The day I turned around and saw you look away”), but none more so than on the chorus, which is perhaps a less celebrated Xenomania earworm, but is a brilliant one nonetheless: “First you say you care / Sure baby, yeah yeah / Not the bullshit that you wear / This ain’t a fair affair, oh / When you’re here with me / It’s a sweet reality / But baby when you’re gone / I know you do me wrong, oh”.
And it also retains the unusual song structure that Brian was fast becoming famous for, as the refrain from the start of the song is also built back into the middle 8 that is interloped in with the chorus to its conclusion: “A-E-I-O-U, nothing baby / Long time gone since I’ve been your lady / All the time that you been away / You never had nothing good to say / I can’t see why you think I’m waiting / Life goes on while you’re hesitating / Not even a reason why / I packed my bags and I said goodbye”. It’s truly giving “I’m better than this crap, and I’ve already moved on, so do the same please, you lowlife” energy and we love it.
Indeed, the video, shot in the desert in Malaga, depicting Mel hitchhiking via a variety of different drivers, showcases the lyrics of the song in a very tongue in cheek yet feisty way; we still live for the scene where, having got into a scrap with what we assume is the love interest at the start of the video, she throws away the keys to his Cadillac in retaliation for yeeting her bags out the car, and promptly stomps off, flipping the bird at him as she does so, whilst giving a knowing grin to camera.
For someone who was very much a reluctant popstar, there was a bit of odd synchronicity in the way that Mel’s indifference to having a mega solo career married up with the indifference the UK record buying public was largely showing to solo projects from members of hugely successful groups and bands. Indeed, Nat and Nic with their duo outing as Appleton had found that out for themselves just mere weeks prior to this, when their third single, “Everything Eventually”, had tanked out at #38, bringing to a premature end their album deal with Polydor Records.
“Do Me Wrong” did a little better than that, but arguably only marginally; it peaked at and debuted at #18 in August but was out the top 40 altogether a week later. And not a word more was spoken about its parent album after that. In fact, the only indication anyone had of any of its other tracks existing was some 10 years later, when, in 2013, another song Mel had recorded with Xenomania called “Blue“, was dusted off for X Factor runner up Amelia Lily, for her debut solo album, Be A Fighter – which also joined it in the great unreleased pop dumper in the sky after the flop of her third single “Party Over”. Just under a year later, in July 2004, Shaznay Lewis completed the solo releases from All Saints, with her first album, Open, and her own top 10 hit, “Never Felt Like This Before”.
As a single, “Do Me Wrong” is a fine proposition even now, but is also an example of how the best solo material away from pop groups need not come with the baggage of an artist who is driven by ego and a desire to be a world beating top dog (indeed, this iconic picture of Mel making funny faces behind Justin Timberlake illustrates that very point hilariously). Sometimes, it’s better not to imagine a parallel universe and just accept what you did receive, and in Mel’s case, it was brief yet brilliant.
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The Niche Reference 