If Ya Gettin' Down

Five were assembled in 1997 by Bob and Chris Herbert, part of the management team associated with the early formation of the Spice Girls. The resulting line-up — Abz Love, Jason “J” Brown, Sean Conlon, Ritchie Neville and Scott Robinson — looked like a conventional boy band on paper, but the music leaned harder on rhythmic production, rapped sections and a more abrasive performance style than many of their chart peers.

Their 1998 debut album established the formula immediately. “Slam Dunk (Da Funk)”, “Got the Feelin’”, “Everybody Get Up” and “When the Lights Go Out” moved between funk-pop, dance production and radio R&B without losing the directness expected of mainstream pop. The album reached No. 1 in the UK, while “When the Lights Go Out” also gave the group a significant breakthrough in the United States.

By the time Invincible arrived in 1999, Five had refined the balance between harder-edged tracks and broad, melodic pop. “If Ya Gettin’ Down” pushed the rhythm-first side of the group, while “Keep On Movin’” became one of their defining songs and their first UK No. 1. Their version of “We Will Rock You”, recorded with Queen members Brian May and Roger Taylor, took them back to the top of the UK singles chart in 2000.

The pace was intense. Three studio albums, constant promotion and international touring were packed into only a few years, and the pressure behind the success became increasingly difficult for the members. Five announced their split in 2001, shortly after the release of Kingsize and the chart-topping single “Let’s Dance”. Later reunion attempts happened in different configurations, but the original five did not properly return to the stage together until the 2025 Keep On Movin’ tour.

That full-line-up reunion changed the shape of Five’s story. Instead of being frozen as an early-2000s pop memory, the group entered the mid-2020s openly revisiting both the fun and the strain of their first run. Their current live activity gives the catalogue a useful second life: not as a nostalgia exercise pretending nothing happened in between, but as five members finally performing those songs together again with the distance to understand what the original period cost them.