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One page, no design

There are many good fanpages for B*Witched out there, most with a good design. I didn't feel like competing with those... Especially since I have a Lindsay fanpage already. So, on one page, with no design whatsoever, you'll get all, or most, info on B*Witched that I could collect and that I thought would be interesting to read. Feel free to comment.

B*Witched

B*Witched is a band consisting of four extremely talented women, whose talents include singing, songwriting and dancing. They can also play several instruments, but they don't yet do that on their album. Their music is original and refreshing, as are their performances. Both are a mix of many different styles. They are dedicated to fulfil their dreams of being succesful musicians and to bring happiness and magic to people's lives.

That the pop audience still recognises talent no matter what people may say about it, can be seen from the fact that their first four singles all entered the UK chart at number 1. Nobody has ever done that before.

And from watching and reading almost every interview I have access to I can say that they are also four extremely nice, lovely, sweet and beautiful women.

The B*Witchers

B*Witched is this formerly Dublin- and now UK-based foursome:

Lindsay Armaou: the half Greek, half Irish beauty who can also play the guitar and piano, is the youngest member of the band. She is also very talented in eyebrow shaping, doing make-up, dress designing, drawing, etc. Met Keavy at kick boxing.
Edele Lynch: lead singer and one half of the twins, can play the flute. Met Keavy at birth.
Keavy Lynch: was a trainee car mechanic and is the oldest of the twins, can play guitar, sax and drums. Does a variety of funny voices...
Sinéad O'Carroll: oldest member, can play piano and is rather accomplished at Irish dancing (she taught the choreographer and the other girls the steps for the C'est la vie video and performances). Met Keavy as customer in the garage.

All photos and screensnaps are on Lindsay's page, because all snaps I'd take of B*Witched are guaranteed to have Lindsay in it...

B*Witching releases

C'est la vie single (UK highest: 1)
Rollercoaster single (UK highest: 1)
B*witched album (UK highest: 3)
To you I belong single (UK highest: 1)
Blame it on the weatherman single (UK highest: 1)
Thank ABBA for the music single with Steps, Billie, Tina Cousins and Cleopatra

B*Witching facts

Here are some facts about B*Witched that many people get wrong, though fans will known them already of course... (If I got them wrong, please tell me immediately!)

B*Witched is not a 'made' band like Steps, Spice Girls or even Eternal (I've got nothing against Eternal!). They formed, and started composing, before they got into contact with record companies.
The B*Witchers can play their own instruments, but don't do so yet on their first album. I've been told that they will play instruments on their first UK tour in November 1999.
Not playing instruments is not because they are not confident they can do it in front of an audience. They are accomplished musicians and especially Lindsay has been performing (guitar, piano, singing, conducting) regularly on stage ever since she was seven years old.
They do write their own songs, and take great pride in doing so. On the first album they don't yet write all songs, and the ones they did write are co-written with the producers. But I've been told that their input while 'co-writing' is major, and goes further than the lyrics.
They didn't get their break because Edele and Keavy are sisters of Shane of Boyzone. In fact Boyzone's management contacted B*Witched to do performances before those people found out that they were sisters of their Shane...
The name 'Bewitched' was chosen by their producer, Ray Hedges. But the star was put in (to make it B*Witched) by the women themselves, because they thought that was more their style and looked more magical. Which is a good thing, because a band called 'Bewitched' already exists. An earlier name they chose themselves, D'Zire, also had an alternative spelling to give this magical and fun feel to it.
Their audience consists of a wide range of ages. It starts around 10, but I also know several 29 year olds like myself that are big fans.
The producer, Ray Hedges, didn't want a girl band. Not because he didn't like pop music, but because his experience is with boy bands. But as the band themselves say: "We're not a girl band, we're a tomboy band", and "We don't have girl power, we have magic", so they bewitched him; hence the name.
The album's recording was (almost) finished before "C'est la vie"'s chart success became known. The record company had faith in the band even before there was any indication of commercial success. The only ones surprised by their success were the women themselves...

B*Witching history

The history of B*Witched, in a nutshell and based on contradicting information and guesses by me (so if you know the truth, tell me):

Keavy and Edele, the twins, like doing karaoke
Sinéad does Irish dancing competitions
Lindsay regularly plays piano and guitar at school performances and sings in the school choir. She plans a parallel business and music career.
They know each other from the Dublin clubs, just well enough to say 'hi'.
Sinéad's mum's car breaks down just outside Keavy and Edele's father's garage.
Inside the garage Sinéad spots Keavy and they start talking about performing, singing, their dreams etc. Maybe Sinéad had seen them sing in those karaoke clubs.
Sinéad, Keavy and Edele form a band called D'Zire.
D'Zire gets a small write-up in big UK pop mag Smash Hits. I think that's weird for an unsigned act which has no songs yet and never done any performances...
I guess Keavy talks to everybody about their band, and she must have mentioned it too during kickboxing classes, where Lindsay goes like hey, that's my dream too.
Lindsay joins D'Zire, not more than a few months after D'Zire started.
Together they write some songs, lyrics and melodies only, no music.
They make up dance routines to go with the songs, and work on those and on their dance vocabulary. They do this both outside in the Dublin parks and in a local dance centre.
Irish tv makes a documentary about that local dance centre. Back at the company's studio's they spot this band on their tapes, dancing in the background. They are very impressed by their talent and go back to the dance centre to try to find them again. The women are asked to perform on Irish national tv. But it has to be within a few days...
To prepare they probably spent more money than they earned by doing it. On clothes and shoes for the performance, but also on quickly booked studio time. They wrote new songs and recorded them, this time with music; all very quickly, one song they even wrote (lyrics+music) in five minutes. Less dedicated artists would have gone for covers...
Their tv performance caught the attention of Boyzone's management and they were asked to support Boyzone on tour (while still in the tv studio I believe).
Both the tv performance, and the support shows, drew the attention of Kim Glover, who with producer Ray Hedges had just started a new (UK-based) production company with the intent to produce new boybands.
Ray and the band wrote more songs in the studio, and they did more shows, supporting bands like 911 (they had only two days to learn their routines for this). They also did their own UK school tour.
It's probably around this time that they were practising their music all day in Sinéad's flat and the neighbours were knocking on the walls to ask them to turn the music up...
Also somewhere in these busy times Lindsay does her school exams and does very well. She earns a place at Business College, but gives up her place because the band is taking off.
Ray and Kim's company arranged a meeting with the boss of Epic, which the women turned into a tea party so he wouldn't get bored. They got a development deal.
The deal was for developing new songs during nine months, but when they wrote "C'est la vie" and "To you I belong" within a few weeks, Epic went like 'Change of plan, we want you to record an album now!'
All other songs of the album were written and recorded in Ray's studio, while they made a videoclip for "C'est la vie" and started its promotion. (Some bits, I think parts of "Castles in the air", were written later and recorded in a hotel room)
Sinéad taught the choreographer the Irish jig vocabulary, so that's how it ended up in their performance. Before that, Lindsay had never done Irish dancing before, but I don't think you can tell...
The first time they appeared on UK tv was on L&K Friday, which is where they drew my attention...
"C'est la vie" entered the UK charts at number one.
"Rollercoaster" entered the UK charts at number one and also their album was released (it got to number three).
"To you I belong" entered the UK charts at number one.
"Blame it on the weatherman" entered the UK charts at number one.
They did a great performance of a medley of ABBA songs on the Brit Awards, called "Thank ABBA for the music". In that performance with Steps, Billie, etc, it's clear that B*Witched are both much better performers than ABBA ever was, and much better dancers than Steps, which is supposed to be a band of professional dancers...
They do many tours in the US, supporting various other artists, resulting in top ten chart success there. And resulting in complaints in Europe that we can't do that long without them and that they shouldn't forget about us...
Upcoming are yet another US tour for Nickelodeon. And in November 1999 a UK tour of their own. No other European countries have been able to see them yet, and there aren't even performances scheduled in their native Ireland.

If somebody can put dates or years on the above events, please tell me!

Who does what?

This is the big mystery surrounding B*Witched, since songs are credited as being 'co-written by B*Witched', but what does that mean? Who has the biggest input? Who does the lyrics, who does the music? And, who sings which bit? Fans keep asking the official site to put colour-coded, or even icon-coded, lyrics up, so we can see who sings which line. But unlike the band the site doesn't seem to care about fans: they never respond to suggestions or even to bug reports.

Some fans have started to compose their own colour-coded lyrics, based on tv and live performances. I'll provide links here when they are finished. Some seperate remarks about who does what:

(general)

The Irish jiggery comes from Sinéad.
Whenever they get to talk about the music instead of about the band, it always seems to be Lindsay who explains about the different music styles and about what songs have which meaning.
The talk about magic seems more Keavy's style.
I heard that Lindsay has said in an interview that she prefers the slow songs. So I guess she's more likely to be involved in writing those.
Hanging in those harnesses to simulate flying in space, in the "Rollercoaster" video, was not(!) Lindsay's idea... She's a bit claustrophobic and didn't like that at all.
I also want to know whose eye is featured in the "To you I belong" video. Yeah, pathetic much. But in some cases they seem blue, and I don't think any of the four have blue eyes; my guess is still that at least at some point in video they're Lindsay's.
(performing the music)
The music originates from Ray's synthesizers, with very few guest musicians.
There's one report where (I think) Sinéad says that Lindsay plays guitar on stage.
(doing the vocals)
Edele does almost all lead vocals
Keavy does lead vocals on "Together we'll be fine", I've been told. (Has not yet been released here)
The bridge for "Rollercoaster" has a line for each in this order: Sinéad, Keavy, Lindsay, Edele.
They all have parts in "Castles in the air", but there's disagreement among fans about who sings what. There's a strong camp that says that Keavy sings first verse, Lindsay both bridges, Edele three times the chorus and Sinéad the second verse. Another group of people is adamant that Lindsay sings both the first verse and the bridges, and that Keavy does backing on the even lines in the bridges. There is indeed a second person singing on the even lines of the bridges, but the leads on first verse and bridge sound slightly different. Maybe, I suggested once to confuse everybody further, Keavy sings the chorus...
The spoken bits in "C'est la vie" are: 'Some people say I look like my dad' (Keavy), 'What?' (Sinéad), 'Are you serious?' (Lindsay) and later during the song: 'Get a life' (Sinéad), 'What are you like?' (Lindsay) and 'I fight like my dad as well!' (Keavy). There's much talking further in the background, but that's probably a random room full of people.
The opening for "Rollercoaster" has spoken bits too: 'Can't believe I'm doing this' (Keavy), 'Here we go' (Lindsay)
There's all kinds of stuff going on in "Freak out".
Silly me had doubts about Edele singing the verses in "We four girls", but it is her, together with some harmony by the others.
(writing the music)
The songs co-written by B*Witched are also the better ones musically.
Lindsay has always been composing melodies on several instruments.
B*Witched wrote music for their songs even before they got into contact with any music industry people. Not counting Shane, obviously.
(writing the lyrics)
The line 'Grab your cap, grab your runners, let's go!' from "Let's go (the B*Witched jig)" is an idea from Lindsay but spoken by Edele. Or so I've been told. I'd like to know for all other songs as well, of course.
In "C'est la vie" an alliteration is used with 'say you will, say you won't', which is not possible with proper French pronounciation. So, it's unlikely that Sinéad or Lindsay wrote that bit. They've done French at school.
Judging by the style of the lyrics, it would seem that some are indeed a group effort, with a mix of writing styles, with many metaphors, but also many rhythmic, staccato lines. This is true for "C'est la vie" and "Rollercoaster"
Some songs are different though and have one consistent style, and may have the lyrics written by a single person: "Rev it up" (descriptive style), "To you I belong" (poetic descriptive style), "We four girls" (that rhythmic, staccato style), "Castles in the air" & "Like the rose" (very sensitive, metaphorical, style)
I think "Oh Mr Postman" belongs in the latter category, but I don't really understand that song, so I'm not sure.
Lindsay once made a very small joke about the lyrics of "Castles in the air", making me think that she wouldn't have said that if she hadn't written it herself. She remarked that it is about how they felt going to number one with their first single, 'even though it sounds like a love song'. But as you can see, this is not major evidence...

There's such a thing as overanalysing something... But if some official source would just provide the info fans ask for (like the colour-coded lyrics...), and if music magazines would just ask questions about their music for a change, then all this wouldn't be necessary.

This page is made by Gidi Kroon. Last updated 15 May 1999. Much more info and beautiful photos to be found in the official book!