Shampoo, ‘Trouble’: Who was the third member of Shampoo?

Shampoo
‘Trouble’

Highest UK Top 40 position:
#11 on August 21, 1994

1. Uh-oh

The end of summer 1994 was a pivotal moment in Britpop. Oasis had burst into the Top 10 with ‘Live Forever’, and Blur followed a few weeks later with ‘Parklife’. But the final September issue of Melody Maker didn’t feature either of these bands. Instead, they ran a 4,000-word Caitlin Moran feature on two troublesome teens, under the headline PLASTERED IN PARIS.

Moran went to Paris to track down Shampoo as the duo prepared to launch their sceond major-label single, ‘Viva Le Megababes’. However, Moran’s planned questions soon got sidelined as she was dragged into an epic bender, one that ended with Carrie & Jacqui almost destroying the Paris Hilton. Highlights of the night include the girls pouring curry in their own beds, spraying everyone with Champagne, and screaming, “Wanker! Double wanker! You use two hands!” at passers-by from their window.

The next day, the hotel manager screams at them for splashing an entire bottle of ketchup along the corridor. They deny this and say blame it on the two lads they had picked up (and then threw out of their room, because they were creeps.) They do, however, admit that they kicked a decorative cactus to death.

Moran’s Melody Maker feature is very funny and led to a minor moral panic back home, with the British tabloids clutching their pearls and asking what kind of example Carrie and Jacqui were setting for young women. But one of the most interesting parts of it is a throwaway line from Moran at the end:

There is one question I want to ask, though: Someone Who Would Know told me that EMI have, in the manner of all record companies with their top pop sensations, re-dubbed all your vocals on your album without your knowledge. Do you know anything about that?

Carrie’s eyes narrow.

“Who told you that?”

Oh, just someone.

“If they have, then they’re in trouble,” Carrie says.

Why? What will you do?

“We’ll go to their offices and wreck them like we did the Paris Hilton,” Jacqui says. “Yeah, and we won’t clean it up afterwards,” Carrie adds.

Melody Maker, September 1994

Like a lot of non-traditional pop stars, Shampoo always faced allegations of being industry plants—a manufactured phenomenon like Boyzone or Menswear. Whether Moran’s source was correct or not, the question reflected the reality of Shampoo, which is that a lot of people assumed they weren’t a real band.

Even now, there are still some unanswered questions about Shampoo. Most of their songs are guitar-driven pop-punk, but the guitarist has never been credited. The girls admit that they don’t have any specific musical ability, but they seem to have an uncanny knack for pop hooks.

One of the most difficult to answer questions is printed on the sleeve of most of Shampoo’s records, which are credited to “Jacqui, Carrie and Con”.

Who the hell is Con?

2. We’ve been out all night and we haven’t been home

Jacqui Blake and Carrie Askew were inseperable childhood friends, despite a two-year age gap. They did everything together and, when boys asked one of them out, they would refuse and say they were washing their hair. Because of this, they became known as “The Shampoo Girls”. 

The first boys to truly their heads were Manic Street Preachers, who were either the most exciting or the worst band of 1991, depending on who you asked. The Manics were still practically teenagers themselves, and they’d earned a lot of media attention (positive and negative) by loudly boasting about their mission to sell 16 million copies, and then vanish forever. The arrogance, drama and junkshop glamour of early Manics attracted some passionate fans—including Carrie and Jaquie.

The Shampoo Girls started following the Manics around on tour, selling homemade fanzines and becoming popular on the indie scene simply for having great vibes. The Manics invited them to cameo in the ‘Little Baby Nothing’ video; their manager, Martin Hall, took them on as clients. Saint Etienne’s Bob Stanley also joined in, offering to release Shampoo’s first single on his own label.

All of which came as a surprise to Carrie and Jacqui:

“We didn’t even realise we were in a band,” [Jacqui] recalls. “People would just say, ‘Do you want to do this?’ and we’d go, ‘Yeah, alright then’. We never thought we’d be in a band because… we can’t sing”

 “We can’t sing!” [Carrie] cries. 

Q, September 2019

Lawrence from Denim got involved and co-wrote their debut single, ‘Blisters and Bruises’. It’s an excellent showcase for the girls’ bratty charms, but it’s still clearly a Lawrence song. 

‘Blisters and Bruises’ tore up the indie charts, but things didn’t really start for Shampoo until their next release, the extraordinary ‘Bouffant Headbutt’. Jacqui and Carrie’s vocal style was now evolving into a Johnny Rotten-esque sneer, and their lyrics include memorable lines like, “When I get you outside, you’re FUCKING DEAD!”

It’s so good.

‘Bouffant Headbutt’ was the first song credited to “Jacqui, Carrie and Con”, and it was strong enough to get them signed to Blur’s label, Food. The trio started working on new material and, by summer of 1994, they were ready for the pop charts.

So then. Who is this Con?

3. We’re eight miles from home and it started to…

Conall Fitzpatrick is a hard man to track down. For a guy who’s been quite successful in the music business, he’s got a surprisingly small digital profile. No socials, no website, not even a photo or an interview. The guy’s a ghost.

While researching this, I started to wonder if “Con” even existed. Maybe this was just a pseudonym for someone like Bob Stanley? But it turns out that other people know Con—and they can’t find him either. His first band, The Downbeat, reformed in 2013 and issued a plaintive appeal for him to join them:

The scraps of available information suggest that Fitzpatrick started as a musician, then pivoted in the early 90s to being a songwriter-for-hire, with Shampoo as his first major project. The girls rarely mentioned their collaborators in interviews, although there are a few hints here and there about their process:

“They hooked up with another musician, Con. The girls would bring in pages of adrenalised lyrics, fuelled by teen dreams. Con would shape them into verses and chorus. One morning in the studio they whinged about the hassle they’d had getting back to Plumstead after another night on the razzle. Hmm, thought Con, that might make a great song. “Eh?” thought Jacqui and Carrie. ‘Trouble’ was born. Shampoo, Mark II, post-punk pop babes, were born.”

The Face, November 1994

Whatever Con did with the girls, it clicked—especially in Asia. Shampoo were vastly more successful in Japan than they ever were in Europe. Their debut album, We Are Shampoo, was a massive hit over there, and the label rushed out a compilation of B-sides and rarities (including ‘Bouffant Headbutt’) to cash in. Things were less successful back home. ‘Viva Le Megababes’ peaked at Number 27 and the third single, the excellent ‘Delicious’, didn’t do much better.

Shampoo found themselves in a bizarre split reality. In Japan, they were simulataneously at Number 1 & 2 in the album chart. In the UK, they were viewed as one-hit-wonders. The media talked about them like failed rejects, while also reporting that they were among Britain’s richest women under 30. In a 2024 interview, the girls described how bizarre it was to ping-pong between these parallel worlds like real-life Hannah Montanas:

“It was like… go over there, be pop stars for a while, then just come home.”

Fascinated with Gearoid Farrelly, May 2024

Jacqui, Carrie and Con got working on their second album, which was a hit in Japan and a disaster elsewhere, despite its cracking lead single, ‘Girl Power’. The press turned on Shampoo, especially NME, who gave the Girl Power LP a rating of 1/10. A vicious review of Shampoo live show was titled “Break Up, ‘Poo!”

The final nail in the coffin came when the newly-famous Spice Girls started using the phrase “Girl power!” Shampoo hadn’t invented the phrase themselves —they’d stolen it from the Riot Grrl scene—but it suddenly made it look like they were the ones trying to copy Spice Girls.

(Carrie and Jacqui are quite zen about this these days, although apparently Carrie’s nan was furious at Geri Haliwell for a long time.)

This was the end of the line for Shampoo, in the UK anyway. Con parted ways with Carrie and Jacqui again after Girl Power. Worse still, he defected and joined the enemy.

4. Something’s come along and it’s burst our bubble

Conall Fitzpatrick’s next significant job was for the Spice Girls’ manager, Simon Fuller.

Fuller hired to Fitzpatrick to work with Jimmy Ray, a London-based vocalist with dreams of being the next Elvis. Fitzpatrick and Ray created a full album together, and spawned a decent-sized hit in the form of ‘Are You Jimmy Ray?’

Some of the most detailed information about Conall Fitzpatrick appears in a post Jimmy Ray made on, of all places, LinkedIn:

RUJR? Was first played to me by my co-writer/producer at the time, Conall Fitzpatrick (“CF”). He won’t mind me saying that he was famous for writing ‘Trouble’ for 90’s pop band and original exponents of girl-power, ‘Shampoo.’

CF & I had already knocked out a couple of ideas when he played me the beginnings of the song on a cassette tape. I immediately thought it was interesting and unusual but had some doubts about the synthetic bassline sound on the recording. I knew it could be changed so we began working on the track together. Con already had the chorus ‘Are You Jimmy Ray?’ plus the ‘Who wants to know’ response. Pretty clever.

We finally learn a few things about Con in this post. He’s a legitimate music nerd and, in Jimmy Ray’s words, “an excellent guitarist”, which means that it’s probably him playing the riffs on Shampoo’s records. On the other hand, Con doesn’t seem to be too bothered about bringing Jimmy Ray’s creative vision to life. There’s a sense that this is just another job.

LinkedIn, October 2016

Fitzpatrick and Ray’s final interaction went like this:

At the close of session one day CF turned to me and asked “So what to think about the splits for [Are You Jimmy Ray] then, Jim?” “Oh, er I dunno? What do you think?” “Well what about 75%/25% in my favour and then you take the lion’s share of ‘I Got Rolled?’” (my song anyway) “Oh, yeah, sure!” thinking and smirking to myself: “You’ve (CF) f*cked up there, mate!” So that was sorted. When I told my publisher about this he looked like sh*t was about to come out of his mouth. “Don’t negotiate any more splits, Jim. Leave that to us.” Lesson learned.

LinkedIn, October 2016

After Jimmy Ray, Fitzpatrick’s other credits suggest that he attempted to recreate his Shampoo success with some other bands (or, alternatively, he was drafted into some Shampoo-like projects). Disco Pistol had been a pretty exciting indie band, a major part of the Glitter Scene that also produced Bis and Kenickie. They were rebranded as Sweet 3 and given a Fitzpatrick-penned single called ‘Like A Love Thang’. It was okay, but it wasn’t ‘Trouble’.

In 2008, he worked with a duo called AT8, who could sing and play guitar quite well. AT8 released one single, ‘Adam’s Party’, which was actually pretty good. But again, it wasn’t ‘Trouble’.

Conall Fitzpatrick is a talented songwriter, especially in the specific niche of “bratty girls doing pop-punk”. But it turns out that success in this niche isn’t about the songs. It’s about the girls.

There could have been a Shampoo without Con, and without everyone else who got involved in their journey over the years. But there’s no Shampoo without Jacqui and Carrie.

5. Book us a ticket on the next space shuttle

Shampoo’s third and final album appeared in 2000, with Bob Stanley stepping in for Con. Having parted ways with their label, the girls released the record directly to fans via the internet—almost a decade before Radiohead did the same thing with In Rainbows.

And then, they just…vanished. Shampoo never officially broke up. It’s more like being pop stars was their job, and one day they just decided to stop coming into work. In recent years, they’ve occasionally popped up to do the odd interview, but they have no intention of joining the nostalgia circuit.

However, Shampoo’s legacy was only beginning. ‘Trouble’ lived on in compliations, ads, and movie soundtracks. Their brand of shouty, bratty pop-rock became extremely stylish in the 2000s, peaking in Icona Pop’s smash hit, ‘I Don’t Care’, which is essentially a homage to ‘Trouble’. ‘I Don’t Care’ also helped launch the career of a new British talent, Charli XCX, who has always cited Shampoo and ‘Trouble’ among her influences:

They’re like the original Spice Girls, and they have such a sick look as well. It was really intense and I love how crusty they were, you know? It was real pussy power to me. Shampoo is also one of the best band names ever. That song was ahead of its time, and definitely laid the foundation for the Spice Girls.

Esquire, December 2014

As I write this, it’s August 2024, and the sun is setting on what has been known as Brat Summer. It’s been a year of banger tunes by extremely funny and confident women: Chappell Roan urging straight women to leave their husbands; Sabrina Carpenter calling her boyfriend an embarrassing motherfucker; and Charli XCX herself, whose brash, brilliant Brat is the defining album of the year. One of Brat‘s standout tracks is ‘Guess’, a duet with Billie Eilish. It is very Shampoo.

Shampoo themselves are absolutely fine after all of it. They both got married (Carrie married into the Saint Etienne family), they both have kids who get embarrassed by their old videos, especially when other kids say “I saw your mum on YouTube! She said the F-word!”

They live down the road from each other. They’re still best friends.

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