It’s the Christmas present that retains on giving: 30 years after its launch, “Keep One other Day” is as fashionable as ever.

It’s a seasonal staple, blasting out of excessive road outlets, auto-playing on vacation playlists, on everlasting December rotation on Peter Kay’s beloved Eternally FM. In 2023 East 17’s lachrymose piano ballad was streamed 20 million instances, virtually double the determine for the earlier 12 months. On Spotify, the place you could find covers of the music by Jorja Smith, Kylie Minogue and Women Aloud, it’s at present sitting at 64.1 million performs, and can presumably be at 65 million by the point you end studying this story.

All of which is the long-tail legacy of a music that, in 1994, raced to No 1 and stayed there for 5 weeks, holding off one other music that might turn out to be a festive perennial: Mariah Carey’s “All I Need for Christmas Is You”. The next 12 months, “Keep One other Day” received its creator an Ivor Novello award for songwriting.

For that man, although, “Keep One other Day” can also be the present that retains on taking.

“It normally begins round October,” begins East 17 founder and songwriter Tony Mortimer with a decent smile. “I settle for it, however it’s all the time been troublesome, a two-edged sword, for my household. Folks come as much as me and say: ‘That music means rather a lot to me…’ I’m like: ‘Grasp about, I’m not prepared for that but, I’m simply in McDonald’s!’ However I’ve acquired used to it, as a result of it’s been so lengthy. It by no means stops, although, and it’s yearly. So, yeah, I stated to the missus this morning: ‘Going into city as we speak to do some interviews. They’re gonna remind me that my brother killed himself.’”

“Keep One other Day” was written by a 23-year-old Mortimer in August 1994. Its lyrics – “Child when you’ve acquired to go away/ Don’t suppose I might take the ache/ Received’t you keep one other day?” – aren’t about misplaced romantic love at that almost all great time of the 12 months. They’re in regards to the suicide, 4 summers beforehand, of Mortimer’s older brother Ollie. He was 22.

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“It’s such a heavy phrase, suicide, and other people do battle presently of 12 months. That’s the darkish facet of [the song] – however the mild facet of it’s that it’s turn out to be a Christmas snowman!” says Mortimer, 54, with a boyish giggle on the considered the fluffy, puffy white coats that he and his bandmates wore within the iconic, very mid-Nineties pop video. “It’s surreal. Anyway, it’s the thirtieth anniversary and the file firm was going to do one thing. We had been batting round concepts, speaking a few reunion and one thing large. And I stated: ‘I don’t simply need to launch the one and be on the take. That’s not proper.’ So I’ve stopped them simply releasing it [for money] – and I be ok with that.”

Reasonably, Mortimer has partnered with the music remedy charity Nordoff and Robbins to re-release “Keep One other Day” as a part of an consciousness and fundraising initiative. Over the previous few weeks the Essex-based musician, a father of two and grandfather of three, has been performing with a few of their younger purchasers forward of a particular Nordoff and Robbins Carol Service. On the occasion subsequent week (which additionally options Jamie Cullum and Lemar) at St Luke’s Church in Chelsea, Mortimer will carry out “Keep One other Day” accompanied by a kids’s choir.

“[We want to] assist mother and father discover out that there’s music remedy, one thing they in all probability haven’t heard of, if their youngster’s struggling with autism or another psychological factor,” says Mortimer as we speak in a room in a non-public members’ membership in central London. “And I feel we will get that message on the market by way of this music.”

Ruby, 17, from Bedfordshire, has autism and ADHD. She’s one of many youngsters who’ve been helped by Nordoff and Robbins, and by working with Mortimer. As her case research notes, “On a regular basis occasions prompted Ruby excessive emotional misery. At age 14 she was sectioned for her security and positioned in a specialist psychiatric kids’s ward. After returning dwelling, Ruby began weekly classes of music remedy.”

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“It’s actually helped with my confidence,” Ruby, a eager bass participant, tells me over a Zoom interview alongside her mum, Bev. “I wouldn’t be within the place I’m now musically if I hadn’t carried out music remedy. Mentally, [it’s the] similar. Socially, they’ve actually helped me as effectively. Now I’m rather a lot higher at leaving the home, going out to locations and socialising with folks. [It’s a] secure place – after being in hospital for such a very long time, you get used to being with the identical six folks for ages.”

As for a way working one-to-one with Mortimer within the music room has helped her, she says, approvingly, “He’s so down-to-earth. You wouldn’t suppose he was well-known in any respect – not in a horrible means!” Ruby provides with fun. “He’s acquired this comforting aura.”

“It’s a heat feeling he provides you,” agrees Bev. “I can see with Ruby that she interacted with him very well.”

And what did she learn about East 17 prior to now?

“I didn’t know who they had been!” Ruby admits. “Mum needed to present me a great deal of music movies on YouTube. It was actually humorous seeing Tony being a boyband individual and doing his… stuff.”

That stuff has lately been excavated within the wonderful, unvarnished BBC documentary collection Boybands Eternally. Lairy dangerous boys East 17 are featured closely, alongside parent-friendly rivals Take That, within the first episode. The four-piece from Walthamstow, east London (postcode: E17) signed their file deal in 1992 – on April Idiot’s Day, notes Mortimer.

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By the top of 1993, they’d had three prime 5 singles from their debut album. The stress was on for Mortimer, as chief songwriter, to maintain up the hit-rate with their second album. Working at a livid tempo the next summer season – he had six weeks to give you a complete album (“I used to be instructed to cancel my household vacation”) – he wrote “Keep One other Day”. Does he suppose it took him 4 years to course of the lack of his brother and switch it into one thing inventive and, effectively, optimistic?

“I’d like to say yeah,” replies Mortimer, a usually cheerful, easy-going man, and an open ebook. “However no. It was the desperation that I wanted songs for an album, and I used to be drawing on something. I’d all the time have this little psychological field [of subjects]. I might write a few membership. A couple of breakup with a woman. About seeing a woman in a membership.” However he permits that he was, by then, a extra achieved author. “So I used to be a greater artist [and more] succesful to attract on it. However it wasn’t the intention. The intention was simply to write down a ballad.”

Nonetheless, that didn’t imply a Christmas ballad. Or, in reality, a single in any respect. “It’s a ballad, and East 17 didn’t launch them – they’re a bit unhappy. It was to go on a B-side.” Then their supervisor Tom Watkins heard it. “That’s a Christmas No 1!” says Mortimer, approximating the late Svengali’s gruff bark. “And I went: ‘No, not that one. You actually ain’t releasing that one.’ I defined what it was about. However he was wanting from a advertising perspective. Then the file firm stated it was a traditional. So as a result of they favored it as effectively, it simply acquired worse!” Mortimer says with one other giddy snort. “I had completely no management with what they had been placing out.”

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After I talked to Mortimer in 2011, he instructed me he was crushed by the necessity to preserve the “gravy practice” on monitor. After I remind him of that as we speak, he nods. “I all the time thought: if I don’t ship an album, this stops. So I put myself underneath that stress. The load was coming off me – I’m six-foot and I used to be nine-stone-three, which is absolutely unhealthy. And later I used to be 19 stone at my heaviest. So I’ve gone from super-featherweight to super-heavyweight. My coronary heart can’t deal with it!”

Again then, he additionally fretted in regards to the influence of “Keep One other Day” on his household. “If I get to open my soul to the general public, it’s an honour,” he defined. “However my household had no say. Even now, after they hear the music, it’s laborious. It takes them proper again. They’re like: ‘Cheers you t***. Made that one a bit public.’”

“My mum and pop have handed, so there’s a little bit of reduction with that,” he says now. “However again then, yeah, it was troublesome. It’s their son… My dad rang me as a result of I’d instructed a tabloid the story. They’d gone with the headline ‘A Rave from the Grave’. How delicate! My dad was very upset.

“So there was these things happening within the background. It was undoubtedly opening your soul to the general public – however it additionally feels such as you’re strolling round together with your trousers down.”

And worse. Boybands Eternally opens with cell phone footage from 2015 of East 17 singer Brian Harvey having a meltdown on the street. “Over the previous 15 years I’ve been handled like a whole c***,” he yells. “I’ve acquired no f***ing heating. I’m getting abused by the police, I’m getting abused by the court docket system and I’m getting abused by the CPS, and I’ve had sufficient of all of you.” Then he smashes his file gross sales awards discs. “A million gross sales. That is what it means. That’s what I consider your f***ing music trade.”

I ask Mortimer the inescapable query: how broken was Harvey by his expertise within the band?

“That’s his character,” he says rigorously of a former bandmate with whom he now appears to have few dealings. “Folks suppose he’s [been pushed] to that time. However that’s his character, that’s what he was like within the band… However after all, there’s a public stress.”

“And the way about you, Tony?”

“Oh, broken? I used to be worn out. I’ve usually puzzled if I’ve PTSD from it. It was hilarious however, yeah, I used to be so drained by the top of it. I all the time discovered travelling actually tiring. I hate going to airports, even now. However broken? I’ve all the time been tousled. I’m simply extra tousled!”

We lately noticed the acute, horrible final result of that stress on younger males from boybands with the loss of life of Liam Payne. Mortimer expresses deep sympathy for him and his household. However he appears to not have engaged correctly with the information, whether or not as a result of he’s in any other case distracted along with his work and household life, or for his personal psychological wellbeing. “I simply heard he fell off a balcony. I noticed it acquired a variety of consideration on-line, after which persons are leaping throughout it. That’s what folks do.”

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He does, although, have ideas on what was revealed in Payne’s toxicology report. “Medicine don’t assist. You may suppose they masks [your troubles]. However you’re by no means gonna make your finest selections on them. Medicine are the issue we have to have a look at. However, yeah, there’s stress,” he repeats, exhaling closely. “For us, it was for fairly a brief interval – four-and-a-bit years.”

However from that popstar mayfly existence has come a music whose sleigh bells chime resonantly to this present day. Thirty years on Tony Mortimer can, lastly, take a extra elevated, even barely dispassionate view of the music that defines him as a musician. This 12 months’s partnership with Nordoff and Robbins, and the music remedy he’s capable of give to Ruby, are a life-affirming alchemising of a music born of deep darkness and disappointment.

“It nonetheless stings, however it does assist,” he acknowledges. “I can’t play that music and not know what I’m taking part in, not consider my brother, each time. However it’s not about me any extra, and it’s not about him. It’s in regards to the music and the way the general public see it. Most of them don’t even know the factor behind it. And I settle for that – that it [just signifies] Christmas. That offers me a smile.”

‘Keep One other Day’ is launched on limited-edition seven-inch vinyl on 13 December. For all objects offered by way of www.stayanotherday.co.uk, London Data is donating £1 to Nordoff and Robbins Music Remedy. Tickets for the Nordoff and Robbins Carol Service on 10 December can be found right here

If you’re experiencing emotions of misery, or are struggling to manage, you’ll be able to communicate to the Samaritans, in confidence, on 116 123 (UK and ROI), electronic mail jo@samaritans.org, or go to the Samaritans web site to seek out particulars of your nearest department. If you’re based mostly within the USA, and also you or somebody wants psychological well being help proper now, name or textual content 988, or go to 988lifeline.org to entry on-line chat from the 988 Suicide and Disaster Lifeline. It is a free, confidential disaster hotline that’s out there to everybody 24 hours a day, seven days per week. If you’re out of the country, you’ll be able to go to www.befrienders.org to discover a helpline close to you