Music / S Club 7

"There ain't no party like an S Club party..."^note Left to right: Tina, Paul, Bradley, Hannah, Jon, Rachel, Jo.

"Don't stop, never give up
Hold your head high and reach the top
Let the world see what you have got
Bring it all back to you (bring it all back now)!"

— "Bring It All Back"

S Club 7 was a pop band that formed at the end of the '90s, following in the footsteps of mixed-gender groups like Steps, and went on to achieve worldwide success. Their first single "Bring It All Back" brought them instant popularity, and they were heavily marketed as "the next big thing" for kids with a TV show (similar in style to The Monkees) as well as various TV specials.

As the name suggests, there were seven members to the band:

• Joanne "Jo" O'Meara - took lead vocals more often than any of the others and was widely regarded as the best singer. She attempted to go solo after the band split but a huge racism scandal on Celebrity Big Brother ruined her reputation and she suffered a mental breakdown. Right now she has shaken off the controversy and is a mother. She also has a YouTube channel.
• Rachel Stevens - probably second in line to Jo and was heavily marketed as the Girl Next Door of the band. She took lead vocals quite often and went on to have a fairly successful solo career after the band split. She later competed on Season 6 of Strictly Come Dancing and placed second.
• Bradley McIntosh - the most prominent male member of the band and also a twofer Token Minority. He attempted to have a music career but he has remained below the radar, mostly working behind the scenes as a writer and producer for other artists.
• Hannah Spearritt - pushed as the cutest one of the band and was hired mainly for her acting on the TV show. Has arguably had the most success after the split, having landed a prominent role on the show Primeval and later CASUAL+Y.
• Jon Lee - the boyish member of the band. Like Hannah, he was more of an actor and went on to have a career in the West End after the band split. In 2010, he publicly came out as gay, though claimed everyone else had known for years.
• Tina Barrett - the dancer of the group and the one who really nobody knows what happened to. Known to have choreographed many of the band's routines. Attempted a solo comeback in 2012 that was only promoted in men's mags and later re-emerged as the face of Christmas savings club Park in 2018. Notable nowadays for being significantly Older Than They Look.
• Paul Cattermole - the first person to leave the group (it was renamed "S Club" after that) to rejoin his secondary school Nu Metal band. Was romantically linked to Hannah for a while. Tragically died at the age of 46 in 2023.

Their projects included:

• S Club, 7, Sunshine and Seeing Double - albums
• Miami 7, LA 7, Hollywood 7 and Viva S Club - a TV show featuring the group playing fictionalised versions of themselves, as a struggling band trying to make it in America. Each season is named after the location it took place in.
• Back to the 50s, Boyfriends and Birthdays, Artistic Differences and Christmas Special - TV specials that followed the TV show's continuity. The first two are set during S Club's drive from Miami to LA and the second are set after they move out of Joni's apartment.
• S Club Go Wild - a documentary series in which each band member went to a different foreign country to see their sponsored endangered animal.
• S Club: Seeing Double - a feature length movie in a different continuity from the TV show. This one is more overtly fantasy, involving a mad scientist cloning the world's pop stars. It's also the only one of the tie-in media to not feature Paul in any way.

After losing Paul at the beginning of Viva S Club, the band continued on with six members for about another year and one more album (Seeing Double) before disbanding. However, in 2014, all seven members reunited for a song medley for the British charity telethon Children in Need, and announced a short reunion tour in the summer of 2015. All seven members regrouped in February 2023 to announce a 25th anniversary tour, but less than two months later, on April 6, Paul Cattermole passed away suddenly due to heart problems. Paul's death devastated the group, with Hannah withdrawing from the upcoming tour and recording of the group's new single "These Are the Days" due to her grief. The rest of the group, now renamed S Club, chose to continue the tour, dedicating it to Paul's memory and renaming it "The Good Times Tour" after a song where Paul sang the lead vocals.

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There ain't no trope list like an S Club trope list:

• A-Cup Angst: Hannah briefly got breast implants, but suffered health problems and had them removed.
• A Day in the Limelight: Each member of the band got to have a song where they sang lead vocals:
  • Rachel - "I Really Miss You", "Natural" and an alternate version of "Alive" with her vocals instead of Jo's.
  • Jon - "Sunshine", "Someday, Someway".
  • Bradley - "Spiritual Love," I'll Keep Waiting".
  • Hannah - "Dance Dance Dance", "Hey Kitty Kitty".
  • Paul - "Love Train", "Good Times".
  • Tina - "I'll Be There", "Secret Love," and the B-Side "Discotek," which she co-wrote.
  • In addition, their albums each have a "girls' song" (Bring It All Back from S Club) and a "boys' song" (Reach from 7) with solos given out to every member of the band.
• Actor Allusion:
  • One episode of Hollywood 7 had Paul and Hannah kiss, echoing their offscreen relationship. Also in the episode of Viva S Club where Paul decides to leave, it's Hannah who finds out first and they have some close moments.
  • Tina would frequently be portrayed as the choreographer of the band in the TV show; in real life she choreographed many of the band's routines.
  • In LA 7 Joni claims she did a bit of acting during the 70s - a nod to Linda Blair being a Former Child Star. She also gets this fantastic line in one episode.
  "If you don't pay your rent, it'll be a case of repossession, and I'm not going through that again.
• Adaptational Sexuality: Jon was gay in real life but his persona in the TV series was portrayed as having an interest in women (although this was de-emphasised by the time of Hollywood 7).
• The Adjectival Superhero: One of their songs refers to them as "The One and Only Wonderful S Club."
• Affectionate Parody: The first episode of LA 7 is a parody of The Blair Witch Project.
• All Guys Want Cheerleaders: Bradley apparently hooked up with a group of cheerleaders in an episode of LA 7.
• Ambiguously Jewish: Paul references Rachel's Judaism in an episode of Miami 7 by saying that bacon isn't good for her, but other than that it was never acknowledged on the show.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  • In Miami 7 Howard is sent to court for illegally working the band. To end the hearing the judge finds him guilty:
    Judge: You exploited these people, worked them like dogs, tried to deceive the law, and your shirt is just awful."
  • In "Howard's Hotel" Tina threatens to sue Danny Parsons for corportate deception, intentional skulduggery and making Rachel cry.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Jo and Bradley. Despite the former's Tsundere behavior towards the latter, it's obvious the two care about one another when the chips are down. And in Real Life, too: Bradley was the only member to defend Jo on the record after the whole Celebrity Big Brother scandal.
• A Wild Rapper Appears!: Bradley did this a couple of times on songs he didn't sing lead on, with a rather slowed-down version in "All in Love is Fair" and twice in "Do it Til We Drop." Since he was an actual member of the group, it's Justified.
• Bad Job, Worse Uniform: A Running Gag on LA 7 where the gang had to work odd jobs to get by.
  • When working in a fast food place, Jo at first has to wear a cheesy behind-the-counter uniform with a silly hat - while Bradley must walk around dressed like a giant hot dog. Jo later gets demoted to walking around dressed like a giant burger.
  • Rachel, Hannah and Jo audition to promote an RPG video game - which involves going around in a Chainmail Bikini dressed as 'Zelda the sorceress'. In the same episode, Rachel and Jo have to play singing teeth in a toothpaste commercial.
  • When Rachel has a job as a dog-sitter, she loses the dog of a costumed superhero called the Cloaked Avenger - so she has to dress up as his sidekick Cloak Girl.
• Bare Midriffs Are Feminine: All of the girls members wore midriff-baring outfits on the show. Justified since it was always hot wherever they stayed, and they frequently hung out on the beach.
• Beach Episode:
  • Quite a few of them in Miami 7 and LA 7 (for obvious reasons). One of the former has an episode revolving around a volleyball match, and the band are on the beach for most of it
  • The video for "Natural" has the gang on an island making a shelter.
• Big Damn Movie: S Club Seeing Double. Notably the TV series was a sitcom about a struggling band trying to make it in America. The movie - set in an alternate continuity - involved a mad scientist cloning the world's pop stars.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: An in-universe example. One episode of LA 7 had the band trying to make a home movie about bank robbers. One scene had Bradley's character (a cop) stop to admire a girl dancing in the street (Tina). This was apparently to give Tina something to do in the movie. Then they decide to end the movie with a performance of "S Club Party".
• Bigger on the Inside: A bathroom on the side of the road in LA 7. It looks like an outhouse from the outside but on the inside is actually a spa.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: All the S Club girls. The usual roles are played with as Tina is the Brainy Brunette (redhead by the time they got to Viva S Club), Rachel was the Dumb Brunette, Jo was the Fiery Blonde and Hannah was a combination Dumb Blonde and Fiery Blonde.
• Bowdlerization: Disney Channel airings of "Misguided" from LA 7 awkwardly edit out the burglar running into the van door, making it a little unclear how Hannah managed to subdue him.
  • Once what exactly the group was singing registered, Fox Family's broadcasts of the video "S Club Party" muted the line "Hoochie mamas, show your nanas!" and that portion of the video was recut to show the girls dancing at that point.
• Boyish Short Hair: Jo had short hair from LA 7 onwards, which is probably why she was portrayed as the Tomboy. Hannah also had short hair for Hollywood 7 but this was never commented on.
• Brainless Beauty: Bradley and Rachel in the TV show
• Break-Up Song: "Hope For The Future", "I'll Keep Waiting", "All In Love Is Fair", "Cross My Heart", "Lately", "Someday, Someway", "Never Had A Dream Come True", "Have You Ever".
• Brick Joke: The hurricane episode of Miami 7; at the start when the band are worrying about a hurricane at the hotel, Jo remarks "the only time we'll get wind here is if Bradley has Cuban food". Later on Howard repeats the same line only with Marvin instead of Bradley. Bradley is there to hear it, turns to Marvin and says "you too?"
• Broke Episode: In one LA 7 episode, the power in the whole block gets shut down from S Club overloading it. So they have to take quick jobs to pay an electrician to rewire it before Joni finds out.
• Buffy Speak: In the movie the group discuss the possibility that the clones are 'pop-bots'.
• Camera Fiend: Paul and his video camera, especially in LA 7.
• Camp Straight: The girls turn Howard into this after a day of pampering in Miami 7.
• Career Versus Man: Three times in the various series.
  • Hannah chooses being in the band over a romance with a lifeguard at a different part of Miami in Miami 7. She does offer to do things long distance but he says "I'm an all or nothing sort of guy".
  • Rachel in Boyfriends & Birthdays initially leaves the band to return home to England to be with her boyfriend after he gives her an ultimatum. She changes her mind and gets dumped over the phone.
  • Gender Flipped with Paul in LA 7, where a snobby news reader tells him he should leave the band to be with her. This one seems to end on a Maybe Ever After but of course the woman disappears afterwards.
• Catchphrase: The band's swear word substitute "Parp" as well as "Muffin".
• Cerebus Syndrome: Jo was always the tough cookie happy-go-lucky member of the group portrayed in the TV series. After the group split and the scandal on Celebrity Big Brother she began receiving death threats and was ostracised by most of her friends while her house was also in danger of being repossessed (that was actually the reason she went on Celebrity Big Brother in the first place). If you were an S Club fan then watching Jo's teary eyed GMTV interview where she broke down and apologised for her actions was especially jarring.
• Characterisation Marches On: For a few of the band members, their characters in Miami 7 are drastically different to their personalities they were known for down the line. It wasn't until LA 7 that they adopted their more well known personas.
  • Rachel was originally a lot more ditzy and obsessed with her looks. She later evolved into a Girl Next Door who was more innocent than actually stupid.
  • Bradley developed extreme Serial Romeo tendencies and became a lot more unlucky.
  • Tina was initially a cross between The Face and a Team Mom but morphed into the bossy one.
  • Jon essentially had no personality, but gradually became a mellower version of Chandler Bing.
  • Jo started out as a bit of a tough cookie but became a full on Tomboy and Lad Ette.
  • Hannah underwent real Flanderisation and became a combination Dumb Blonde and Cloud Cuckoo Lander.
  • Paul was the only one who stayed fairly consistent although he was a lot clumsier in Miami 7 and this trait had vanished by LA 7.
• Chekhov's Gun: A minor example in the movie. In the opening montage we see a fan giving Hannah a pair of sock puppets. She later uses the puppets to distract a pair of guard dogs
• Chekhov's Gunman: Rachel's boyfriend is mentioned casually in a few episodes of Miami 7 before being part of the major plot of the Boyfriends and Birthdays TV special where he gives Rachel an ultimatum - leave the band or he breaks up with her.
• Chekhov's Skill: In the movie when the band spies on the clones in the mansion they see them rehearsing a dance number. The next day when they swap places with three of the clones they are filming a music video with the same dance routine. Jon, Hannah and Rachel are able to blend in.
• Child Prodigy: An entire camp full of them in an episode of LA 7. Played with slightly in the fact that the kids only know things they've read up on - and have no idea how to do things practically. This could count as a deconstruction, given that the aesop of the episode is that trying to force kids to become prodigies shouldn't come at the cost of enjoying the short childhood while they can.
• Clip Show: Each season's finale recapped its events.
• Comically Missing the Point :
  • From the movie when the band are staking out where the clones are staying
    Jon: The eagle has landed.
    Hannah: Where? I love eagles.
  • Hannah gets this a lot. When the band gets stranded in the woods and the car breaks down, Rachel sarcastically suggests digging for oil and then turning it into petrol. Hannah remarks how ridiculous that idea this - how will they dig without a shovel?
• Costume-Test Montage: When Rachel, Tina, and Jo help Howard prepare for his date in "Alligator".
• Continuity Reboot: The movie in a sense. The TV show portrayed them as a struggling band trying to make it in America. The movie, on the other hand, ignores this and seems to follow the band's actual history. See Genre Shift below, as well.
• Covert Pervert: The Rachel clone in the movie.

  Rachel Clone: "Do I tie you up now, Bradley?"

• Daddy Didn't Show: A plot point in Boyfriends & Birthdays. The S Club 7, still on their way from Miami to LA, end up at a small-town trailer park. A mother and her two sons and two daughters beg the group to stay, given no one has seen them in a long time. It is later revealed that the father lives in LA. The audience isn't told whether the father and mother are divorced or whether he got a job there and the rest of the family was unable to follow him immediately. Either way, the birthday boy's father isn't able to make it.
• The Danza: In-universe example. When making a film themselves in LA 7, Hannah, Paul, Bradley and Jon play police detectives Spearritt, Cattermole, McIntosh and Lee.
• Distant Reaction Shot: The movie's Tina ambushing her clone on stage and grabbing her microphone is given one of these, from the outside of the venue.
• Distracted by the Sexy: In the movie Rachel is able to help the others sneak past a security guard by seductively washing his windows.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Played with in an episode of LA 7. Bradley and Jo get into a fight, Jo comes home with a bruise on her arm while Bradley is covered in bandages. Tina is shocked that Bradley hit a girl despite the clear fact that Jo nearly killed him. Jon calls Tina out on this.

  Tina: He hit a girl!

  Jon: Yeah, but she won!

• Drill Sergeant Nasty:
  • Tina transforms into one in one episode, even mysteriously donning a uniform from Hammerspace.
    Tina: Head up, shoulders back, chest out! Not that far out, Rachel!
  • In another, she gets a job as a dance teacher at Muscle Beach. She's teaching several musclemen the dance routine to "Reach," and they all look ready to collapse.^note This is quite justified to those who know about body building. A lot of amateur bodybuilders focus on weight exercises and minimise cardio so as not to lose their muscle mass. As dance is a very strenuous exercise, it's understandable that they'd be exhausted; they've likely not done that before.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Some episodes of Miami 7 were a bit odd, specifically the one where they get sent back in time to the 1970s. They also frequently make lightning flash whenever they slap hands. There are also random moments in some episodes, such as when they do the haka to intimidate Howard, and when Jo gets carried off by a hurricane. The rest of the shows kept things to a more realistic sitcom formula.
  • The group's first couple of singles emphasized equality, with all the members getting lines in. Starting with "Two In A Million", Jo took lead vocals, and she was the primary lead singer from then on. "Natural" and "Don't Stop Movin'" are the only singles not to have Jo on lead vocals.
• Easy Amnesia: Paul in the Christmas special, thanks to a car accident.
• Equal-Opportunity Offender: None of the villains targeted a specific member for their looks. They were targeted for their actions, regardless if there was a member of a different sex and/or race.
• Everyone Loves Blondes: By the time of Hollywood 7 Rachel had become blonde, thereby filling this role which she had while she was brunette.
• Evil Brit: In the "Making Movies" episode of LA 7, Hannah and the boys play American cops. Jo and Rachel play the bank robbers but keep their own accents.
• The Face: Tina in the Miami 7 days but this morphed into her being the bossy one.
• Fake American: In-universe in an episode of LA 7. The gang make a movie, and Hannah and the boys play American cops. Rachel and Jo as the villains get to keep their accents.
• Fanservice: The TV series took place in Florida, California and Barcelona - giving plenty of excuses for the band to be in swimsuits on the beach. Likewise the video for "Natural" is a Beach Episode.
• Fauxreigner: In an episode of Miami 7, Howard tries to get the group to pass as Americans - in order to avoid getting done for employing illegal immigrants.
• Flanderization: At the start of the TV show, Hannah was a fairly happy-go-lucky girl. She had a bit of a quirky side but she was fairly calm. Fast forward to the movie where tries to distract a group of guard dogs with sock puppets, wears all her clothes to avoid carrying a suitcase and apparently got her ex-con uncle to hire their manager.
• Forgot Flanders Could Do That: Tina released a solo album eight years after the band split. Averted with Hannah who has focused solely on acting.
• Four-Girl Ensemble: The girls were portrayed this way on the show. Hannah was The Ditz, Jo was the mannish one, Rachel was the glamorous one obsessed with her looks, and Tina was the wise one.
• "Friends" Rent Control: The gang in LA 7 do rather conveniently find an apartment that has enough room for seven. Their landlady does feature as a main character and it's implied she cuts them some slack. But most of the episodes do revolve around them trying to pay rent with various odd jobs. One episode suggests that the building wasn't the nicest, with the power getting wiped out rather easily just by all seven using it at once. Joni later says the wiring was "kind of a death trap".
• Genre Shift: The TV show was fairly realistic but the movie veered into children's fantasy with a plot about an evil scientist cloning various pop singers. Earlier on, the tie-in S Club style magazines would occasionally feature a fantasy story - such as the band getting sent back in time to Queen Elizabeth I's court or a witch turning Bradley into a girl.
• Girliness Upgrade: Rachel commented on this after she went solo. She mentioned that she had mostly worn t-shirts and jeans in S Club - so it was new for her to be wearing more glamorous and sexy clothing in her videos.
• Good-Times Montage: A lot of episodes would feature these, with one of the songs playing over it.
• Greatest Hits Album
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: The band loved to use the word "parp" as a swear word substitute, though Hell and Damn were used by Jo and Tina
• Hair Flip: Jo during "S Club Party" - "We got Jo, she's got the flow".
• Head-Turning Beauty: Rachel In-Universe and real life. See Informed Attractiveness below. She was actually requested through her modelling agency to come into the studio to record an audition tape for the band. She found out she had been accepted within two weeks while the rest weren't confirmed until after six months. Of course it probably helped that Rachel could sing as well.
• Hidden Depths: Jo's character was of course the Tomboy of the group, and the hot-tempered one. However she also displays a surprising knowledge of classical music - due to her father being a fan.
• High-School Dance: Rachel must go to a prom with the manager's son in an episode of LA 7 while Jo, Hannah and Tina all go with the same guy.
• Hotter and Sexier: The band's album Seeing Double is a bit more mature than the ones that came before it.
  • Rachel's image after the band split. Her first single "Sweet Dreams, My LA Ex"'s video has her showing off her long legs while locked in a box, "Some Girls" alludes to a Casting Couch and she left behind several square feet of clothing.
  • Tina's solo comeback attempt was promoted in men's magazines with racy photoshoots.
• Horrible Hollywood: LA 7 shows the group having a lot of trouble even finding an agent ("this is LA, everyone sings here") and having to get measly gigs to get by even when they do.
• Hospital Visit Hesitation: : After Paul, Hannah, and Bradley get into a car accident during The Christmas Special'', Tina is at first reluctant to visit them due to the vague nature of how their injuries were explained to them. Whilst they were all banged up and Paul momentarily lost his memory, they eventually recovered.
• Hufflepuff House: In-universe when LA 7 has the group trying to make a movie. They cast Rachel and Jo as the bank robbers, while Hannah, Jon and Bradley play the cops. Tina plays a dancer busking on the street, who has no lines.
• Hurricane of Puns: When Jo and Rachel end up playing singing teeth in a toothpaste commercial, the rest of the band goes to town:
  Jon: I don't know why you're upset. You both looked really polished.
  Paul: What's the matter? Flost your sense of humour?
  Hannah: Come on, we always have dinner together. You know the drill.
  Bradley: (as they're going to bed) Don't forget to brush yourselves.
• Idiot Ball: An episode of LA 7 where Jo is working as a Burger Fool has her dealing with a pair of rude customers who only order their food in slang ("a walking dog, hold the hay, and a tall brown cow"). Rather than simply saying she doesn't understand what the customers are ordering, she acts combative from the start, rudely saying "this ain't a pet shop, you know" and eventually screaming at them to Get Out!. Understandably, her boss is ready to fire her on the spot.
• Informed Attractiveness: Rachel is definitely portrayed as "the pretty one" of the girls. Bradley is attracted to her clone in the movie, she frequently has men grabbing her ass, is a Serial Romeo and her blind date faints when he sees her for the first time.
• Informed Attribute: In Miami 7, Howard's nicknames for Rachel and Hannah are "long haired kid" and "short/small kid" respectively. Despite Rachel being shorter than Hannah and Hannah having, at the time, longer hair than Rachel. Also, Tina's nickname is "tall kid" and Paul's nickname is "older kid". Even though Tina's the oldest member and Paul is the tallest.
• Intercourse with You: "I'll Keep Waiting."
• Ironic Nickname: According to the manual, Tina was nicknamed "Teeny" - even though she was the tallest of the girls.
• Irony:
  • Hannah spends an episode trying to attract the attentions of a lifeguard, all her attempts failing. The one thing she doesn't try is the one that gets him to notice her - she nearly drowns when a jet ski knocks her off her Li-Lo.
  • Howard is terrified he won't make a good impression on a blind date and resorts to the girls' help. The twist is of course that he ends up not liking the woman albeit for completely superficial reasons.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Howard from Miami 7.
• Jukebox Musical: Pretty much the raison d'etre of the sitcom and movie. Each season of the TV series had one of the band's albums as its soundtrack, though usually just featured one song per episode. Seeing Double is a much straighter example with many of the band's songs being worked in as musical numbers.
• Lampshade Hanging: The TV series (especially LA 7) loved this. One episode had Hannah talking to the Imagine Spot and the rest of the group yelling at her for it.
• The Lad-ette: Jo's character on the TV show. It can be quite surprising to see the contrast between that and her real life personality in S Club Go Wild.
• Love Is a Drug: Shows up in the lyrics for "You're My Number One".
• Magical Nanny:
  • The band themselves in an episode of the TV show where they work at a kids' camp that's more like a boarding school.
  • They also play a similar role in the video for "Reach".
• Manchild: Paul and Bradley at times.
• Market-Based Title: Each TV series was renamed for broadcast on the Fox Family Channel in America. The first three's titles began with "S Club 7 in..." followed by the name of the city they were in on said series (e.g., Miami 7 became S Club 7 in Miami, etc.). The fourth, Viva S Club, was simply titled S Club onscreen, but was referred to as S Club 7 in Barcelona in commercials.
• Mistaken for an Imposter: In the movie, the real members of the group are jailed for impersonating themselves. Of course this is quite justified by S Club getting advertised prominently on tour in America, and the cloned!Alistair putting in a call about impersonators in Barcelona.
• Ms. Fanservice: Rachel was promoted as the glamorous one of the group, and supplied a considerable amount of innuendo and parental bonuses. She's even called upon in the movie to make sure a security guard is Distracted by the Sexy. Notably in the S Club Party Tour of 2001, during the performance of "S Club Party", her bit was shaking her ass for the crowd - as opposed to the rest of the group doing something athletic.
• Never Say "Die": Averted in the movie. It's outright said that the villain is going to kill them. He also threatens to kill Rachel at one point. Additionally in the Back To The 50s special, the group has to stop a boy racer from dying in a car crash.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The trailers made it look like the band getting arrested was a big plot point of the movie when they're only in prison for about five minutes. Also the clones were only mentioned in a blink-and-you'll miss it line.
• New Season, New Name: Each series of the TV programme reflects its setting.
• Not Distracted by the Sexy: Despite showering with their fellow bandmembers' clones, Rachel is more interested in them not having bellybuttons. Tina likewise when she spies on the clones showering.
• Noodle Incident: One episode of LA 7 had Bradley fired from his job. The reason: he took his boss's car and something happened involving mayonnaise and hungry cheerleaders.
• Out of Focus: Tina in Miami 7. While she had a clearly defined role in the group as the dancer/choreographer, it's somewhat obvious that she was the least prioritized when came to storylines, the biggest indicators of this are the fact that she was the only one of the seven to not get a romance plot of any kind and that her most notable episode was about her wandering around lost with a bucket on her head. LA 7 would later rectified this though.
• Pair the Spares: A band of four girls, three guys...they were often paired together during the more romantic songs. It typically went Jo/Bradley, Jon/Tina and Hannah/Paul and Rachel often was the one left on her own. This dynamic was of course dropped when Paul left.
• Parent Service: The parents probably didn't mind watching the shows with their kids whenever the hot young singers donned their swimsuits every other episode.
• Plot Hole: The movie is full of them.
  • The band splits into two groups to find out information about the clones - it's Tina, Jo and Bradley that discover Victor Gaughan cloned them. Yet before they've had a chance to contact the others, they're kidnapped and Jon remarks "Gaughan's gonna clone us again" when he should have no idea who Gaughan is or that they've been cloned in the first place.
  • Then later on when they meet Gaughan, Rachel says "are you the one who bought the knickers off the internet?" when she shouldn't know that.
  • Then there's the moment when the band are watching "live" footage of their clones performing in LA...except it's archive footage from the S Club Carnival tour when Paul was still in the band. So the band don't comment on why there's a seventh member of the band onstage or why Jo, Jon and Hannah all have different hairstyles (shorter). Then the same footage is shown again later in the movie and is still supposed to be a live show.
  • Also when they swap places with three of the clones, they do so in the middle of filming a music video. Jon and Hannah have to improvise the dance routine since they haven't rehearsed it yet we see Rachel following it perfectly when she shouldn't know it at all.
  • To rally the clones, the Bradley clone gives a passionate speech about what the real world is like outside of Eagle Peak...except he was one of the clones kept in isolation. It was the Hannah, Jon and Rachel clones that experienced the outside world - making it baffling that none of them were given this speech.
  • Jo doesn't appear in the shower scenes (see Real Life Writes the Plot) and the other clones don't acknowledge this.
  • The band's travel manager Natalie arrives at the end of the movie with the police. There's no mention of her knowing that they should be there or how she got from Spain to LA so quickly. To be charitable, maybe she got a flight after putting S Club on theirs, but it's odd that they're never seen talking to her over the phone to give her this information.
• Politically Correct History: Played straight in Back to the Fifties when Bradley (black) and Tina (mixed-race) encounter no racism or segregation whatsoever in a small American town in The '50s.
• Postmodernism: The TV series especially:
  • Miami 7 will have the odd episode where a member of the group conjures something out of Hammerspace, usually with someone else wondering where they got it.
  • Whenever they put their hands together saying "united we stand, divided we fall", lightning flashes. One episode has them getting annoyed when it doesn't happen right away, and trying to make it happen again.
  • Jon asks Rachel if she sometimes thinks Hannah is an alien - and Hannah's eyes flash green. They wonder if she uses contacts.
  • Hannah talks to the Imagine Spot in one episode, and the rest of the group scold her for it.
• Rainbow Motif: The seven members of the band each got their own colour of the rainbow (Tina - red, Paul - orange, Hannah - yellow, Jon - green, Bradley - blue, Jo - indigo, Rachel - violet).
• Real Life Writes the Plot:
  • Jo was suffering from back problems during production of the movie. As a result, she's sitting down while singing "Never Had A Dream Come True", she's absent from the shower scenes, she scares the guard dogs instead of climbing over the hedge like the others and she's the one who walks across the road to Natalie's instead of running around town. Jo's back problems were also one of the reasons the group chose to split up - given that she was promoted as the lead singer.
  • Jo's back problems also lead to the creation of an alternate version of Seeing Double's lead single "Alive", with Rachel taking lead vocals. This was usually performed at live appearances when Jo was too injured, but it was never released on CD.
  • Paul's departure. It stemmed from wishing to move on from the bubblegum music (as well as their hectic schedule and the type of management they had) and a desire to curtail the spotlight on his personal life (namely his relationship with fellow S Clubber Hannah, his troubled relationship with his father and increasing attention towards his weight). After he left, Viva S Club continued on without him.
• Reset Button: A rather blatant example in the Hollywood 7 episode "The Kiss" where Hannah and Paul kiss and the others use hypnotism to get them to forget it ever happened so there wouldn't be any problems in the band. The kiss was never mentioned or referenced after that episode.
• Running Gag: For a few episodes in Miami 7 the band would put their hands together and say "united we stand, divided we fall" and a strange lightning bolt thing would flash. Lampshaded by Marvin in an episode.
• Sequel Goes Foreign: Technically they had "gone foreign" since the very beginning, being a British band in the United States, but the fourth series still pulled this off, sending them off to Barcelona, Spain.
• Serial Romeo: Bradley. Rachel developed into one in LA 7 and their landlady Joannie has quite the number of exes too.
• Shaking the Rump: The music video for "S Club Party" features a montage of the girls twerking. Rachel also did this in the S Club Party Tour of 2001 during the same song.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: The band would often be seen in casual clothes, not to mention a little dirty from all the work Howard put them through at the hotel, so it was quite a change whenever they all got dressed up to the nines.
• Ship Tease: Jo and Bradley, Hannah and Paul (eventually became a couple in real life) and Jon and Tina.
• Shirtless Scene: The guys in the video for "Natural".
• Shout-Out: See the Affectionate Parody example above. Also Tina's codename in the movie is Mr Black.
• Silly Love Songs: “You’re My Number One”, “Two In A Million”, “Natural”, “If It’s Love”, “Love Train”, “I’ll Keep Waiting”, “Cross My Heart”, “The Color Of Blue”, “I’ll Be There”, “Stand By You”, “Spiritual Love”, “Perfect Christmas”, “Show Me Your Colors”, “You”, “Stronger”, “Boy Like You”, “Sunshine”, “I Will Find You”, “Right Guy”, “Alive”, “Love Ain’t Gonna Wait For You”, “Straight From The Heart”, “Secret Love”, “The Greatest”, “Let Me Sleep”, “Rain”.
• Skewed Priorities: When the group finds their tiny living quarters in Miami, what freaks Rachel out the most? There's no mirror in the bathroom.
• Squick: In-Universe during The Movie; Jo, Hannah, Tina, Jon and especially Rachel had this reaction when Bradley kissed the Rachel clone, since the members of the band looked at one another Like Brother and Sister. Bradley didn't see the issue. Behind the scenes it was like that for them when they filmed the kiss. Bradley described it as like kissing his sister.
• Stylistic Suck:
  • When the band have to pass as a classical orchestra in LA 7 and put on a truly diabolical performance, the kids at Clever Camp decide it must be awful on purpose and applaud.
  Girl: That was either totally brilliant, or the worst thing I've ever heard in my life.
  Boy: Even worse than Silence of the Lambs: The Musical?
  Girl: Possibly, let's just go with brilliant, shall we?
  • And when they decide to make a movie, it's filmed with a camcorder and is full of loads of cop movie cliches - complete with lots of Melodrama and bad American accents from the gang.
• Take That!:
  • The movie has quite a few, a lot of them directed at the Spice Girls who were also managed by Simon Fuller before firing him.
  "We could manage ourselves, and do loads of solo projects that no one's gonna buy"
  "You could marry a footballer, Rach. And have loads of babies with really silly names"
  • When they're in the room with all the celebrity clones, we get yet another Spice Girls Take That! and an Ozzy Osbourne one.
  Rachel: Is that Posh Spice over there eating a steak-and-kidney pie?
  Hannah: Well that proves she's not the real thing.
  Tina: And Ozzy Osbourne! I can't believe they cloned Ozzy Osbourne.
  Bradley Clone: No, that's the real one. Victor never cloned him. He's a mad scientist but he's not insane.
• Technician Versus Performer: The group was usually divided into Technicians with good singing ability - Jo, Rachel and Bradley - and Performers who didn't shine in the songs but had much more personality on the TV show - Jon, Hannah, Paul. Tina is a curious case; as an accomplished dancer, she falls into the Technician category. But as a singer, she's a Performer.
• Those Two Guys: Howard and Marvin in Miami 7.
• Time Travel Episode:
  • Miami 7's "The Bermuda Triangle" has the gang being transported back in time to the 1970s. Jon tells a young Madonna to keep plugging away at her music, while Tina warns a still-thin Elvis Presley to not eat so much at the snack table.
  • Back To The 50s of course has them going back in time to 1959. The video for "S Club Party" ties in with this too.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Tomboys - Jo, Hannah - and Girly Girls - Rachel, Tina.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Jo's character may have been a tough Essex girl, but she did indulge in the occasional girly past time and enjoy getting dressed up. Likewise she's the one who faints when introduced to a famous movie star.
• True Companions: The relationship between the band members was portrayed this way on the show. They all thought of each other like family, were always there for one another, and became deeply depressed in the episode where Paul left the band.
• Tsundere: Jo frequently. The most aggressive and fiery of the girls. Also has a sweet side that comes out around Bradley frequently.
• Unwanted Harem: Sam in LA 7 who takes Hannah, Jo and Tina to his prom all at once. He has a horrible time but ends up dancing with Rachel at the end.
• Video Full of Series Clips:
  • The video for "Bring It All Back" featured clips from Miami 7
  • The video for "Love Ain't Gonna Wait For You" showed clips from the band's other videos, as well as clips from the TV shows and the movie and other archive footage.
• We Want Our Jerk Back!: Howard loses the band in a card game to another hotel owner who's even worse than he is. Needless to say, the band are overjoyed when they're won back.
• Wrench Wench: Jo displays this skill in Miami 7 when their car breaks down.
• Written-In Infirmity: Jo's back problems are incorporated into The Movie by making her role less physical - walking across the road to Natalie's house while everyone else is running around Barcelona, scaring the guard dogs instead of legging it over the fence, her clone being made to sit out during a dance rehearsal and being inexplicably absent for the shower scenes (where standing up for so long would have been too painful for her).

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