REACH FOR THE STARS
MICHAEL CRAGG
NINE EIGHT BOOKS
★★★★★
As a magazine that was itself born to celebrate the art of pop music, we know better than most the inherent snobbery and derision that has often accompanied its success. Credit has usually been given grudgingly in hindsight or patronisingly slapped with the ‘guilty pleasures’ tag for example. Michael Cragg sets out to right those wrongs in Reach For The Stars, a fantastic, fizzy oral history of pop music’s last party. Kicking off in 1996 with the Spice Girls, the book is a raucous romp through the next decade on Planet Pop, celebrating the likes of Girls Aloud, Steps, S Club 7, Sugababes and A1, as well as Billie, Westlife, Five, Hear’Say, Liberty X, Busted, McFly and Blue among many others.