WHEN SISTER KIM JOINED SINGER MEL, STOCK AITKEN WATERMAN WERE SELECTED TO OVERSEE THEIR JOYOUSLY IRRESISTIBLE DANCE-POP DEBUT ALBUM - BUT THIS RIDE ON THE MERRY-GO-ROUND WOULD PROVE ALL TOO SHORT…

MARK ELLIOTT

No assessment of the one and only album by Mel & Kim can be complete without some reflection of the duo’s wider and tragic backstory. Few acts as successful as this have only a single studio collection to their name, and F.L.M. poses many questions about how long the sisters’ triumphant winning streak would have continued if fate hadn’t intervened so cruelly. As with all stories cut short after the first chapter, the rest is anyone’s guess - but no one can deny the brilliance of this debut, which saw SAW heralded as gifted writers as well as maverick production geniuses.

Across a tight nine tracks, F.L.M. was as innovative as it was commercially successful, peaking at No.3 in the UK charts and attaining platinum status during its 25 weeks on the listings. Showing Out (Get Fresh At The Weekend) is widely credited with being the UK’s first-ever house record, and the scale of its impact on the British pop chart in late 1986 was the nucleus of the set that followed the following year.

The pair’s breakthrough can be traced back to when Mel Appleby sang lead vocals with a UK club act, The Glamour Girl Roadshow. She caught the attention of a music manager who spotted her star potential. His introductions led to a demo tape of the sisters being passed to Nick East, who headed up Supreme Records, which had enjoyed major success with SAW on the project with Princess and also a near-miss with The Three Degrees. “Mel & Kim were the real deal - I liked them the moment I met them,” Nick recalls. It was natural he would pair the duo with SAW, with early plans hatched to create more of the slick British soul then making waves on the pop charts.

“Mel & Kim were very talented, but they were totally inexperienced and couldn’t sing with the headphones on,” says Mike Stock in his 2004 autobiography. “We had to re-organise the entire studio just so they could sing with loudspeakers as monitors instead.” A track called System was laid down but then, at a post-studio session down the pub, Mike and Matt Aitken were transfixed by the Hackney sisters’ larger-than-life personalities.

“They shocked us with their loud, crude East End behaviour and we quickly realised that the soul songs we had in mind weren’t going to be suitable,” Matt explained. “We went back to the studio, scrapped everything and started again.”

★ THE PLAYERS

MEL APPLEBY

Bringing up a daughter on low wages earned in dead-end jobs was tough for the teenage mum, so she tried her hand at glamour modelling and joined a revue troop performing at nightclubs across the UK. She was spotted by a former member of Marmalade, Alan Whitehead, who promised to help her break into the music business. Mel battled liver cancer at 18, but by the time Alan had passed the tape to Nick East at Supreme Records she was in recovery. When the disease returned in 1987, she tried to keep the news hidden but finally revealed what was happening in April 1988. She died in January 1990 after a cold developed into pneumonia which she was too weak to fight.

KIM APPLEBY

First brought in to sing alongside her sister Mel while she was recording demos, Kim bravely continued promotional duties for Mel & Kim after Mel started receiving cancer treatment. After her sister’s death in 1990, Kim worked with her then-boyfriend Craig Logan, not long out of Bros, to launch a solo career. It kicked off in spectacular style with Don’t Worry, a UK No.2 in November of that year. Further hits G.L.A.D. and Mama were lifted from her self-titled debut collection, but a delay before its follow-up collection Breakaway saw the commercial momentum around her career slacken. A final reunion with Mike Stock and Pete Waterman on Free Spirit was her last 45 in 1994 before she took a long break from the recording industry (although she took a leading role with the Ivor Novello Awards). A new single emerged in 2010 before Kim agreed to some occasional gigging commitments and a brace of TV presenting jobs.

NICK EAST

Leaving school with no qualifications, Nick ended up in A&R and promotions for labels like EMI before starting up Supreme Records at the age of 28. Although Supreme had hits with Princess, Mel & Kim would transform the company’s fortunes. Nick left the music industry in the early 2000s and now works as a life coach.