Just reading an Idolator interview today with Richard X - who was behind virtually 70% of the best pop singles about 10 years ago - "Freak Like Me" for Sugababes, "Being Nobody" for Liberty X etc. Anyway whilst discussing working with Rachel Stevens on "Some Girls" he mentioned in passing that he'd worked with Frankie during her development solo deal with 19 Management after S Club 8 disbanded.

 

I remember scaring Rachel slightly, as I’d come up with a supposedly great idea for the b-side, which was an extended version, but with new spoken word sections. As it was a glam-influenced track, I prepared some questions about 1970s Britain and took Rachel into a small room and began interviewing her for some soundbites. “Rachel, do you remember anything of the three-day working week? Or the 1978 winter of discontent?”  I wasn’t trying to be a smart-arse, I just thought we’d get some interesting words out of the exercise. Her reaction was somewhere between bemusement and terror. A year or so later, I worked with a pre-Saturdays Frankie, who, during our session, expressed relief that I was reasonably normal — she had been worried, as her management had told her of the Rachel interview, and that I “was a bit of a weirdo.”

 

I know the only two solo tracks Frankie did pre-Saturdays that ever saw the light of day were "Bored" and "Swallow" from her MySpace page but how cool would it be if we could hear the stuff she did with Richard?

Hopefully he will leak them one day. As good as the demos are they are very obviously demos.