Mel and Kim were an English pop duo, consisting of sisters Melanie and Kim Appleby. Mel & Kim were born to English and Jamaican parents. In 1985, Mel recorded two demos solo, under Alan Whitehead’s management. Soon after, her sister Kim joined her and they performed as a duo, recording some demos. The demos got them signed with Supreme Records, and Nick East – president of Supreme – put them in touch with producers Stock Aitken Waterman.
A sedate soul-pop track “System” was intended as their first single, but their producers were unhappy with it, and it became the “B-side” of their first release “Showing Out (Get Fresh at the Weekend)”. After getting to know the girls, producer Pete Waterman became convinced the act’s music should reflect their feisty and streetwise personalities, with the then-emerging Chicago House sound chosen as a perfect vehicle.
The reorientation worked; “Showing out” reached number three on the British charts in 1986. It was a minor hit in America peaking at No. 78, but did peak at No. 1 on the Dance Chart there. Their next single “Respectable” reached number one in Britain, and sold in excess of 800,000 copies there. “The follow up was genius,” recalled Kim “It started to go global; ‘Respectable’ just took it to another level.” The sisters became well-known celebrities in Europe, particularly in Britain, and were known for their visual style which combined urban street wear with high fashion (prior to their music career Mel had worked as a glamour model). Their third single “F.L.M.” reached number seven in the UK, while their final single “That’s the Way It Is” reached number ten, giving them an unbroken run of top ten hits in the UK. In February 1988, they were nominated for Best British Breakthrough Act at the Brit Awards.
In 1985, prior to the duo’s recording career, Mel was treated for malignant paraganglioma, a form of cancer, on her liver. The B-side of “That’s The Way It Is”, “You Changed My Life”, was composed by the sisters during Mel’s treatment and was submitted to the producers as a potential single. Work on a second album produced by Stock Aitken Waterman was not continued, due to Mel’s illness. Both sisters appeared on the Wogan show in April 1988 while Mel was still undergoing treatment, as part of European Cancer Week. Later in late summer 1988, after Mel had finished chemotherapy, the duo appeared on Good Morning Britain to promote the need for teenage cancer wards in British hospitals.
The sisters then again withdrew from publicity while writing songs for a second album; several of these songs later appeared on Kim’s debut solo album. In a TV interview with Trisha Goddard in 2005, Kim revealed that she knew Mel’s illness was terminal in mid-1989. On 18 January 1990, Mel died suddenly of pneumonia after contracting a cold; her immune system weakened by chemotherapy. In January 2018, the release of a previously unreleased unfinished demo track, “Where Is Love”, was announced on the official Mel & Kim website. It was released in February 2018.
