Easter, baby! If you're living in a country where Christianity is the dominant religion, chances are you've made the first pilgrimage home of the year. In the UK you're likely looking forward to a long weekend of eating chocolate products marketed at children until you potentially vomit. Maybe a go on Cool Runnings on BBC1 at quarter past two on Sunday, probably a good old-fashioned row with a family member in the middle of a supermarket at some point. Traditions, really. But please, I beg, amid the Mini Eggs and passive aggression, do not forget the meaning of this special holiday in the Christian calendar. Easter marks the resurrection of Christ, which is when Jesus came back from the actual dead to launch the ultimate emma_roberts_surprise.gif at everyone who doubted he was the Son of God.
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At risk of sounding like a youth pastor called Paul who wears festival wristbands and plays acoustic guitar, Easter makes me feel like Jesus was the original pop star. This is because he did something that very few can pull off: he finessed the hell out of a comeback. Think about it – and with my Catholic upbringing, I already have. Jesus' comeback had everything: suspense (three whole days of drama), public spectacle (enormous stone rolled away from the mouth of the tomb), shock factor (reanimated corpse). What more could you ask for? You may well say that Jesus set something of a precedent.Therefore, to celebrate this comeback of comebacks, I've collated some of the best pop resurrections from recent years. For some, returning to new glories meant shedding the dead weight of surplus band members. For others it was reinventing their image, and for Steps it was just releasing arguably the biggest banger of their career and getting a bit worse at dancing. Onwards, and Happy Easter:This is how you do a comeback. "Spinning Around" is an outrageously good pop song with an earworm of a chorus, which is exactly what Kylie needed after her previous album Impossible Angel had flopped critically and commercially three years before. Peep the music video, which not only sees her rocking Those Famous Gold Hotpants, but also rubbing her glorious self on an average man who has dared to wear gold chain and an "Otsego Lake" T-shirt in her presence. This could well be described as a live action premonition of the dynamic between men and women on Tinder. "Spinning Around" wasn't just a pop resurrection – it was a warning.
Kylie Minogue – "Spinning Around"
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Mariah Carey – "Honey"
Steps – "Scared of the Dark"
Cher – "Believe"
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Britney Spears – "I'm a Slave 4 U"
Christina Aguilera – "Dirrty"
There's a reason why Britney and Christina are pretty much always mentioned in the same breath – it's because their early careers took such similar trajectories that in many people's minds, they're inseparable from one another. "Dirrty" is Christina's "I'm a Slave 4 U" moment (rebranded as Xtina, lest we forget), only more full-throated: sweatier, sexier, downright dirrtier. That she chose to experience her resurrection as a grown woman on the pop landscape clad in the pair of assless chaps that I am quite sure were responsible for some of my earliest sexual feelings is only the icing on the already exquisite cake.
Beyoncé – "Crazy in Love"
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