The release of the Universal album hammered home to Andy McCluskey and Stuart Kershaw the fact that OMD were perhaps no longer a credible act for the 1990's. Still convinced that they were good songwriters they began looking at alternative options for their material A press ad searching for the foundations of a girl band resulted in Honeyhead - a 5 piece outfit that soon collapsed due to internal tensions. They quickly recruited some new girls and this time concentrated people one the Liverpool area, which resulted in the recruitment of Kerry Katona, Heidi Range and Liz McClarnon. The new band were initially called The Automatic Kittens, but by early 1999 had been renamed Atomic Kitten.
Heidi Range dropped out of the outfit. At age 15 she was reckoned to be too young to face up the arduous task of being in a dynamic girl band. Heidi's replacement was Natasha Hamilton and Atomic Kitten swiftly moved on to showcase performances and scouting for possible record label interest. This came in the shape of Virgin subsidiary Innocent who released Atomic Kitten's debut single Right Now in November of 1999. Right Now reached No. 10 in the UK charts, and the follow up See Ya managed No. 6. Atomic Kitten's debut album Right Now arrived in October the following year.
Despite the success of Atomic Kitten's early singles, subsequent chart success eluded them. To complicate matters, Kerry Katona was pregnant and had decided to leave Atomic Kitten to devote more time to her relationship with Westlife's Bryan McFadden. Kerry's replacement was Jenny Frost (who had previously been part of Eurovision hopefuls Precious). Virgin had decided to drop Atomic Kitten from their roster - a decision that might have spelled the end for the Kittens if it wasn't for one significant event.
In February 2001, Atomic Kitten found themselves in the unusual position of battling it out with U2 for the No. 1 spot in the UK charts. The single in question, Whole Again, managed to beat U2 to the No.1 spot selling 1,000 more copies than U2's single on its first day of sale. Overnight, Atomic Kitten had become a hot property and Virgin tore up any plans for dropping the girls.
A decision was taken to withdrawing the Right Now album with a view to amending the track listing, but also to take the opportunity to remix and re-record some of the songs to include Jenny's vocals. The reissued album, which also benefited from a more polished sleeve design, followed on from the success of the singles, reaching No. 1 in the UK charts.
This release of the album, aside from the different versions of some songs featured on the reissue, includes Get Real and Do What You Want which were dropped from the reissue.
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