I've heard that Scandal'us has changed management and is preparing to make a return as soon as everything is sorted out! With Australia's Popstars 3 on at the moment, it might be a good time to make a come-back!

The second Popstars series in Australia led to the creation of Scandal'us. The second series wasn't as popular as the first one in Australia, but was still watched by a lot of people. Everyone seems to love the Popstars concept, and I suppose the show is better than many of the other reality shows out there, because you see at least some talent in Popstars!

The group created was Scandal'us. I can't decide whether this is a worse name than Bardot... If you have any opinions on this, please let me know! Perhaps I should make a poll for the stupidest Popstars band name. If I can find out how, I'll do that! Anyway, following the current trend of creating bands as young as possible, the judges chose a bunch of teenagers for this group. This was different to the first series, and another thing that was different was that the band was made up of guys as well as girls. The group originally consisted of Jason, Anna, Daniela, and Tamara, but later, the judges decided that they needed another guy. So they chose Simon, to everyone's surprise! Simon has talent as a musician as well as a songwriter, and it's unusual to see someone like that in a manufactured band. Another girl with real talent from the show (she plays the guitar, and writes her own songs too, I think) was given a solo record contract, and I hope to see more of her soon! I think she's expected to release a solo single sometime soon, but it seems to be taking her a while, so hopefully that is still going ahead. Another talented person who was first seen in the second series is Selwyn. He's a young guy from South Africa who has just released his own solo single. He's a great singer, and definitely my favourite person from Popstars II! He sounds a lot like Craig David, and I hope he'll do well with his music.

But back to the band... It's interesting to see that all of the members in the band are of Italian origin, with the exception of Simon. At least I think they are! But they all looked a lot alike (well, they all had dark hair, anyway!). So the people in control compensated for this by changing their image to make them all look different. Now Daniela has horrible blondish hair that really doesn't suit her, and Tamara's hair is the brightest red I've ever seen! Jason has some weird facial hair, but I think he already had that before the show. Well, they sure look different now, anyway!

Scandal'us have only released two singles, and I think that they may not last much longer. A lot of people don't like them, and so they haven't really had as much success as Bardot. I probably like them more than Bardot, but I don't think that Scandal'us appear to be very credible. Their first single 'Me myself and I' reached number one, as all debut Popstars band debut singles seem to. It's good in a way, because the number one spot in Australia is usually reserved for such musical talents as Bob the Builder, Afroman, and Hampton the Hampster. 'Me myself and I' was a pretty good song, typical of N'Sync and Britney's sound, although perhaps not quite as good. All of the members appear to have pretty good voices, although the guys didn't play any major part in singing this song. The video was pretty bad! It astounds me that almost all Australian music videos feature a single fake room scene. We are the country with no budget! **g** (As Rick Dees might say!) The video is confusing, too. Anyway, it was unfortunate to see that Scandal'us followed up their debut with a middle of the road song called 'Make me crazy', which charted accordingly. It's hard to define this song, as it doesn't really seem to fit into any particular category. But I think the band unsuccessfully tried to move away from the tradional created pop genre with this one.

And since then, we haven't heard anything from them. I've seen them perform on TV, and I know they do have some good songs, like one called 'History'. But I wonder if they've ruined their chance at success. Scandal'us was supposed to do an Australian tour, but instead, they cancelled it and went to the UK instead. It really makes me wonder about their sanity, or the sanity of the people in control, anyway. Wouldn't they rather have success in Australia than no success anywhere at all? There was no chance that Scandal'us would catch on in the UK, that's for sure! The UK is the home of created pop, and they don't really have anything too special to offer. And while they were away, Australia has grown tired of them, and I don't know if they'll be able to make it back onto the charts anymore.

When the band was choosing its first single, parts of three songs were played on the show. I could never understand why 'Me myself and I' was chosen as the first single, although it was pretty catchy. One of the songs stood out as being the best, yet it's the only one that hasn't been released yet. I hope that Scandal'us will realise their mistakes soon, and maybe they'll still have a chance of retaining the popularity they had before.