Do you remember...?
Their Story
Boybands
A new phenomenon?
Or an old one? The music-scene saw some changes within the last few years.The last decade, particularly the early nineties, was shaped by a special phenomenon: boybands. But who was first? No-one. Boybands were not invented in the nineties, neither in the eighties, seventies or sixties. There have always been boybands, like The Beatles, for instance, or The Jackson Five, or The Rolling Stones, or The Bay City Rollers... Actually all of them were boybands, and there were lots of them. Necertheless the word "boyband" became more significant with the New Kids on the Block appearing on the scene. They set the ball rolling. There were screaming fans, hystrerical teenagers, most of them girls, all over Europe, and all over the whole world. But what was so special about these boybands? They used to be young, good-looking men, four or five of them, who played no instruments but danced to their catchy music. This was definetely not all new, but suddenly there were lots of these bands, from one day to the next.
Those were the days...
An old picture from the year 1993.
Line up: Steve Hart, Schelim Hannan,
Aaron Paul,Patric Osborne & Dan Bowyer
10000 applied for the job - finally five were chosen:
Aaron Paul, who was discovered in a club; Schelim Hannan, who was sent to the audition by his agency; Dan Bowyer, who was also sent there by his model-agency; Steve Hart, who was discovered during the casting; and Patric Osborne.
English manager Gary Wilson decided to create his very own boyband - this was in 1992. One year later, there was an advertisement put in the English daily newspaper The Sun: Someone was searching for young men, who were able to sing and to dance...
A new band was created - Worlds Apart. And these five guys personified this idea. Aaron's father was a Jamaican, Dan's mother had a French origin, Schelim who was from Bangladesh, and Steve from England... and Patric, who left the band after a couple of months but was replaced by Cal Cooper. Now the group was complete, doing their name great credit!
The band started their first promotion tour - through English schools.Their first single's name was "Heaven must be missing an Angel", who hit the UK Top Fifty, just like their second single, "Wonderful World", though this hit wasn't as big as the first one. There were lots of articles in newspapers and teen-magazines, their songs were put on the playlists of the English radio stations, and the group became pretty famous.Together, their first album, went on sale. Single number three, "Everlasting Love", entered the charts on a pretty high position and was releases in Germany a few months later. Their 4th and 5th single-releases were "Beggin' to be written" and "Could it be I'm falling in Love", the last one was their first song being released in Germany, a big hit there, and all over Europe as well.
By this time, Dan had already made his decision - he left the band in June 94. They decided not to replace him. Then Worlds Apart hit the German charts with "Could it be I'm falling in Love" and "Everlasting Love", becoming more and more popular and famous. "Everlasting Love" was a big top-ten hit in Thailand.There was no new single released in the UK, but they were stars in Germany and enjoyed an incredible success there, like they had never done before.
New Changes & Success in France
But it was all to change again. Aaron, their lead-singer, left the band in December, and this time they had no choice but to replace him by a new singer. Nathan Moore, former frontman of Brother Beyond, a quite successful group of the late eighties, was chosen. Though this was a lucky decision, the band was unlucky. Their fans were waiting for the announced new single "Believe me (I'm the one)", which was never released, for a tour, and there was nothing. Another song was said to be their next single, "Right Kind of Love", but its release was cancelled as well. In the summer of '95 they were dropped by their record company, BMG, and a couple of weeks later, they signed a major recording deal with EMI. They appeared on several open air festivals. Finally a new single was released in september '95. "Baby come back" was Worlds Apart's comeback, a song written and produced by Masterboy. In December, at Christmas time, their Christmas song, "When it's Christmas Time", was released.In January '96 the first Worlds Apart Fan Convention was held in Cologne. "Everybody", second single extract from their second album, was performed live on stage for the very first time. The band took part at two special charity events, "Love Message" and "Hand in Hand for Children", and recorded with other bands and singers the songs "Love Message" and "Children".The album "Everybody" went on sale on March 21st. "Just say I said Hello" was published in June.
By this time, the band had already enjoyed their first smash hits in France with "Baby come back" and "Everybody", "Je te donne", especially recorded for the French fans, even made it up to number 1. This song was released all over Europe, being their biggest hit of all times.They were succesfull as never before, partcularly in France. In December '96 they recorded a song for a tribute CD for Queen, "I was born to love you", which was released as a single only in Germany. For their French fans, they re-recorded "Everlasting Love". In '97, a remix of "You said", taken from the "Everybody"-album, was released in France, whereas the next Single in Germany was "Rise like the Sun", a song which was used for a TV-ad. It was the first extract taken from the new album "Don't change"."Quand je reve de toi" was released in France in June.
