Growing up I was obsessed with Steps. I don't mean that lightly. I'm talking posters everywhere, owning every album, every single, learning the dance moves, knowing all the song lyrics, crush on H, over-playing their Wembley tour VHS kind of obsessed. Which is why on Boxing Day 2001, poor little 9 year old me, along with countless others, was crushed when upon learning that they had split.
Obviously that didn't stop me from still playing their music. And I'm not talking a few years after they split, I'm talking up until now. Even now Steps still have pride of place in my iTunes library.
But lucky me and countless other Steps-fans, they've reuinted after 10 years. I don't know about anyone else, but I've been watching the show about it on Sky Living, and for me, it was a huge shock to see so much bitching and rivalry between them all. They started out in 1997, so I would have only been 5 when they first came about and wouldn't have known what bitching and rivalry was, but for the 5 years that they were together, I remember watching their tours, and their Greatest Hits VHS (even mentioning VHS makes me feel old and I'm not even 20 yet) and thinking "wow, they're the best of friends. That's just AWESOME."
Embarassing as this was even to type, I remember me and my friend down the road would pretend to 'be' them, I was Claire, she was Lisa, and we'd put on shows for our Mums in each others' living rooms singing their songs and that was a pretty huge chunk of my childhood. H was also my first crush, as I'm sure he was to many fans back then, and I had a poster of him in my bedroom that I'd love to gaze at.
Unfortunately, unlike the lucky fans that got to see them live, I never did. Yes, yes, get your violins out. So my only experience of their concerts were on my over played VHS's of their Wembley concert and their Gold: Greatest Hits concert. However, I managed to get the experience of seeing the latter live on TV as an early Christmas present - my mum paid for it for me to watch live on Sky Box Office and I remember it was the best thing I'd gotten that year. Whilst my Mum couldn't believe she'd spent £9.99 on pay-per-view, I was in my absolute element. I do remember Lisa, Faye and Claire crying at the end of it though, and I remember thinking "why are they crying?!" Little did I know that they'd actually split an hour before they went on stage for that show - in fact, I found that out about 2 weeks ago while watching the Sky documentary.
The documentary pretty much spoiled my naive child's view of Steps that I had about them all being BFFs and it being all super-amazingly awesome, but I guess that's growing up for you. Never again will I watch one of their music videos and think "Aww they're such good friends!" which is a shame, but those videos still provided me of hours of enjoyment when I was bored because I wasn't the kid of child to go outside and ride my bike. Because I couldn't ride a bike. But that's a different story.
Anyway, I'm secretly thrilled (alright, publically thrilled once I publish this blog) that Steps are back together. I don't know if it'll work, but by the sounds of things, people seem to be excited about it, and I really hope it goes down well. For one, I can now start listening to their albums on the bus again without feeling like I never stepped out of the 90s era. Steps were a huge part of my childhood and like I said, I was obsessed with them. I don't see myself being obsessed again, as I don't tend to have obsessions anymore (other than collecting DVDs, a fear of germs and keeping my DVD's alphabetised), but I can safely say there will still be a place for them in my 90s-music-loving heart. Aww.
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