All Saints

Those unfamiliar with pop music would be forgiven for confusing All Saints with another hotly tipped music property, The Spice Girls. The four members of All Saints could have stood for Spice Girls body doubles in a lineup: two brunettes, one blonde, and one of West Indian descent. While The Spice Girls were always pure pop and barely musically functional, the members of All Saints, however, were songwriters and music aficionados with a softer, more intelligent image less tied to their looks than their music.



The group came together in 1993 when Melanie Blatt and Shaznay Lewis began recording and writing at a studio on All Saints Road, in London's Ladbroke Grove. The duo hooked up with R&B vocalist Simone Rainford and released a single for ZTT Records in 1995, then parted ways with Rainford and were dumped by the label. Undeterred, Blatt and Lewis recruited native Canadian Nicole Appleton and, later, her big sister Natalie, to make All Saints a quartet.

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