Down a back road in London’s Highgate is a pop fortress, decorated in massive prints of bygone Top 40 glitter. Girls Aloud pout from above office desks. Alison Goldfrapp smoulders in a purple veil, like gay Dune. The eyes of The Saturdays seem to follow you to the loo. And actually here at the centre of Fascination Management today, flesh and blood and eerily ageless, are Nicole and Natalie Appleton, half of All Saints – the aspirational cool kids’ favourite girlband of the Nineties. These are the women who taught a generation that they, too, could get totally sloshed, then roll into Live & Kicking the next morning and belt out the prettiest, airiest and most confessional pop of the era.“We were so young, but that’s what made it work,” Natalie says, pragmatic and serene, accent all over the place (they grew up nomadically – born in Canada, before spells living in New York, then London, then New York again as teens). “We worked hard, we played hard. We were machines back then.”Nicole agrees, bouncy and enjoyably scatterbrained, accent also all over the place. “It didn’t phase us. We would go out, be wild, then rock up to the studio straight after.”These days they’re in bed by nine, but Appleton, as they’re collectively known, are in the midst of releasing their first new music as a duo since 2003. Everything’s 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 – though that might be because their dreamy ballad “Don’t Worry” soundtracked Galaxy chocolate ads for a decade, give or take. But it didn’t 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’s 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’s wearing a shirt bearing the name Villanelle, Gene’s burgeoning rock band. It’s very sweet… while also making you feel 1,000 years old.I remember saying, you know, Kevin Spacey has never been seen with a woman on his arm before, so I figured, ‘ooh, we’ve not really broken America – this could be really good for us!’Natalie Appleton“The industry was brutal,” Natalie says. “I remember saying to myself, once we were dropped, maybe this isn’t the world for me, you know? So I took time out, enjoyed being with my family, and didn’t think about it.”“I never fell out of love with that album,” Nicole adds. “You just end up moving onto something else, you know?”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’s Eventual on vinyl, which got the cogs whirring. They could promote it again, they thought. Maybe tour it, too?“We had just done these fabulous tours with All Saints,” Nicole remembers. “But 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?”Enjoy unlimited access to 100 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon MusicSign up now for a 30-day free trial. Terms apply.Try for freeADVERTISEMENT. If you sign up to this service we will earn commission. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.Enjoy unlimited access to 100 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon MusicSign up now for a 30-day free trial. Terms apply.Try for freeADVERTISEMENT. If you sign up to this service we will earn commission. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.The result is an EP planned for September, an appearance at the Mighty Hoopla festival this weekend, and two new singles: January’s elegant “Falling Into You”, and next week’s “Ready to Begin”, a rockier, gnarlier ode to sisterly affection built atop a soaring chorus and punchy, dramatic strings.There remains something endearingly unvarnished about the Appletons. In person, they talk over one another, finish off each other’s 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’re just two years apart (Natalie is 53, and Nicole is 51), so they’ve always been incredibly tight – even when All Saints became a hotbed of acrimony, their bond never wavered, so the globetrotting of their early pop stardom wasn’t an issue, either. Phone bills, though? More so. Nineties cool: Shaznay Lewis, Melanie Blatt, and Nicole and Natalie in 1997 (Shutterstock)“At least one of us had to call our mum every night, from wherever we were in the world,” Natalie remembers. “And I remember we got a phone bill in LA that was like $9,000.”“That was Australia!” Nicole interrupts.“Your bills were worse, though,” Natalie teases.“But I didn’t care,” Nicole laughs.Was your label paying for those?“We were!” Nicole shrieks. “But I had no concept of money back then. I mean, we were kids. I didn’t know that spending all that money on phone calls was ridiculous.”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 “Never Ever”; the jittery funk of “Bootie Call”; “Pure Shores”, which… let’s just be honest here, remains the greatest pop song of the 2000s.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’ Dave Stewart that cast the Appletons and Blatt as cross-dressing thieves. Released in the summer of 2000, amid All Saints’ “Pure Shores” peak, it went down badly: “It’s Lock, Stock and Three Smoking Bimbos,” 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. “That was genuinely one of the highlights of our early career,” Natalie says. “I felt bad for Dave once it came out. We were used to backlash and negative attention at that point, but he wasn’t. And I just felt hugely responsible for letting him down.”Camp classic: Nicole and Natalie, with Blatt (centre), in ‘Honest’ (Shutterstock)“But we didn’t carry the film with us, like he did,” Nicole adds. “We premiered it at Cannes. We went on these huge yachts, we got to borrow diamonds… 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’s just the most divine person.”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’s label – events recently dramatised in the Robbie biopic Better Man. When I chatted to the film’s director Michael Gracey for its release, he spoke highly of Nicole and how involved she was in its production.“There was a lot we couldn’t put in for legal reasons, but I was very grateful to be brought on board early just to absorb it and remember it,” Nicole says. “Michael 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.”“I cried both times I saw it,” Natalie says. “There were certain things I didn’t know about what Rob went through back then, because I think we’d all just moved on, and got on with life, so to see it all play out again…” She trails off.“We were babies!” Nicole adds. “And I think as me and Rob have grown up and had our families and really looked back at everything that happened between us – it was really healing to talk about it all.”Nicole and Robbie Williams in 1998 (Shutterstock)I tell them I was up late the previous night devouring Together, their 2002 autobiography, which touched on much of the Robbie saga.“I don’t think I ever read it,” Natalie says.“Good pictures in it, though!” Nicole laughs.Wait. So they just stuck their name on it?“Well, we had a ghost writer, who we probably drove crazy,” Natalie says. “But the whole thing upset me because so much of it, legally, had to be taken out.”“It was only about 50 per cent of what happened,” Nicole adds. “And I feel like if we don’t have full reign over our truth, then what’s the point?” She turns to her sister. “Did we even promote it?”“Promote what? It was barely a book. It was probably a pamphlet.”OK, but the stories. Together is a Heat magazine-era hoot. There’s Shaznay being a grumpy goose and Melanie being an absolutely terrible mediator between the All Saints factions. Natalie’s ex Jonny Lee Miller is misspelt as “Johnny” throughout. The outrageously Y2K sentence “my friend Donna Air” is repeated ad nauseam. And what was the deal with Britney Spears stealing your shoes, Natalie?“She didn’t technically steal them,” Natalie says. “But we were doing this little tour of America with her when she was 16 and brand new.” Britney and her mother approached her backstage, she remembers, marvelling at her shoes, which she’d just bought at a local shopping centre. “I tell her where I got them, and cut to the next day and she’s literally wearing the same sneakers during her set. So now I’m like… ‘I can’t wear the same sneakers as a teenager, are you kidding?’”“It was worth it for the story, though,” Nicole laughs.‘We 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’ (Fascination)One more thing: Natalie, did Kevin Spacey really try to make you his beard?“Excuse me?” she hoots.“Wait, what’s a beard?” Nicole asks.“You tell Nic,” Natalie orders me, before I painstakingly explain to Nicole Appleton from All Saints the delicate art of closeted gay men dating women in public to keep their sexuality hidden.“OK, what I remember…” Natalie says, with the slight bafflement of someone who’s thinking about this for the first time in 25 years, “Kevin Spacey was a big All Saints fan. And we ended up being sort of friendly with him. He’d invite us to plays. And he asked me one day to come with him to the LA premiere of a film he was in… what was the one with the rose petals?”“American Beauty?” Nicole asks.“It was maybe that one… and I remember saying, you know, he’s never been seen with a woman on his arm before, so I figured, ‘ooh, we’ve not really broken America – this could be really good for us!’ But then I think we were in Brazil and I couldn’t do it, so… yeah.” The pair erupt into giggles. It was probably for the best, I tell them. “This was also so long ago,” Natalie adds, “like long before there were any stories about him. To us, he was just Keyser Soze, you know?”They’ve had such a mad life so far, I tell them.“It’s been exhilarating,” Natalie laughs. “And, honestly, if I could do the Nineties again, even with all the bad parts, I would.”“But the good always outweighed the bad,” Nicole adds. “We always made sure that the bad didn’t ruin it for us. It’s like water off a duck’s back at this point. We went through it, made peace with it, and now we’re here.”Appleton are appearing at Mighty Hoopla on Saturday 30 May, ‘Ready to Begin’ is released on 3 June, and the Appleton EP will be released in September