The one thing I love about music is that everyone has their own story to tell – the musician, the lyrics, the way the fans decipher them and also the way a song can also create a memory or a meaning to someone.

Since Five have reunited this year and are doing a tour all of this moth, I thought it would be fun to have a break from Movie Memories and 100 Weeks Of Discovery (which will both return in 2026) and return to the feature Music Memories to look at Five every week of November.

I was quite young when Five were around but I loved them. Their first album was my first ever CD (had tapes before) and I still have it to this day! Lots of their songs have memories for me attached so thought would write about them every Tuesday!

Track: Don’t Wanna Let You Go
Artist: Five
Original Release Date: 6th March 2000

I think if you are a regular reader of this website, you will start to notice that as a kid I used to love dancing and would spend a lot of my spare time making up dance routines to my favourite tracks. I have mentioned before on here that I loved school discos, when I was at Primary school in the late nineties, the main thing that was used to play the music was a cassette player. Yes that is correct, we would use tapes to have a disco.

A few days before our school disco, we were always told to bring in our favourite songs so that they could be played in the disco – if this was something such as a CD player, mini disc or even a digital download you could of just chosen the track and played it there and then. However, with a tape, you had to have it rewound or fast forwarded to the exact song that it was ready to be played.

I remember that the discos were always people fighting to put their track on – there was only one class per year but there was always select few that would always be in charge or demand that they had their music played. At the time, I was a big fan of Five and I loved their album Invincible. They had recently released the song Don’t Wanna Let You Go, I would watch Top Of The Pops to see the music video and then try and learn a routine to it.

This particular school disco, I was so excited to put that track on and dance this routine I had come up with ( I can faintly remember it, there was punching, legs in the air and waist wiggling) and it got to my turn to put my cassette in and play my track for everyone. I do not have a lot of memories, but I do remember that I was enjoying the track and doing my routine. However, halfway through the track one of the popular girls decided she had had enough of Five. The song was still in the middle of the track and I remember her shouting that she was bored and didn’t like the track and stopped it halfway and put something else on.

It was such a long time ago but it still makes me pretty angry when I think about it. I felt so annoyed that my choice of song was not allowed to see the light because one person decided didn’t like the song whilst others did. It is something even to this day that makes me so annoyed and wish in some ways I did more to stop it but I was only about 9 or 10.

Facts About Don’t Wanna Let You Go

•   Written by producers Richard Stannard and Julian Gallagher with band members Abs Breen, and Jason “J” Brown, and Sean Conlon
•  Fourth single from Five’s second studio album, Invincible (1999).
•  Charted at number nine on the UK Singles Chart and also peaked at number five in New Zealand. 
• The video was acted similarly to the 1999 movie The Matrix.

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