Music
Five: “The key to what we’re doing is that we don’t know what we’re doing”
Ritchie, Abz, J, Sean and Scott remember their best boyband moments, from spinning Russian stages and Smash Hits parties, to getting their mum on the screen at the O2
“None of us ever wanted to be in a boyband,” declares Five’s Ritchie Neville. Beside him are bandmates Abz Love, Jason ‘J’ Brown, Sean Conlon and Scott Robinson – the original line-up together once more. Bedecked in all black, their outfits may be uniformly sombre, but their demeanour anything but. A year into a highly successful reunion, a mischievous mood abounds as they talk ahead of an Australian tour and a smattering of UK summer shows, including a huge headline gig at Newmarket Racecourse in June.
Nevertheless, Ritchie’s statement is a striking one, and it’s a view shared by the others. “That was always a bit of a problem for us,” agrees Sean, reflecting on the group’s original run. “Each of us always had some conflict with the band, thinking, ‘Nah, I don’t want to do this, I want to do that’”. “None of us were necessarily pop heads [when we started out],” Ritchie continues, by way of explanation. “We each had other ideas”.
J, who attempted to forge a hip hop career before joining the band, explains that he, too, “hated” boybands prior to joining Five. “I used to look at East 17 and Take That and, stupidly, because I was young, used to go, ‘oh, I’d never do that’,” he says with a hint of remorse.
Sean believes that the years apart dissolved any “ego” that used to lead to intragroup friction. In its place is an all-round appreciation from each of them, an acknowledgement that their music is “a gift” and something to be cherished. A calling, even. “I am meant to do this. I am meant to be here,” he remarks. “Everything we’ve done individually always felt like we were swimming against the tide. Like, there’s a resistance. Once we got back together, everything started flowing again. You feel alive. It’s weird. It’s meant to be.”
When Five emerged in 1997, it was into a mainstream teeming with play-it-safe popstars broadly peddling tepid, formulaic fare.
Rather than blend in, Five bucked fiercely against the trend. They were edgier, rockier, more daring. Less inclined to doe-eyed ballads, the troop’s trademark were up-tempo, party-starting pop anthems. Singles such as ‘Keep On Movin’’, ‘Everybody Get Up’, ‘If Ya Gettin’ Down’, ‘Got the Feelin’’ speak for themselves; evergreen chart hits packed with catchy melodies (along with the realisation that they discriminated against the letter ‘g’ with wanton abandon).
They were also the pop band that crossed the sex divide – a rare instance where males quietly admired a boyband alongside hordes of ardent female fans.
“I remember guys coming up to us back in the day and going, ‘Do you know what? I’m not even ashamed to admit that I like your song ‘Everybody Get Up’. It’s a really cool song’,” remembers Scott fondly. “[But] Listen, we’re definitely a boyband, there’s no question about that,” he reasons, “but we’re a boyband that anyone can like. And we’re really proud of that.”
It’s hard to believe that their original run lasted just four sweet and busy years, stretching from 1997’s debut single ‘Slam Dunk (Da Funk)’ to 2001 album, Kingsize. In that time, they sold over 20 million records and even had Queen jump aboard for a raucous cover of ‘We Will Rock You’ as the millennium dawned.
Various configurations emerged in the years since, including a stint on the 2013 ITV show The Big Reunion, but it is 2026 that finds them twelve months into a fully-fledged, complete reunion.
According to J, they met up around 18-months prior to February 2025’s public announcement. It was the first time in “20-odd years” that they’d all been together, and it was an important opportunity for them to talk, reconnect and reestablish old friendships; some of which had long lain dormant.
That didn’t mean anxieties didn’t creep in once they’d decided to reunite. Scott remembers the band calling family and partners fretting over whether or not anyone would still be interested in the group nearly a quarter of a century on. But not only did the arena dates sell out quickly, the all-round reaction has been extremely effusive. “It’s gone so well that you’re almost waiting for it to fail, but it hasn’t,” he admits, gratefully. “It sounds cliched, but it’s felt like a blessing.”
Sean is philosophical on why their return has been so warmly welcomed. “Our music triggers a lot of positivity,” he offers, explaining that society wasn’t as “polarised” in their heyday as it is today – and that association evokes good memories.
“[The late 90s/millennium era] was a really special time,” he continues. “People felt good and were optimistic. [As a society, we] didn’t really appreciate how good a time it was, because it was just happening… but there was more togetherness.”
What is evident is that there is certainly more togetherness between the group. Larking about one moment, serious the next, they seem eager to, well, keep on movin’ together, as a unit.
They tell us that they will “never say never” when it comes to the prospect of making new music, but neither need nor want the pressure right now. They reason that they’d broken up prematurely the first time around. There’s a sense of unfinished business, and a catalogue that’s far from exhausted. Plus, far too much fun is being had giving audiences what they demand: the hits, sprinkled with fan favourites.
As conversation turns to Five’s Stage Times memories, we seek to draw out some of the chaos and the mayhem of life in a boyband.
Warning us that this might not be a straightforward exercise, Sean prefaces it with a knowing grin: “The key to what we’re doing is that we don’t know what we’re doing – and that was the same the first time around.” And with that, we dive in.
The gigs that made us want to make music
Sean Conlon: When I was three, I had this [small] electric guitar. I’d be sat there with a dummy inside my mouth, watching the likes of Duran Duran on the TV. And then, when I was nine, I saw a Michael Jackson autobiography movie and I remember saying to my parents, ‘I’m going to do that. I want to do music for a living’.
I was 15 when I went to the Five audition, and I just had that confidence and that belief, because that’s what my parents put in me. It’s gone now, like, but… [laughs].
Scott Robinson: Believe it or not, I was a really shy kid.
[Cue uproar from his bandmates] I was! I was really shy!
My eldest sister, Nicola, did performing arts and I remember watching her at shows, thinking what she was doing was really good. One day, I sang in my bedroom and thought I might be able to do something, and that brought all the shyness out of me. I went for an audition for a local theatre show, and they gave me a lead singing part.
Sean: [talking to Scott] So, if your sister didn’t do performing arts, do you think you wouldn’t have even had the idea of doing something like this?
Scott: No, I don’t think I would. I was really, really shy and quite quiet. She was in the show that I auditioned for. From the moment I got that part, I wasn’t shy.
Ritchie Neville: Both my parents were professional singers. They’d talk about being onstage and the strange things that happened. From about the age of four, I knew performing was what I wanted to do, whether that was singing or acting. It was just there.
When I was 13 or 14, I had a meeting with a careers teacher. I walked in and said, ‘I don’t need this meeting’. He said, ‘Well, you do, because…’, and I said, ‘No, honestly, sir, I’m going to be famous’. And he goes [mimics a chuckle], ‘Yeah, but what if that doesn’t happen?’. I went, ‘It’s going to happen’.
Scott: We all did that at senior school. [Careers people] said to me, ‘What are you going to do?’. I said, ‘I’m going to be a singer. I’m going to be famous’. I refused to have a backup plan. I’m not good at anything else so it had to be this. All the eggs: one basket.
Ritchie: It wasn’t arrogance.
Abz Love: [For me], it was the same shit. I was born to do this. There wasn’t anything else. I ain’t got no qualifications. Came out of school, hung out with a few shady types, got an audition [for Five], went along to it. Bada boom, bada bing.
Jason ‘J’ Brown: When I was seven my mum and dad bought me a little keyboard. One of the first things I taught myself to play was Pet Shop Boys‘ ‘Suburbia’.
I always had this thing inside me that said I was going to do this. So much so that there was a point in my life just before I got into Five where I did a ridiculous thing: I tried to do myself in because I thought that I was never gonna [make it].
I used to make hip hop, and I’d been sending off all my demo tapes – but this was before the mid 90s, before hip hop crossed over into the mainstream. I was living in this little town up north, really depressing, nothing going on, and my heart had always said, ‘I’m gonna have a record deal and make music’.
When I thought it had escaped me, I got really, really low. In my heart, I thought, ‘Shit. I honestly believed that this was supposed to happen for me’. And when it looked like it wasn’t, I got really depressed, and it was out of that deep depression that I applied for the band.
My girlfriend at the time who I lived with was a singer. She used to sing at The Haçienda and other clubs in Manchester. She said, ‘Why don’t you do what your family and I’ve said to you for ages and go for one of these pop bands? You can make money and get experience through that, and then you can get your studio, and you can write and produce hip hop and do what you want to do’.
So, I bought The Stage newspaper and saw the advert for this, and went for it. It’s the only audition I’ve ever gone for in my life. And I got into this band.
Our first
Photo by Tim Roney/Getty Images
Scott: We didn’t warm up by doing a school tour or anything like that. We literally got into the band, went to Sweden, wrote the music and came back. When our first single, ‘Slam Dunk Da Funk’, was released we played the Radio 1 Roadshow. We were just meant to be the warm up act. We weren’t even meant to be played on the radio doing our one song.
[On the day] I remember getting out of our Chrysler Voyager and seeing Peter Andre signing autographs, thinking, one day someone might ask for my autograph. Never in a million years did I think it’d be later that day. We went onstage and did our performance, and they asked us to go back on and go live…
J: …because the crowd went ballistic, basically.
Scott: Afterwards, we were at the gate signing autographs. It was like, ‘wow, we’ve cracked it!’.
Our biggest
Scott: [2001] Rock in Rio in Brazil to 400 trillion people!
J: Every time we tell someone how many it was, the number goes up!
Scott: …It was a lot of people. A massive gig.
[In 2001, the band played the Rock in Rio festival to an estimated crowd of 250,000]
J: The thing I always remember that I would have done differently is not tried to have covered the same parts of the stage, because the Rock In Rio stage was f*cking enormous. We all tried to do the same positions and everything that we did on other [smaller] stages. I remember thinking, ‘Shit! I’ve got to get over there’ and sprinting while trying do the vocal!
Scott: In the UK, the biggest gig we did was Party in the Park (in 2000). We performed with Queen. That was incredible as well. Both of those gigs were just a sea of people as far as your eye can see. Quite literally mind-blowing.
Our weirdest
Ritchie: Weirdest gig?
Sean: Maybe, Japan? That was surreal.
Ritchie: Yeah, Japan was surreal.
Sean: We did a gig in Tokyo, and it was a really different setup. Obviously, our music is upbeat, lively and rowdy, and yet they were sat in seats like it was a theatre production. I remember giving it all the large, doing ‘Slam Dunk Da Funk’ and as soon as we finished, they stood up, clapped, and then sat back down. We went into ‘Everybody Get Up’ and they were sat down. That was quite surreal.
Scott: Yeah, it was so bizarre. You knew they liked you because they’d bought a ticket – it was our show. But at the end of every song, they would do exactly like Sean said. I remember thinking, ‘Did you really like it?’ But I believe they did.
[Scott starts talking to the others] What about that gig ‘in the round’? That was weird, wasn’t it?
J: Yeah, we did that in 1998 in Russia. It was supposed to be a warm-up to the tour that was happening the next year.
Scott: Our old manager thought it was a really good idea to do this Russian gig ‘in the round’. It turned out it wasn’t. Because we were spinning, we lost our way. There was audience everywhere, and one of us was dancing this way, the others were dancing that way…
Ritchie: …You oriented by the sound of where the crowd was, but they were all around you, so instead of coming out facing the right way, we were all facing completely different ways!
Our smallest
Scott: That would probably be the first thing that we ever did: our launch.
[Their record label held a launch event for their record label at The 5th Floor restaurant in Harvey Nichols, London, in September 1997]
J: The record company wanted to show us off to some press.
Scott: It was a really intimate show. Just our friends, family, executives and some press. That Radio 1 Roadshow gig came after that, and then we were literally onto doing arenas. Firstly, for the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party [and on from there]. We literally went from a small promo gig to a massive gig, and then massive gigs all over the world.
Sean: That situation caused some issues for us because there wasn’t a natural progression. It was quite artificial; how quick it happened. Emotionally, we just weren’t prepared.
The Smash Hits Poll Winners’ Party feels like a snapshot of a bygone era…
Scott: It was crazy. There was a girlband, 98 degrees (an American boyband comprising Nick and Drew Lachey, Jeff Timmons, and Justin Jeffre) and Five. And we won it. 98 degrees were really upset about that! We were this rugged UK act who had just come out, and they were a very polished American act. They expected to wipe the floor with us – and they were good – but we got more votes and more cheers, so when they didn’t wipe the floor with us it really, really ruffled their feathers.
So much so that they’re still slagging us off in interviews in 2026. It’s unbelievable!
Our best
Ritchie: Best gig ever? There’s been a few where I’ve felt ‘that was really good’. I don’t know about a best ever…
Sean: I think the last tour were the best shows we’ve ever done…
Scott: It’s definitely the most together we’ve ever felt as a band.
Sean: Yeah. And a lot of the fans that came said that this was better than when they saw us the first time around.
Scott: I would say, even more than that, I had moments on each night of the last tour.
Sean: Actually, yes, that was the best moment: Abz’s mum. We filmed Abz’s mum and she was seen up on the big screen dancing.
Abz: …and I ain’t heard the last of it, mate.
Sean: That is genuine one of my favourite moments ever.
Scott: A personal one for me was singing for my twins on our last O2 show. I gave them a cuddle on this B-stage that we had. That now goes down as one of my best moments.
Sean: That wasn’t for me, though, because I now get grief from my daughter for not doing the same!
Scott: Another one was when Sean mentioned his kids and his mum onstage. That was so out of character for him, so when he said it, I was like, ‘Wow. What a moment’.
Sean: I didn’t even know I’d done that…
It shows that it all comes down to family and friendships in the end. That’s what matters.
Sean: Yeah, this means so much to our families. It’s not just about us getting back and doing a few songs, a tour and making some money. It’s a very, very personal thing, and it’s affected our families so much, and it’s uplifted them massively.
Five return to UK stages this summer across a string of outdoor shows including Discovery Festival in Plymouth, Dundee and Darlington, the Isle Of Wight Festival, Newmarket Racecourse and Trentham Live. Find all upcoming dates and tickets for Five here
Header image: Debbie Hickey / Getty
