\u201cWe were so young, but that\u2019s what made it work,\u201d Natalie says, pragmatic and serene, accent all over the place (they grew up nomadically \u2013 born in Canada, before spells living in New York, then London, then New York again as teens). \u201cWe worked hard, we played hard. We were machines back then.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nicole agrees, bouncy and enjoyably scatterbrained, accent also all over the place. \u201cIt didn\u2019t phase us. We would go out, be wild, then rock up to the studio straight after.\u201d<\/p>\n
These days they\u2019re in bed by nine, but Appleton, as they\u2019re collectively known, are in the midst of releasing their first new music as a duo since 2003. Everything\u2019s Eventual, their sole LP, was full of scuzzy, slinky pop-rock, and a gorgeous statement of artistic agency in the wake of All Saints, who had folded two years earlier amid lots of (presumably cargo pant-clad) in-fighting. The record seemed massive \u2013 though that might be because their dreamy ballad \u201cDon\u2019t Worry\u201d soundtracked Galaxy chocolate ads for a decade, give or take. But it didn\u2019t sell enough for their label at the time, bringing Appleton to a premature close. Natalie had a son with her husband, Liam Howlett of The Prodigy (she has an older daughter from a previous relationship, too), and Nicole dove into family life with her then newborn Gene, her son with Oasis\u2019s Liam Gallagher. They married in 2008, then divorced in 2014, with Gallagher admitting to infidelity; Nicole has since had a daughter with businessman Stephen Haines, whom she married in 2021. Today she\u2019s wearing a shirt bearing the name Villanelle, Gene\u2019s burgeoning rock band. It\u2019s very sweet\u2026 while also making you feel 1,000 years old.<\/p>\n
I remember saying, you know, Kevin Spacey has never been seen with a woman on his arm before, so I figured, \u2018ooh, we\u2019ve not really broken America \u2013 this could be really good for us!\u2019<\/p>\n
Natalie Appleton<\/p>\n
\u201cThe industry was brutal,\u201d Natalie says. \u201cI remember saying to myself, once we were dropped, maybe this isn\u2019t the world for me, you know? So I took time out, enjoyed being with my family, and didn\u2019t think about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI never fell out of love with that album,\u201d Nicole adds. \u201cYou just end up moving onto something else, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n
A lot has happened since then. All Saints got back together twice: first in 2006, when they all still seemed miserable around each other; then again in 2016, happily that time, for two brilliantly mature albums of ethereal R&B. It was during the pandemic that the Appletons were asked to re-release Everything\u2019s Eventual on vinyl, which got the cogs whirring. They could promote it again, they thought. Maybe tour it, too?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had just done these fabulous tours with All Saints,\u201d Nicole remembers. \u201cBut I remember us saying, OK, if we were going to tour our solo record, why not try and make some new music with the same producers?\u201d<\/p>\n
The result is an EP planned for September, an appearance at the Mighty Hoopla festival this weekend, and two new singles: January\u2019s elegant \u201cFalling Into You\u201d, and next week\u2019s \u201cReady to Begin\u201d, a rockier, gnarlier ode to sisterly affection built atop a soaring chorus and punchy, dramatic strings.<\/p>\n
There remains something endearingly unvarnished about the Appletons. In person, they talk over one another, finish off each other\u2019s sentences, and gently tussle over the accuracy of their memories. Natalie asks: was it the guy from CHiPS they met at a dinner in France? No, it was the guy from Starsky & Hutch, Nicole insists. They\u2019re just two years apart (Natalie is 53, and Nicole is 51), so they\u2019ve always been incredibly tight \u2013 even when All Saints became a hotbed of acrimony, their bond never wavered, so the globetrotting of their early pop stardom wasn\u2019t an issue, either. Phone bills, though? More so. <\/p>\n
![\"Nineties](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/shutterstock_editorial_438235c.jpeg\")
Nineties cool: Shaznay Lewis, Melanie Blatt, and Nicole and Natalie in 1997 (Shutterstock)<\/p>\n
\u201cAt least one of us had to call our mum every night, from wherever we were in the world,\u201d Natalie remembers. \u201cAnd I remember we got a phone bill in LA that was like $9,000.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was Australia!\u201d Nicole interrupts.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour bills were worse, though,\u201d Natalie teases.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I didn\u2019t care,\u201d Nicole laughs.<\/p>\n
Was your label paying for those?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were!\u201d Nicole shrieks. \u201cBut I had no concept of money back then. I mean, we were kids. I didn\u2019t know that spending all that money on phone calls was ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n
All Saints were a product of three distinct dynamics: best friends Melanie Blatt and Shaznay Lewis; good friends Melanie and Nicole, who met at the Sylvia Young Theatre School; and siblings Nicole and Natalie. It was a quartet ripe for bust-ups and jealousies, and heightened by the inherent madness of being suddenly rich and successful in your early twenties. But, gosh, the hits they put out: the massive romantic open wound that was \u201cNever Ever\u201d; the jittery funk of \u201cBootie Call\u201d; \u201cPure Shores\u201d, which\u2026 let\u2019s just be honest here, remains the greatest pop song of the 2000s.<\/p>\n
In Nineties tabloid parlance, Lewis was the studious, serious one who wrote the songs, Blatt was the pouty cool one, and the Appletons the rowdy party girls. Creative decisions were typically made without them, and it took a toll. What they wanted was something that was their own, and that arrived in the form of Honest, a Swinging Sixties crime movie directed by the Eurythmics\u2019 Dave Stewart that cast the Appletons and Blatt as cross-dressing thieves. Released in the summer of 2000, amid All Saints\u2019 \u201cPure Shores\u201d peak, it went down badly: \u201cIt\u2019s Lock, Stock and Three Smoking Bimbos,\u201d The Independent declared at the time (sorry about that). The frustrating thing about the movie, Natalie and Nicole say now, is that they really enjoyed making it. \u201cThat was genuinely one of the highlights of our early career,\u201d Natalie says. \u201cI felt bad for Dave once it came out. We were used to backlash and negative attention at that point, but he wasn\u2019t. And I just felt hugely responsible for letting him down.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Camp](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/shutterstock_editorial_5869677c.jpeg\")
Camp classic: Nicole and Natalie, with Blatt (centre), in \u2018Honest\u2019 (Shutterstock)<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we didn\u2019t carry the film with us, like he did,\u201d Nicole adds. \u201cWe premiered it at Cannes. We went on these huge yachts, we got to borrow diamonds\u2026 It was like being at the Oscars for us, so to me it was a success. And I know Dave went through his own grief with it, but he never let us know he was upset. He\u2019s just the most divine person.\u201d<\/p>\n
Honest drove a bit of a wedge through All Saints back then, as did the sheer trauma of being young, female pop stars at the turn of the millennium. In one particularly awful incident, Nicole, who at the time was dating Robbie Williams, was pressured into having an abortion by the band\u2019s label \u2013 events recently dramatised in the Robbie biopic Better Man. When I chatted to the film\u2019s director Michael Gracey for its release<\/a>, he spoke highly of Nicole and how involved she was in its production.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a lot we couldn\u2019t put in for legal reasons, but I was very grateful to be brought on board early just to absorb it and remember it,\u201d Nicole says. \u201cMichael was at my house loads, not even just to talk about the scenes that I was in, but all of it. I think they all did such an amazing job.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI cried both times I saw it,\u201d Natalie says. \u201cThere were certain things I didn\u2019t know about what Rob went through back then, because I think we\u2019d all just moved on, and got on with life, so to see it all play out again\u2026\u201d She trails off.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were babies!\u201d Nicole adds. \u201cAnd I think as me and Rob have grown up and had our families and really looked back at everything that happened between us \u2013 it was really healing to talk about it all.\u201d<\/p>\n I tell them I was up late the previous night devouring Together, their 2002 autobiography, which touched on much of the Robbie saga.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think I ever read it,\u201d Natalie says.<\/p>\n \u201cGood pictures in it, though!\u201d Nicole laughs.<\/p>\n Wait. So they just stuck their name on it?<\/p>\n \u201cWell, we had a ghost writer, who we probably drove crazy,\u201d Natalie says. \u201cBut the whole thing upset me because so much of it, legally, had to be taken out.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt was only about 50 per cent of what happened,\u201d Nicole adds. \u201cAnd I feel like if we don\u2019t have full reign over our truth, then what\u2019s the point?\u201d She turns to her sister. \u201cDid we even promote it?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPromote what? It was barely a book. It was probably a pamphlet.\u201d<\/p>\n OK, but the stories. Together is a Heat magazine-era hoot. There\u2019s Shaznay being a grumpy goose and Melanie being an absolutely terrible mediator between the All Saints factions. Natalie\u2019s ex Jonny Lee Miller<\/a> is misspelt as \u201cJohnny\u201d throughout. The outrageously Y2K sentence \u201cmy friend Donna Air\u201d is repeated ad nauseam. And what was the deal with Britney Spears stealing your shoes, Natalie?<\/p>\n \u201cShe didn\u2019t technically steal them,\u201d Natalie says. \u201cBut we were doing this little tour of America with her when she was 16 and brand new.\u201d Britney and her mother approached her backstage, she remembers, marvelling at her shoes, which she\u2019d just bought at a local shopping centre. \u201cI tell her where I got them, and cut to the next day and she\u2019s literally wearing the same sneakers during her set. So now I\u2019m like\u2026 \u2018I can\u2019t wear the same sneakers as a teenager, are you kidding?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt was worth it for the story, though,\u201d Nicole laughs.<\/p>\n One more thing: Natalie, did Kevin Spacey really try to make you his beard?<\/p>\n \u201cExcuse me?\u201d she hoots.<\/p>\n \u201cWait, what\u2019s a beard?\u201d Nicole asks.<\/p>\n \u201cYou tell Nic,\u201d Natalie orders me, before I painstakingly explain to Nicole Appleton<\/a> from All Saints the delicate art of closeted gay men dating women in public to keep their sexuality hidden.<\/p>\n \u201cOK, what I remember\u2026\u201d Natalie says, with the slight bafflement of someone who\u2019s thinking about this for the first time in 25 years, \u201cKevin Spacey was a big All Saints fan. And we ended up being sort of friendly with him. He\u2019d invite us to plays. And he asked me one day to come with him to the LA premiere of a film he was in\u2026 what was the one with the rose petals?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAmerican Beauty?\u201d Nicole asks.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was maybe that one\u2026 and I remember saying, you know, he\u2019s never been seen with a woman on his arm before, so I figured, \u2018ooh, we\u2019ve not really broken America \u2013 this could be really good for us!\u2019 But then I think we were in Brazil and I couldn\u2019t do it, so\u2026 yeah.\u201d The pair erupt into giggles. It was probably for the best, I tell them. \u201cThis was also so long ago,\u201d Natalie adds, \u201clike long before there were any stories about him<\/a>. To us, he was just Keyser Soze, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n They\u2019ve had such a mad life so far, I tell them.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been exhilarating,\u201d Natalie laughs. \u201cAnd, honestly, if I could do the Nineties again, even with all the bad parts, I would.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut the good always outweighed the bad,\u201d Nicole adds. \u201cWe always made sure that the bad didn\u2019t ruin it for us. It\u2019s like water off a duck\u2019s back at this point. We went through it, made peace with it, and now we\u2019re here.\u201d<\/p>\n Appleton are appearing at Mighty Hoopla on Saturday 30 May, \u2018Ready to Begin\u2019 is released on 3 June, and the Appleton EP will be released in September<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464090,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,409],"class_list":["post-464089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Nicole](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/shutterstock_editorial_299103a.jpeg\")
Nicole and Robbie Williams in 1998 (Shutterstock)<\/p>\n![\"\u2018We](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/RC2525_APPLETON_SISTERS-4-115.jpeg\")
\u2018We had a ghost writer for our memoir, who we probably drove crazy. But the whole thing upset me because so much of it, legally, had to be taken out\u2019 (Fascination)<\/p>\n