Frank were a british girl group made up of Bryony Afferson, Lauren Blake, Helena Dowling and Hayley Wardle. They were brought together to star in a TV series called Totally Frank.
The TV show was launched in 2005. In it they played fictional characters in the music business, but like The Monkees or S Club 7 before them, they became an actual musical group. Many of the songs that they played during the series were later featured on their album Devil's Got Your Gold, released in 2006 and produced by Xenomania.
Colin Barlow, joint managing director of Polydor (Frank's label), said that the band and the series reflected pop's dissociation with "the shiny, squeaky clean stuff". The concept originated when Brian Higgins wrote some electro-funk based songs and played
them to Colin Barlow, who suggested finding a band. At the same time, a scriptwriter at Endemol-owned production company Initial had the idea for the series. Four
actors were then recruited who could play instruments and also contribute to songwriting.1
Devil's Got Your Gold was recorded in Los Angeles in 2005. Seven of the tracks are co-written by Frank, who also played some of the instruments. Frank's Bryony Afferson said it was fantastic to work with Xenomania: "(...) Brian Higgins is such a phenomenal pop writer - he's got such a legacy behind him. So being involved with
him and to find out what it's like to work in that sort of situation was mind blowing.2
After poor single and album sales the group were dropped by their record label in late August and on 11th September 2006 they announced they had split up.
