RIDING POP’S ROLLERCOASTER

THELIST GIRL GROUP B*WITCHED ENJOYED PHENOMENAL SUCCESS AROUND THE WORLD IN THE LATE ’90S, BUT THE RIDE ENDED JUST AS QUICKLY AS IT HAD BEGUN

Back in 1998, four denim-clad lasses Irish-jigged their way to the top of the UK and Australian charts with hits like “C’est La Vie” and “Rollercoaster”, but B*witched’s runaway success was followed by a demise just as rapid. Two decades later, Lindsay Armaou tells WHO about their breakthrough and breakup, and the So Pop tour coming to Australia from Jan. 30, 2019, which features a host of ’90s acts (see below).

What are your memories of B*witched taking off in 1998? There were about four or five years where our feet didn’t touch the ground, and we lived out of suitcases and didn’t see our families for months on end. We worked 18-hour days – it was crazy. Do you miss it at all? I miss certain aspects of it – the buzz. But I don’t miss that crazy lifestyle. Things are really cool now because it’s all on our terms. We’ve all got families so we certainly couldn’t do it now. There must have been so many pinch yourself moments back then… When we found out “C’est La Vie” went to number one in the UK, it was an amazing feeling. Another highlight was touring America on a tour bus with a driver who looked like Wayne out of Wayne’s World – he was AC/DC’S driver before us. It was proper rock’n’roll. [ Laughs] The problem with being so huge was that when you stopped having number ones, your record company dropped you. How hard was that? It was really harsh. Because we’d set the bar so high, it was a lot to live up to. The second album sold half a million plus, but the first album had sold over three million so it was seen as a failure. You got back together in 2012 as part of UK reality series The Big Reunion. That process wasn’t entirely straightforward, was it? We knew that once we got back into rehearsals things would click again but we needed to air a few things from the past. Once we had, it felt like a clean slate. The lines of communication are much better nowadays. Back in the day, we didn’t have the time or energy to talk it out.

It concerned who did what share of the singing?

We all sing, so Keavy [Lynch] and myself really wanted to make sure that moving forward we had more to offer in that respect. Things are a lot more shared out now.

Your dance routines were so high energy. Will you pull out those moves on the So Pop tour?

This is 20 years later, so we’re not quite as bouncy. And we wear heels now; we used to wear trainers and baggy jeans – but we still do the routines. And do you still rock some double denim? We do – we can’t get rid of it. We’ve embraced it, to be honest. It’s quite nice for us to have a theme.