Best Girls Aloud Single

Not sure if it needs its own thread but I've just heard the new Cheryl Cole single and it's... fairly rub.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1b1YGIedsk

where's the kick-ass BEAT that should really come in at the chorus? BOO.

Sorry, that's rubbish.

Don't know who I'm apologising to.

What's the betting that some autotune bobbins was on that track and then hastily removed?

Wha? It's totally still there! The unsubtle Auto-Tune is but one of the 117 reasons I'm disappointed by this.

Hadn't seen this poll!

Would have voted for I'll Stand By You, narrowly over I'll Stand By You - the ballads are definitely their best suit.

Um, narrowly over Whole Lotta History, even!

(xxpost) I mean autotune in the Cher/T-Pain sense. Listening to the track I'm left waiting for a hook that doesn't appear, and as the chorus is otherwise flat and boring I think the effect would have been applied there.

Girls Aloud star takes £20 prize
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8246563.stm

Roberts expressed dismay that the £20 was trapped in a plastic container
Girls Aloud singer Nicola Roberts turned up at a pub in central London to accept a tongue-in-cheek alternative to the Mercury Prize on Tuesday night.

The 23-year-old was presented with a solitary £20 note after her band's hit The Promise was named single of the year by music website Popjustice.

"How do I feel? I feel so liberated," she joked as she posed for photographs.

At the same event, the Sugababes were awarded worst single of the year for Girls. They will receive a £20 invoice.

The Popjustice Twenty Quid Music Prize was established as a light-hearted antidote to the more serious Mercury Prize - where the winner receives £20,000.

"The voting process is sort of a shambles," said Popjustice editor and chairman of the 35-strong jury, Peter Robinson.

"I draw up a shortlist of 12 songs and then, over the course of the evening in a pub with a lot of alcohol, a group of judges who have applied through the website eliminate one song at a time."

'Daunting'

Girls Aloud have won the prize five times in the last seven years.

Roberts arrived for the ceremony during a particularly heated argument over whether her song or Tinchy Stryder's Take Me Back should remain in the running.

She later nominated Girls Aloud's own The Loving Kind for worst single of the year.

"It was so interesting to hear people thrash out opinions on all the other bands and other songs - as daunting as it was," she told the BBC News website.

"But the best song won in the end."

However, the Liverpudlian singer expressed dismay that the £20 note came "in a little plastic container".

"You can't actually spend the money, but it's there on your shelf," she laughed.

<3 Nicola

Cheryl single even more disappointing than expected. (If that's possible?)

I don't think the Cheryl single is that bad. It's just a couple of things that ruin it IMO. Namely, her timing is horribly off in some parts. Also the "fight, fight, fight" part of the chorus doesn't work at all. It's kind of surprising considering how Xenomania are usually obsessed with these details... But give the backing track to someone else (I'm thinking Rihanna, for instance), change some of the words, and you'd end up with a decent, maybe even excellent, song.

Hey, Xenomania has nothing to do with this song.

just realised when this emerged that i had no idea what cheryl cole's singing voice actually sounded like. after listening i still don't.

Biology, fo' sho'.If there was a new poll I've got a real soft spot for Call The Shots, but I know loads of people hate it, so even though I don't think it's their best I'd vote for that

That Cheryl track is guff.

I think I voted The Show. I hope I voted The Show.

the ballads are definitely their best suit.

Couldn't disagree more.

If there was a new poll I've got a real soft spot for Call The Shots, but I know loads of people hate it, so even though I don't think it's their best I'd vote for that

Aw, I love that song too! Think I got hooked after repeatedly listening to it in an attempt to make grammatical sense of the chorus.

Call the Shots is good. I also really like The Promise.

Flicking through a Woman's Own at the checkout yesterday, the cover story was an x-factor twofer: Simon & Cheryl's worst nightmares. Inside a double-page with the moving story of S's learning ten years ago of his father's death on one side. On the opposite page: C's horror at realising Alexandra Burke has a single out this month too.

Girls Aloud aren’t bad exactly at ballads, but they’re a long, long way behind their up-beat tunes.

THIS is how you do a ballad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3C57O17Ui4

Yeah the Sugababes are infinitely better at balladry. I don't know what kind of bizarro universe one must be in to think that Girls Aloud's strong suit is ballads...I don't think I have heard a GA ballad on my own volition in years and I'm all the better for it.

And this thread makes me miss old Girls Aloud. Sexy No No No, Call the Shots, Can't Speak French, The Promise, The Loving Kind, Untouchable: competent but boring. Xenomania takes themselves too seriously now.

it's true. some of those are less than competent, too.

sugababes have also fallen off in recent years, but somehow their old stuff (first four albums, give or take a few duffers) just gets better and better: it holds up really strongly. girls aloud's...hasn't, in the slightest. maybe because GA's problem was diminishing returns on the same qualities to the extent that they almost seem like a very boring parody of themselves now, whereas sugababes were always a) magpies flitting from one style to another, b) were fundamentally really good singers.

There is a more timeless quality about the Sugababes' output, they have been all over the place but in a good way. Their critics might call them flighty for moving around from sound to sound but they have never stuck around one style for too long to get stuck in a rut and that has worked to their benefit. Girls Aloud have been on the same level their whole career and now that they have squeezed all the blood from the turnip (excuse my half-heartedly crafted analogy there) they are still sticking around the same sound, and why shouldn't they? The irony of it all is that they are at the pinnacle of their commercial success and neither the girls nor Xenomania have any incentive to recapture their old style. Looking at the list of their latest singles, when I picture them singing the songs I don't see cheer or giddiness or abandon, I see restrained maturity from a bunch of ice queens. They were at their musical best when they were wearing shiny silver spacesuits and wearing bikinis in car garages. Now they are classy fashionistas and Cheryl Cole is England's Sweetheart (by the way I remember when she was a violent racist chav, her publicist needs an OBE or MBE or whatever it is you give out). Shame.

Sugababes = Beatles, GA = Stones?

The only song by either Sugarbabes or Girls Aloud that I ever play is "Hole in the Head".

Would you let your son date a Girls Aloud?

They were at their musical best when they were wearing shiny silver spacesuits and wearing bikinis in car garages

Wait, early GA as Ziggy era Bowie?

guys

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/leaders-of-the-pack/id1327907750?mt=2

Biology is legitimately incredible by any standard.

How surprising that Lex doesn’t like “Biology.”