Pop Scars

A memoir on fame, addiction and the dark side of 90s pop - 'Unflinching and unmissable', HEAT Magazine

Anthony Kavanagh, AK

• Publisher: Blink Publishing
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN:
  9781785123139
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music Biographies

The shocking, tell-all memoir from '90s popstar and heart-throb formerly known as Kavana

Born in Manchester in 1977, Anthony Kavanagh's rise to fame was stratospheric, scoring a record deal at the age of just eighteen and winning the much-coveted Smash Hits Male Artist of the Year Award in 1997, all the while achieving top ten hits, appearing on countless magazine covers, performing on Top of the Pops and gigging alongside the Spice Girls. The stuff that dreams are made of.

But Anthony - or Kavana as he came to be known - was also trying to keep his sexuality a secret while navigating his way through an industry where image was everything; where his success depended on him having to be exactly who he wasn't.

What followed was a dark and dangerous spiral into addiction, an illness that would insidiously follow and baffle him for years to come. Pop Scars is a story told with fearless honesty that's at times as funny as it is heartbreaking, chronicling the highs, the lows, the self-destruction and the chaos of hitting rock bottom and then finding out that rock bottom has a basement.

Thirty years on, Anthony is ready to tell his jaw-dropping story. Pop Scars is a book about teenage stardom, fame, addiction, grief and - ultimately - survival and sobriety.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Prologue
• Introduction
• Factory Settings
• Nice to Meet Me
• Council House Memories
• Waiting
• That London
• Crazy Chances
• Wannabe Mates?
• Fandemonium
• What Goes on Tour . . .
• Big! Time
• Make Me Feel Good
• Like a Virgin
• Brit Awards – Part Two
• Cover Boy
• Spirals and Carpets
• All Grown Up
• Mtv Hanging Out
• Smash Hits Tour
• The Win
• One Week Later
• Lucky Boy
• The Glamorous Life
• Italy
• Made in Taiwan
• The Flop Era
• Hung Up
• A Gay Old Time
• Game Over
• Westview Towers
• I’d Rather Jack
• Golden Invite
• Planet Hollywood
• Wrong Bitch
• Hollywood Charles
• Blackouts and Hot Dogs
• Ba Honours
• Sunset Stripped
• Murder on the Panel Floor
• Dinner for Six
• Amy
• I Told You I Was Trouble
• Potters
• Your Father
• The Faithful
• Morning Miracle
• No Place Like Home
• Mother and Son
• Rehab – Part One
• Osmosis
• Birthday Boy
• Post Rehab
• A Sadness
• The Road to Recovery (Sort Of)
• Angela
• Divine Timing
• Return to Oz
• Acknowledgements