Now That’s What I Call a Breakdown

The one who gets one solo line per song if he’s lucky. The one who does all the backflips in the video and none of the interviews. The one who shows up to the reunion tour but barely gets his mic turned on. The one who doesn’t even get a Real Name in the band - just a nickname that sounds like a gym membership.

That one, in Five, was Abs. And honestly? He deserved better.

Look, Five weren’t built for longevity. They were lightning in a Brit Award-shaped bottle: shouty, swaggering, and chaotic in the way only late-'90s boybands with actual attitude problems could be. But Abs brought something different. A little flair. A little weirdness. A lot of eyebrow ring.

He had charisma and flow (yes, flow!!) and a playful delivery that made even the most ridiculous lyrics slap - go back and listen to “Let’s Dance” and tell me he’s not carrying the entire song like a Tesco bag for life. And when Five crumbled under label drama and the emotional toll of being famous and deeply underappreciated, Abs tried to go solo. And it should have worked.

His debut album, Abstract Theory, is a clunky title with a shiny heart. It gave us “What You Got” (lowkey a UKG-lite banger), “Stop Sign” (cheesy? yes. catchy? also yes), and a handful of songs where he sounded like he was having more fun than he ever got to in the band. But the press wasn’t kind, the label got cold feet, and like so many pop boys not named Justin or Robbie, Abs quietly disappeared from the charts.

Here’s the thing: Abs was never the problem. He was just a square peg in a very polished, very shouty boyband hole. And in a better timeline, he’d have been scooped up by Xenomania or invited into a bonkers pop collective with Rachel Stevens and Mutya Buena, and we’d all still be dancing to his left-of-centre bangers at queer nights and wedding discos.

Pop history forgets the side players too easily.
So this is your glittery reminder:
✨Justice for Abs.✨