Nearly three decades after All Saints helped reshape the sound of British pop, Natalie and Nicole Appleton are back with new music.
Their return offers a chance not only to hear what they sound like today, but to reconsider the contribution they made to one of the era’s most distinctive groups – a contribution that was too often overshadowed by the headlines surrounding them.
Appleton – Falling Into You
There was a time when the British tabloids decided who you were.
In the 1990s, a headline could become a biography, an image could become a personality, and a few “debauched” paparazzi shots from a night out could be enough to establish a public identity that would follow you for years. Once the press had decided on a narrative, breaking away from it was almost impossible.
Singers Natalie and Nicole Appleton perhaps know that better than most.
“1, 2, 3, 4 ‘Saints in da house…”
As members of All Saints, alongside Melanie Blatt and Shaznay Lewis, the sisters were part of one of the biggest and most influential British girl groups of the era. They sold millions of records, topped charts around the world and helped create a sound that remains instantly recognisable more than two decades later.
Yet somewhere along the way, the story of Natalie and Nicole became less about the music and more about everything surrounding it.
They were the blonde party girls. The sisters with the famous boyfriends. The ones photographed out at night, living the life of young pop stars. Their personal lives became almost as much a subject of fascination as the records they were making.
It is difficult to look back at that now without recognising just how reductive it was.
Because what exactly were Nic and Nat supposed to do? They were young women who had suddenly found themselves living the kind of extraordinary life that most people could only dream about. They had money, fame, fans, gigs to perform, glamorous parties and premieres to attend, along with all the excitement that came with being at the centre of the pop industry. Of course they enjoyed it – God forbid two young women should achieve their dreams and reap the rewards of their hard work!
All Saints – I Know Where It’s At
There was a familiar double standard at play. Male musicians could be celebrated for their excesses, their nights out and their romantic escapades; those things could become part of their mythology, evidence of a life lived to the fullest. For women, particularly young women in pop, the same behaviour could quickly become a reason to dismiss them.
Natalie and Nicole didn’t always play by those rules. They were young, successful and having fun, and they weren’t particularly interested in pretending otherwise. But the tabloids took those fragments of their lives and turned them into an identity that proved difficult to escape.
The music, ironically, should have been enough to do that.
Listen to All Saints now and the thing that immediately strikes you is how distinctive those records still sound. The group occupied a space somewhere between pop, R&B, soul, hip-hop and electronic music, but they never sounded as though they were simply following whatever happened to be fashionable. There was a coolness and restraint to their music that separated them from much of the pop landscape around them.
At the centre of that sound were four very different voices. Shaznay Lewis has, quite rightly, received considerable recognition for her songwriting and vocal ability, while Melanie Blatt brought her own distinctive character to the group. Yet Natalie and Nicole’s contribution has often been strangely under-appreciated, perhaps because the celebrity narrative surrounding them was so much louder than the music itself.
Go back to ‘Never Ever’ and listen properly. Then listen to ‘Pure Shores’. Strip away the nostalgia, the music videos, the fashion and the memories of where you were when you first heard them. What remains is an extraordinary vocal sound.
Natalie and Nicole’s voices are rich, warm and instantly identifiable, with a softness that never comes at the expense of strength. There is an intimacy to their delivery, but also a quiet confidence. Their vocals don’t overpower those songs; they become part of their atmosphere, giving them a warmth and texture that is central to what made All Saints sound like All Saints.
Those voices were not incidental to the band’s success. They were part of its DNA.
We should have always recognised that, but perhaps we simply weren’t listening closely enough at the time.
All Saints – Black Coffee
“I know, you know everything will be OK…”
When All Saints went their separate ways in 2001, Natalie and Nicole suddenly had to navigate life outside the group that had defined so much of their early adulthood. Their celebrity didn’t disappear, but the structure that had given it context did. For two young women who had spent years being observed, photographed and discussed, the period that followed offered an opportunity to figure out who they were when they were no longer simply two members of All Saints.
That journey was captured, in part, in Appleton On Appleton, a BBC documentary filmed by their sister Lee. Looking back now, it feels like more than another piece of celebrity television. It was a coming-of-age story, following two young women attempting to find their footing after the extraordinary experience of being in one of Britain’s biggest bands.
More importantly, it was a moment in which Nic and Nat began to reclaim some control over their own story. For years, the tabloids had supplied the narrative. Now, they were beginning to tell it themselves.
Then came Appleton.
Appleton – Fantasy
“Everything Eventually…”
If there had been any lingering doubt about whether Natalie and Nicole Appleton were musicians in their own right, their work as Appleton provided a rather compelling answer. Their debut album ‘Everything’s Eventual’ allowed listeners to hear the sisters without the framework of All Saints and, crucially, without the celebrity shorthand that had followed them throughout the previous decade.
The music demanded that people reconsider them.
There was no hiding behind the idea that they were simply personalities who happened to find themselves in a successful band. There were their voices, their melodies and their own musical identity. And once you heard them in that context, it became much easier to appreciate just how much they had brought to All Saints in the first place.
That is perhaps the great irony of their story. The women who were so often presented as the least serious members of the band, had voices that were fundamental to the group’s sound. The songs people continue to return to decades later contain their vocal fingerprints.
Perhaps to call it a moment of sweet vindication is too strong, but there can be no denying that reclaiming their narrative was a victory for the sisters – all the more poignant because they did it together.
Appleton – Don’t Worry
Time has a habit of changing the way we hear pop music. It strips away the urgency of the moment and allows us to recognise what was genuinely good, rather than simply what was fashionable. It can also expose the limitations of the stories we were told about the people making it.
The 1990s were a complicated time for women in popular culture. The decade gave us some of the most powerful female artists in British music, but it also created a media environment in which a woman’s appearance, sexuality, relationships and behaviour could become almost impossible to escape. Young women were expected to be empowered but controlled, glamorous but not vain, confident but never difficult.
Natalie and Nicole were never particularly interested in being perfectly controlled. And that shouldn’t be regarded as a character flaw. They went to parties. They had relationships. They made mistakes. They grew up. And, like everyone else, they changed. The difference was that their growing up happened beneath a magnifying glass.
More than two decades later, however, the sisters are returning to music together with ‘Side By Side’, their first new collection of material in more than 20 years, due for release on September 4th 2026.
Appleton – Ready To Begin
“You and I have waited for this moment…”
‘Side By Side…’ the title feels fitting. For all the twists and turns of their careers, Natalie and Nicole have always had one another. Now, they’re stepping back into music as Appleton, not to recreate the past, but to add another chapter to a story that was never fully told the first time around.
The easiest way to approach the return of a beloved act from the 1990s is through nostalgia. Remember the clothes, the videos, the chart battles and the cultural moments. But ‘Side By Side’ offers something more interesting than a trip down memory lane. It gives us a reason to reconsider what came before.
Because nostalgia can sometimes obscure the very thing it is trying to celebrate. We remember what people looked like, where they went and who they dated, but forget what they actually sounded like.
With the Appleton sisters, perhaps it is time to reverse that.
Revisit ‘All Saints’, ‘Saints & Sinners’, ‘Studio 1’, ‘Red Flag’ and ‘Testament’, and the argument becomes much clearer. Their voices have always had an understated beauty to them, and the passing years have only made that quality more apparent. There is maturity in them now, but the essence remains: that warmth, richness and individuality that helped make the All Saints records so distinctive.
Nic and Nat don’t need to rewrite their past, nor should they have to apologise for it. They don’t need to pretend the parties didn’t happen or that the celebrity attention wasn’t part of their lives. Those things are part of the story. What deserves challenging is the idea that those things were the whole story.
Because they weren’t.
Behind the headlines were two young women with genuine musical ability who found themselves at the centre of a cultural phenomenon. Behind the photographs were two sisters figuring out how to navigate fame, family, ambition and adulthood. And behind the celebrity narrative were two voices that helped make some of the most memorable British pop records of the Nineties and early 2000s.
Natalie and Nicole Appleton aren’t coming back because they need to prove that they were important. They don’t need to convince anyone that they belonged in All Saints. History has already taken care of that.
What ‘Side By Side’ offers instead is a chance to hear them on their own terms once again – and perhaps, finally, to give them the respect they should have had all along.
Appleton’s brand new EP ‘Side By Side’ is out THIS FRIDAY (September 4th 2026) and available to pre-order here.
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