You might be aware that the driving force behind ‘00s UK girlband Atomic Kitten was Andy McCluskey of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), but did you know that the person who advised McCluskey to form the group was none other than Kraftwerk’s Karl Barthos.
It seems unlikely, but McCluskey has repeated the claim in a new interview with The Guardian, explaining that he decided he needed to do something different in the mid-’90s when it started to feel like, commercially at least, OMD were fighting a losing battle.
McCluskey says that the final straw was the lack of support for 1996 OMD single Walking on the Milky Way, which he believed was “one of the best songs I’d ever written.”
“In the age of Britpop, we were perceived as an ‘80s synthpop band, past our sell-by date,” he continues. “Radio 2 wouldn’t play the song and [British high-street store] Woolworths wouldn’t stock it. I thought: ‘I’m functioning with one arm tied behind my back.’ So my friend Karl Bartos of Kraftwerk said: ‘Why don’t you create a girlband as a vehicle for your songs?’”
This isn’t the first time McCluskey has said this. In fact, the claim became so well-known that Bartos himself was asked about it by the NME in an interview in 2022.
And guess what? It’s true.
“OMD co-founder Paul Humphreys had left the band, and Andy had released OMD’s Sugar Tax album on his own and was feeling alone,” said Bartos. “I suggested he was such an excellent songwriter, he should become a producer – instead of putting 300 per cent effort into OMD, just create a girl group. He took me by surprise that he actually did it!”
Indeed he did, and with considerable success. Atomic Kitten’s biggest hit, 2001 single Whole Again, topped the UK charts, despite the fact that founding member Kerry Katona left the group while they were in the midst of promoting the single to be replaced by Jenny Frost, who joined the group’s other two founders Liz McClarnon and Natasha Hamilton.
The success of Whole Again turned Atomic Kitten into major stars, to the extent that they were invited to perform it at a star-studded concert at Buckingham Palace in 2002.
“My favourite performance of it was at the Queen’s golden jubilee,” says Natasha Hamilton. “Phil Collins was playing drums, Bryan Adams on guitar, 100,000 people on the Mall singing your song back to you – just insane.”
As insane as Karl Barto’s involvement, though? “People never believe me that Kraftwerk created Atomic Kitten,” says Andy McCluskey, but it seems that there’s more of a grain of truth in it.
