B*Witched were an Irish girl group consisting of twin sisters Edele and Keavy Lynch, Lindsay Armaou and Sinéad O'Carroll, and all four members knew each other vaguely from dancing at Digges Lane dance studios in Dublin. O'Carroll met Keavy Lynch in a garage in the Dublin suburb of Finglas, where Keavy was working as a part-time mechanic, and the two became friends after talking about music, which sparked the idea of being in a band. In 1996 they decided to put a group together, and invited Keavy's identical twin sister Edele to join, originally calling themselves Butterfly Farm, and they later became a four-piece when Armaou joined, having met Keavy at a kickboxing class. They experimented with the names D'sire and Sister, before settling on B*Witched, and the band members deliberately cultivated a tomboy image and, in order to appeal to a younger audience, they also understated their ages in their early years. Edele and Keavy's older brother Shane (of the band Boyzone) helped the group find a manager, and Kim Glover signed them to Glowworm Records in 1997. B*Witched released their debut single 'C'est la Vie' on 25 May 1998, and despite mixed reviews, it reached number one on the UK Singles Chart, making them the youngest girl group to have a number one in the UK. Following its release in the United States, the song went to number nine on the Billboard Hot 100, and subsequent singles 'Rollercoaster', 'To You I Belong' and 'Blame It On The Weatherman' also topped the UK chart.
Their self-titled debut album was released in October 1998, and reached number three on the UK Albums Chart and number 12 on the US Billboard 200. In 1999 the group appeared on the ABBA tribute single 'Thank ABBA For The Music', which reached number four in the UK, and they also recorded a cover of 'Does Your Mother Know' for the subsequent 'ABBAmania' album and TV special. Their second album, 'Awake And Breathe', appeared a year after their debut, and peaked at number 5 on the charts, but singles from the album were less successful than earlier releases. After touring Europe and America, the band began work on a third album, but although three new songs were recorded: 'Hold On' (featured in the film 'The Princess Diaries'), a cover of Toni Basil's 'Mickey' (featured in the film 'Bring It On'), and a cover of Wild Cherry's 'Play That Funky Music', the sessions didn't produce much other new music. The band had chosen 'Where Will You Go?' as their next single for release in October 2001, but before they could film a music video for it, the girls received a phone call from their manager telling them their record label Sony had dropped them. In June 2002, after one year without signing a new record deal, O'Carroll left the band, unhappy with the forced hiatus, and in September the group split up. There has been a tentative track listing doing the rounds for what could have been their third album, but only two songs from it have ever surfaced, so the best we can do is to gather up all of the tracks from their 2000 EP, a few b-sides, and the ABBA cover, and I've topped and tailed the album with a rather strange piece from the flip of their 'Rollercoaster' single entitled 'B*Witched Go To The Moon'.
Track listing
01 B*Witched Go To The Moon/
02 Where Will You Go?
03 Mickey
04 Get Happy
05 Together We'll Be Fine
06 Play That Funky Music
07 Coming Round Again
08 Does Your Mother Know
08 Don't Say Never
09 Fly Away
09 Hold On
