All Saints 'split over money'

London (BBC) - Former All Saints member Melanie Blatt has revealed the hugely successful band's "premature end" was due to arguments over money. The quartet was put "on ice" in February after enjoying number one hits with Never Ever, Bootie Call and Pure Shores.

A statement said the girls were taking a break "in order to clear the air between themselves". But Blatt said she did not know whether the band members would ever work together again. "It ended prematurely so who knows," she said during an interview with BBC Radio 1's DJ Nemone. "Right now I don't think anybody is thinking about it. She said she thought "Is that it then?" when the bandmates decided to go their separate ways.

She said she realised the band could not stay together "as soon as the money started rolling in. We were great friends, we were good in band together, but we were not good at the business side," she said.
"We couldn't mix the friendship and the business, it was too hard." She added that her new solo career is "terrifying".

"[Shaznay Lewis] has been at my side for the last six to seven years of my life, and now she's just not there and it's really scary," she said.

Blatt is about to release her first solo single, Twentyfourseven, with Mark Hill from garage band Artful Dodger. She said the first time she appeared solo on live TV, on CD:UK, was "awful".

Success

"I spent the morning wearing high-heeled boots, and when I heard the music at the start of the show my knees went so I had to put my trainers back on," she said.
Of the other former band members, Lewis is to star as the captain of an amateur football team in a new film and is believed to be working on new music with Robbie Williams' songwriting partner Guy Chambers. Nicole and Natalie Appleton have signed their own record deal, and Nicole has recently given birth to a child by Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher.

All Saints sold 10m albums across the globe since their 1997 debut single I Know Where It's At.