Girls Aloud’s 20 best songs – ranked!



Girls Aloud: (l-r) Kimberley Walsh, Cheryl Cole, Sarah Harding, Nadine Coyle and Nicola Roberts. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian

Twenty years considering that their debut azygous Sound of the Underground, we cheque the ITV endowment amusement winners’ tracks

20. No Regrets (2005)

Ballads person been seldom Girls Aloud’s country of expertise – they person been amended astatine songs with bolshie attitudes, which regarded to steadfast their personalities – nevertheless No Regrets is the objection that proves the regularisation of thumb, allotting with the aforesaid aged pop-ballad cliches successful favour of a tinny antique drum gadget, a French chanson-inspired melody and I Will Survive strings.

The irony of Girls Aloud’s vocation is that it flourished owed to the information – the set contributors advised – their managers weren’t interested. Happier operating with boybands, they licence adventurous manufacturing radical Xenomania bash what they desired, truthful tracks similar this, constructed circular u . S . A .-ish acoustic guitar that builds into immoderate happening similar hard stone overlaid with screaming synths.

Girls Aloud: Long Hot Summer – video

It says thing astir however immense Girls Aloud had been that Long Hot Summer turned into considered a flop arsenic it champion reached No 7, breaking a tally of 8 Top 5 hits. It’s hard to look what the hassle became: its relation substance of creation beats, noisy guitar and electronics clicks flawlessly and the opus itself is popular heaven.

Originally written for the Pet Shop Boys’ Xenomania-produced medium Yes, The Loving Kind neatly performs Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe’s patent instrumentality of taking a lushly melancholy tune that person to theoretically beryllium to a ballad and dragging it to the dancefloor.

Improbably, Girls Aloud’s 3rd album, Chemistry, felt astir conceptual, wittily depicting an origin of 00s popular civilization guaranteed to beryllium swept beneath the carpet portion 00s nostalgia kicks in: the grotty vacuous “glamour” of Heat magazine, information TV and coffee-hire lad mags Nuts and Zoo. The useless-eyed refrain and jerky caller wave-stimulated dependable of Models captures the epoch flawlessly.

A Saint Etienne-esque diversion into 60s popular – there’s a chiseled hint of Petula Clark’s Downtown astir the melody – that speedy abandons the endeavor of verses aft its starting 60 seconds, fundamentally devolving into 1 agelong refrain for the last 3 mins. Intriguingly pugilistic lyrics, too, their ire aimed toward a mysterious “New York nothing”.

Kimberley Walsh, Nicola Roberts, Nadine Coyle, Cheryl Cole and Sarah Harding execute connected their ‘Ten – The Hits Tour’ astatine The O2 Arena successful 2013. Photograph: Dave J Hogan/Getty Images

14. Hoxton Heroes (2008)

A B-side that sounds similar it ought to had been connected Chemistry, Hoxton Heroes is simply a fabulously bitchy onslaught astatine the mid-00s trilby-clad “indie clones” that followed wrong the Libertines’ wake: “You stated you performed astatine Reading past you illustration astatine 50 seven,” they snap, fabulously, implicit a tumult of distorted guitars.

A gloriously dumb 4-observe store stone riff – the fuzz pedal and the flanger cranked up to 10 – implicit a banging location bushed and Blue Monday-ish physics bass line, lyrics depicting a booze-fuelled romance and sung arsenic though Girls Aloud cognize of what they speak: Wake Me Up is an astir indecent magnitude of amusing.

The experimentation determined connected Chemistry and Tangled Up go successful ample portion absent from Girls Aloud’s last album, Out of Control, nevertheless determination has been a hint of it astir Untouchable, which stretches a awesome euphony retired for astir 7 minutes, has an intro that feels similar Moby’s rave anthem Go and each implicit again bears the power of New Order.

Girls Aloud: Sexy! No No No – video

The past honestly WTF?-sounding Girls Aloud unmarried – a broiling, warp-pace stew of distorted guitar, Auto-Tuned vocals (greater of a novelty past than now), and a signifier from, of each things, Hair of the Dog by means of hoary 70s rockers Nazareth. In reality, determination isn’t a large woody of a track, nevertheless it fades retired earlier you note.

“They were equipped to beforehand a cardinal albums consecutive away,” Xenomania’s Brian Higgins mentioned of the last Girls Aloud album. “They didn’t privation thing a portion intellectual, they wanted thing that would deed you betwixt the eyes.” Which is precisely what the fabulous Phil Spector-encouraged The Promise – a No 1 – tin provide.

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On the 1 hand, Can’t Speak French is the de rigueur 90s/00s pistillate set homage to 60s soul. (In Wigan Casino phrases, its bushed is simply a floater, alternatively of a stomper.) On the opposite, its manufacturing feels excessively supercharged to trust arsenic specified pastiche, and the melody is simply notable. Brilliantly, fixed the title, successful summation they did a mentation successful French.

Another of Chemistry’s vicious pen photos of 00s fashionable culture, populated by utilizing “fee-tag starlets” “complete of tools” (“equipment, equipment, gear, gear”, it repeats, lest each of america miss the druggy point): “We’re down the descent to rehab and it all’s without spending a dime.” The tune is simply a livid, noisy chatter of distorted synthesisers and squelching, screaming acerb strains.

Girls Aloud: Sound of the Underground – video

With hindsight, it turned into wide from the commencement that Girls Aloud were a hardly circumstantial to astir TV endowment show winners: successful which the others sailed to No 1 with a large ballad oregon evident cover, Girls Aloud’s debut became a fizzing cocktail of drum’n’bass and surf guitar, with a place that – coming from a synthetic popular set – regarded impressively provocative.

My Sharona bass line, monster refrain, guitar seemingly nodding successful the way of the Ruts’ Babylon’s Burning, lyrics exceptionally greater screw-you (“a digit to the assemblage underneath … I’m already wasted”) than you mightiness presume from a set created connected prime-time ITV: truely Sound of the Underground wasn’t a one-off.

The pb unmarried from a 2nd medium that astir didn’t hap – their record statement were threatening to tug the plug, assuming their occurrence could beryllium quick-lived – The Show is simply a triumph: rave synths successful the backmost of lyrics that sharply bespeak connected a failed relationship: “I should’ve known, person to’ve cared / Should’ve hung astir the room successful my undies.”

The cleanable illustration of a Girls Aloud tune wherever Xenomania dialled down their eccentricities and conscionable got present up with a preposterously hook-encumbered melody, Call the Shots’ synth-encumbered dependable is exceedingly other sincere than that of their other out-there singles, but it scarcely topics fixed the classy earworm high-quality of the refrain.

The first-class Girls Aloud singles regularly dependable similar a idiosyncratic had a huffy thought astir popular opus wrong the pub – successful this situation: what could a continuing hello-NRG opus dependable similar with glam guitars implicit the apical of it? – past went location and acceptable astir making it appear. The outcomes are deliriously interesting.

Certain Girls Aloud participants seemingly conception Love Machine became “career suicide” – what mid-00s popular set launched a rockabilly- stimulated unmarried? – nevertheless it turned retired to beryllium the making of them, arsenic a minimum arsenic avatars for an archetypal and idiosyncratic attack to making hits: a synthetic popular set who did matters synthetic popular bands weren’t presupposed to do. It’s additionally a outstanding music.

Girls Aloud: Biology – video

Biology sounds adjacent other high-quality 17 years close into a other straitened epoch of dada tailor-made to suit streaming algorithms. That said, it sounded alternatively formidable successful 2005: a unmarried that dispenses with preferred verse-chorus signifier for immoderate happening much expansive and episodic, jumping from an intro that samples the bluesy riff from the Animals’ 1965 unmarried Club A-Go-Go, to a gliding, synth-heavy verse that dilatory builds to what sounds conscionable similar the refrain, nevertheless isn’t: the existent chorus doesn’t crook up until decently past the halfway mark. Audacious and superbly achieved, teeming with hooky melodies, it’s present not conscionable Girls Aloud’s first-class single, it’s 1 of the first-rate popular singles of the beyond 20 years.