Atomic Kitten a girl group from Liverpool composed of Liz McClarnon, Natasha Hamilton , and Jenny Frost, who replaced original member Kerry Katona in January 2001. Atomic Kitten has sold over 8 million albums and singles around the world. Many of their singles and albums entered the Top 40 charts worldwide such as "Right Now", "Whole Again", "Eternal Flame", "The Tide Is High", and Ladies Night.
The group was formed in 1997 by Andy McCluskey of '80s band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and included Heidi Range in the original line-up. However Heidi left the group and was only featured on the demo recordings. The group was first called "Honeyhead" but later renamed itself to "Automatic Kittens", the name of the label of its designer, and abbreviated to "Atomic Kitten."
The group has released 16 singles and six albums: Right Now (2001), Feels So Good (2002), Atomic Kitten (2003 - US only), Ladies Night (2003), The Greatest Hits (2004) and The Collection (2005).
The group's first single "Right Now" debuted in December 1999, reaching the British top 10. After the initial success Atomic Kitten made an Asian tour during which it scored their first hit with "Cradle". The album, also titled Right Now, was first released in Japan on March 16, 2000 and subsequently released in the United Kingdom on May 21, 2000 with a slightly modified track list.
Right Now was a modest success upon first release. Initially there were no plans to focus on the global market yet. The record label was even considering dropping them because of limited success, however they pursuaded Innocent Records to record one more single. This one single changed the career of Atomic Kitten because they scored their first number-one hit in the UK in 2001 with "Whole Again". The song and video for "Whole Again" originally featured Kerry Katona however she left the group several days prior to the number-one position because of her pregnancy. The single was remade when Jenny Frost was added to the line-up as Kerry's replacement. The success was such that it was decided to remaster and rerelease the album, which then went to number one on its second appearance on the chart.
The next single "Eternal Flame", a cover version of the 1989 hit by The Bangles, also became a number-one hit.
Given the success a new album, Feels So Good, was recorded. The songwriting and production agreement with Andy McCluskey was an increasing source of tension within the group and the girls decided to terminate the contract with Andy half way through the recording of the album. Luckily they had the good fortune of getting unexpected support from Kylie Minogue and Susanna Hoffs who both wrote a song for their new album.
"It's OK!" from Feels So GoodThe first single of the album was "It's Ok!" and was shot in South Africa. Even though this song performed well in the charts, securing a number three position, it was the next single "The Tide Is High (Get The Feeling)", a remake of the 1965 song by The Paragons (but also made famous by Blondie in 1980), which attained Atomic Kitten its third number-one single.
Natasha announced in April 2002 that she was pregnant, but she had no intention of leaving the group and wanted the scheduled 2002 tour to continue. Natasha also featured in the video "The Tide Is High" and her last duty was the 2002 Party in the Park before finally going on pregnancy leave.
During January and February of 2003, Atomic Kitten toured around south-east Asia and visited countries like Singapore, Thailand and Korea. Natasha decided to take her newborn baby with her on the tour as well.
The American market had been neglected up to then, therefore on April 2003 an album called Atomic Kitten was released, consisting of tracks from the first two albums. It was promoted by teaming up with Disney for The Lizzie McGuire Movie starring Hillary Duff, however the album only managed to peak at ..102 and it was decided to focus on the United Kingdom, Europe and Asia.
A large part of 2003 was spent in the studio recording their third and final studio album Ladies Night Upto now the girl group mainly relied on songwriters and sometimes co-wrote a song. This time they decided that it was time to be directly involved in the creation of eight of the fifteen songs. They also teamed up with Kool and The Gang for a cover of their 1979 hit Ladies' Night and decided to name the album after the song. The album and singles were slightly less successful than the two previous albums.
November and December 2003 were spend on an arena tour in the United Kingdom making Atomic Kitten the second girl group after the Spice Girls to do an arena tour.
Their career was going well, however on January 23, 2004 Natasha decided that she wanted to spend time out of the group and spend more time with her son Josh. The group released a single "Someone Like Me / Right Now 2004" as a goodbye, but was reunited on Valentine's Day to release the charity single "Cradle 2005", a new version of the original on their album Right Now, which charted at No. 10. The proceeds of the single went to World Vision.
Atomic Kitten was featured on the soundtrack of Disney's Mulan II in 2005 which was their third time as a featured artist.
Atomic Kitten recorded a one-off single, "All Together Now (Strong Together)", in association with Goleo VI, the official mascot of the FIFA World Cup 2006. The track is taken from the official Goleo VI World Cup 2006 album and was released on CD and digitally in Germany, where the World Cup is being held, on 16 June 2006. However even though the single was listed by the HMV website for release in the UK many weeks prior to the competition, the single was taken off from schedule and deleted from the catalogue, due to the amount of competing football records that were being released at that time. The proceeds of the single went to SOS Children's Villages.
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