27TH MARCH 2005

 

The Faders - "No Sleep Tonight"

Official UK Chart peak: #13

 

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Oooh, now for an entry I've been buzzing to write about since we entered 2005! Cast your minds back, if you will, to the very top of this thread - about three or four entries in, when we met Hepburn, the clever, but not quite big lady band with guitars that scored a smattering of top 20 hits in the infamous 'post-Spice boom/hangover' years of the late 90s/early 00s.

 

Five years on from Sony showing the 'I Quit' rockers the door, and suddenly, pop groups were all about the guitar licks and drumsticks again. Even with Busted's shock split at the top of this year, their natural successors McFly were riding high with their Comic Relief chart topper 'All About You' and a BRIT win, and in the wake of Busted's demise, record labels were throwing their own contributions left right and centre into the hat. Some, it has to be said, were uniformly terrible (Freefaller and The Noise Next Door, hello to you).

 

And some were actually pretty kicking indeed, and so it's hello to Molly Lorenne (daughter of Ultravox's Midge Ure), Cherisse Osei and Toy Valentine, otherwise known as Polydor's entrant into the hat: The Faders. Somewhat misogynously dubbed as 'Busted with breasts' by a couple of the gutter press, they showed some real promise indeed - CD:UK even premiered the video (set in the same California high school 'Grease' and Britney's 'Baby One More Time' video was filmed in, fact fans) two months before the single came out, a good omen if any were needed.

 

 

Of my own memories, I certainly remember they were everywhere in the run up to this single coming out. And rightly so - 'No Sleep Tonight', their debut single (and subsequent soundtrack to a gazillion different TV shows and movies, more of which later), was a rollicking, rowdy punky pop joy, borrowing heavily from the guitar riff of Iggy Pop's 'Lust for Life'. It was a refreshing change from all the dullard Busted copies, and not just because they were girls either.

 

So all of that exposure should have pretty much guaranteed a strong debut right? Right? Er, sadly, wrong. It was close but no cigar to a top 10 in the end, instead, peaking at #13 and exiting the chart after a month. Once again, the old 'Girl Thing launching in an overcrowded market' conundrum of 2000 springs to mind here. A different slant they might have been offering, but the idea of girl groups wielding instruments was something the UK record buying public just wasn't cottoning onto for whatever reason.

 

This'll be the case not just with The Faders, but also two other forthcoming entries avec guitars to this thread who'll suffer by the same cruel hand of fate (or rather, public wallet of fate). As for the ladies themselves, we have one more entry to come from them in 2005, by which point things will look much more dismal than they did here.

Absolutely adore Wake Me Up. Girls Aloud at their best!

Girls Aloud - Wake Me Up = What can I say, great song, everything about the "WWTNS" campaign was awesome, and "WMU" was the perfect single choice to end the album, although "Graffiti My Soul" would have made a great single also.

 

The Faders = Don't remember these at all, not hard too see why that song just does nothing for me.

1ST MAY 2005

 

Destiny's Child - "Girl"

Official UK Chart peak: #6

 

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Something I forgot to mention at the last entry, and am going to now. It goes without saying that since 2003 we've been through a lot of entries which were charting high on low sales as the singles market continued to be bitten by illegal downloads and file sharing sites. 2004 had seen some developments towards this new method of music consumption becoming a more legitimate thing, with the launch of iTunes in the UK and the introduction of the Official Download Chart.

 

By the start of 2005, the perhaps inevitable announcement came that, reflecting the growth in popularity of iPods and MP3 players, from the start of April 2005, downloads would now begin to count towards official chart data - but with a clincher. It was only on the proviso that the single was available to buy in shops as well as through the download outlets for it to count. The rules regarding this were to continually be tweaked for the next two years from this point onwards in this thread, and as they are tweaked, we'll be meeting more entries on their peak, rather than their actual entry point.

 

 

It won't be the case, however, with our final entry for Destiny's Child (in the UK at least). And what an impossibly naff swansong we have to end on from Beyonce and the other two (as I shall continue to refer to them as for this period of their career). 'Girl' is all preachy, overtly sugary self empowerment, set to a dated 70s backing track, and the ladies appearing as themselves in a tribute come parody (but more the latter) to 'Sex and the City' for the video - right down to Beyonce's best Carrie Bradshaw impersonation.

 

Everything about this single just felt so forced at the time. However much the song's war cry of 'I'm your girl, we your girls, don't cha know that we love ya' tried to protest otherwise, they really were a band ruled by its strongest part by then, and all around knew the jig was gonna be up sooner rather than later - confirmed when they announced, midway through the world tour to support the 'Destiny Fulfilled' album, that they were splitting up for good once it finished. We'd have been meeting them again in July and November with the even more impossibly awful 'Cater 2 U' and 'Stand Up For Love', but both were download only singles and as such, didn't count towards the UK chart at the time. I'm going to go listen to 'Say My Name' from the top of this thread again and remember them when they were good...

Edited January 10, 20169 yr by ThePensmith

3RD JULY 2005

 

The Faders - "Jump"

Official UK Chart peak: #21

 

http://a3.mzstatic.com/eu/r30/Music/v4/d1/9a/bd/d19abd1e-e7be-29cb-293b-4b22c395b637/cover600x600.jpeg

 

And from the beginning of May, we now take a giant 10 week leap forward to the start of July. A historic (or with hindsight semi historic) month. 20 years on from the original Live Aid concert, and as the G8 summit was campaigning for us all to 'Make Poverty History', the Live8 gigs happened. Conspicuously however, they did so without a girl group on the bill (except for a token acoustic performance by Sugababes at the Edinburgh 'Final Push' gig on the day of the summit three days later).

 

Even rumours of a Spice Girls reunion at the July 2nd gigs, despite confirmation by Mel B (and if it's coming from her, it's usually not to be trusted), proved unfounded. And whilst all this was going on, The Faders released their second single. Their debut album, 'Plug In + Play' had already topped the charts in - yep, you guessed it - Japan, and 'No Sleep Tonight' found itself on a wealth of TV soundtracks both sides of the pond, including Channel 4's 'Sugar Rush', and 'Grey's Anatomy' and 'Veronica Mars' over in the States.

 

 

All this international activity meant that they weren't around to promote 'Jump' as much as they did with 'No Sleep Tonight' - a fatal decision on Polydor's behalf, as it conked out just outside the top 20 before falling - fast. Whilst with 10 years' distance, it does rather lack the punch of their debut, it's still an energetic little beast of a record. But the video does all rather smack of 'What's that you say? The first single was expected to go top 10 and didn't and now we could be dropped?'.

 

They were pretty much in limbo for a year after that, and temporary salvation came in the form of a support slot for Kelly Clarkson on her UK tour - then of course, having just made her own huge impact this year with her 'Breakaway' album - but when their final single 'Look at Me Now' was cancelled for release in May 2006, The Faders dream had finally, pardon the pun, faded into obscurity.

 

Molly then made the bizarre slash shady decision a few months later, with the release of Uma Thurman's so-so action flick 'My Super Ex-Girlfriend', to release 'No Sleep Tonight' as her debut solo single, this time under her new stage name Molly McQueen. It inevitably tanked, but is still an amusing anecdote regardless...

31ST JULY 2005

 

Bananarama - "Move in My Direction"

Official UK Chart peak: #14

 

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Time for another 'I'd have been writing quite a lot about this lot were this an 80's thread' entry now. I think most ardent pop fans of that decade will be familiar with Bananarama, who with 40 million record sales worldwide are one of the most successful girl groups, decade regardless, that the UK has ever produced, with monster hits like 'Venus', 'Robert DeNiro's Waiting' and 'Cruel Summer' to name but a few.

 

Whilst their commercial peak had long passed for the now duo formation of the group consisting of Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward (three new albums had been released in that time, to little fanfare, original member Siobhan Fahey had also briefly rejoined them for a reunion performance in 1998), 2005 saw a brief but nonetheless welcome resurgence to their former chart busting glory.

 

 

First up that summer was 'Move in My Direction', the lead single from their 9th studio album 'Drama'. Radio 2, long standing champions of any pop act that can't get on the Radio 1 playlist anymore, showed a lot of support for this single, as, bizarrely enough, did a lot of the radio stations that were on the Capital and GWR networks at the time (my local station Essex FM, now owned by Heart, included), hence it's top 20 showing.

 

To be fair, with 10 years' distance it's aged better than I thought it would. It's a moody, baroque down the disco number that wouldn't have sounded out of place on either Madonna's 'Confessions on a Dance Floor' album that came a few months later, or on Goldfrapp's 'Supernature' album that arrived two weeks after this single. So whilst it is very 2005, I was quite happy to hear this one again. Hooray for the Nanas!

28TH AUGUST 2005

 

Girls Aloud - "Long Hot Summer"

Official UK Chart peak: #7

 

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And from Bananarama, we now segway neatly into another Girls Aloud entry that the Nanas could have very easily recorded back in their 80's heyday - nay, maybe as a companion piece to 'Cruel Summer'. Well, in an ideal world maybe. Let's focus instead on August 2005. Or rather, several months before that. Whilst the girls were deep in preparation for their 'What Will the Neighbours Say? Tour', Brian, Miranda and the Xenomania gang were over in Los Angeles in the spring of that year.

 

They were over there for a meeting with Disney, who, impressed with the team's work for the girls on their song 'You Freak Me Out' (which was used on the soundtrack of their 2003 remake of 'Freaky Friday') were relaunching the popular series of films starring Herbie, the magical car, in a new adventure titled 'Herbie: Fully Loaded', starring Lindsay Lohan. It was an exciting proposition, but one, that ultimately, Brian and Miranda hated every minute of.

 

Speaking to Music Week the following year, he said 'Chasing the soundtrack was disrupting us creatively ... Something had to come out of those sessions, and that was 'Long Hot Summer'. It was made in a panic and I can't stand it. It's a disaster record.' When Polydor released (spoiler alert) a boxset of all the girls' singles in 2009, a demo and rarities disc included no less then three rejected versions of the single with different lyrics and choruses, so he wasn't far wrong in how arduous a task it must have been to fit Disney's vision.

 

 

But is 'Long Hot Summer' really the big 'disaster record' that Brian made it out to be? Well, yes and no. I do remember at the time of this single coming out that a lot of people were saying that it was essentially 'Girls Aloud on auto pilot', releasing something that sounded like 'The Show' or 'Androgynous Girls' but not nearly as exciting. It's not without it's charms, particularly the lyrics about cross dressing boyfriends running down Old Kent Road, or Nadine's simply divine tongue twisting rap on the second verse.

 

Neither however, is it without it's faults. The video, a three minute lad's mag-o'clock pin up fest saw the girls as mechanics in a garage (alluding to the theme of the movie the single was intended for) stripping out of overalls into skimpy clubbing threads, whilst sporting the most radioactive tans known to man. It wasn't one of their best looks, put it that way. And when of course, the song was dropped from use on the 'Herbie' soundtrack (which would itself go onto be a box office flop), suddenly the girls had a video which bore little semblance to the single it was for.

 

And when it was also released in a highly competitive chart week, with new releases from Kaiser Chiefs, Blue's Simon Webbe, Oasis, Black Eyed Peas and a certain Barbadian teenager making her debut (Rihanna), it was little wonder that it became their first single to miss the top 5 and swiftly exit the top 40 in a matter of a month. 'Long Hot Summer' is by no means the worst GA entry we've met thus far. But like Christmas songs, songs about long hot summers make no sense except at that time of year (if of course, we do ever get one...)

I was so gutted when GA broke their run of Top 5s with LHS! Particularly as it achieved first week sales which were relatively strong for a #7 placement, and enough to place them within the Top 5 in other weeks. (In fact it sold 2k more in its first week than Wake Me Up did to get to #4... doesn't sound like much at all, but in 2005 terms that was fairly significant :lol: ).

 

I'm not too keen on the video. Like you say, obviously its intention was to go hand in hand with Herbie so I know why they went with the garage theme, but I wish they could have done an "outside" video for this one. On the beach / by the pool... ice cream, cocktails, shades, sun-hats... could have been fun! Maybe something reminiscent of The Show video where they're being mischievous with male extras (lol).

 

I like the artwork, more so the cocktail/straws cover pictured, than the one of them in the car. It looks great on the 12" Vinyl they released of it (somewhat randomly the only occasion the label decided to release a single of theirs in that format). Sad story alert: I kept my copy in pristine condition for years, but a couple of years ago I discovered that my Dad had accidentally damaged it. I kept it at the bottom of my book shelf with my other Vinyls, but they jutted out slightly. My room was used to store some boxes while some renovations were being done, and he must have bashed one of the boxes into the book shelf. :drama: My LHS vinyl is creased/bent/ripped in the top corner! :snif: My other GA 12" promo vinyls took a bit of damage too (the top of their spines are a bit bent), but LHS took the brunt of the impact! I'll most likely never get to replace it, because they're so rare & expensive now (and if any go online, they're usually not in mint condition).

 

[i really didn't need to mention that! :kink: I am somewhat over it, honestly... :lol: ]

 

Looking forward to your write-up of a certain forthcoming 2005 release by them. :cool:

I was so gutted when GA broke their run of Top 5s with LHS! Particularly as it achieved first week sales which were relatively strong for a #7 placement, and enough to place them within the Top 5 in other weeks. (In fact it sold 2k more in its first week than Wake Me Up did to get to #4... doesn't sound like much at all, but in 2005 terms that was fairly significant :lol: ).

 

I'm not too keen on the video. Like you say, obviously its intention was to go hand in hand with Herbie so I know why they went with the garage theme, but I wish they could have done an "outside" video for this one. On the beach / by the pool... ice cream, cocktails, shades, sun-hats... could have been fun! Maybe something reminiscent of The Show video where they're being mischievous with male extras (lol).

 

I like the artwork, more so the cocktail/straws cover pictured, than the one of them in the car. It looks great on the 12" Vinyl they released of it (somewhat randomly the only occasion the label decided to release a single of theirs in that format). Sad story alert: I kept my copy in pristine condition for years, but a couple of years ago I discovered that my Dad had accidentally damaged it. I kept it at the bottom of my book shelf with my other Vinyls, but they jutted out slightly. My room was used to store some boxes while some renovations were being done, and he must have bashed one of the boxes into the book shelf. :drama: My LHS vinyl is creased/bent/ripped in the top corner! :snif: My other GA 12" promo vinyls took a bit of damage too (the top of their spines are a bit bent), but LHS took the brunt of the impact! I'll most likely never get to replace it, because they're so rare & expensive now (and if any go online, they're usually not in mint condition).

 

[i really didn't need to mention that! :kink: I am somewhat over it, honestly... :lol: ]

 

Looking forward to your write-up of a certain forthcoming 2005 release by them. :cool:

 

Oh man, that's not good re: the vinyl! Similar thing happened with me recently, my 7" picture disc of Busted's 'Air Hostess' was warped when I went to play it, so I feel your pain!

 

RE: the video. I think had Disney not put their tuppence in we'd have had the video you described. For most of their TV performances they wore the outfits (or similar) from that CD2 cover above - when they performed it on CD:UK for the first time I remember they were all on sun loungers with cocktails and had fans (promotional ones of which they had at Woolworths? I may be wrong there but I remember seeing them on Popjustice).

 

And oh yes. The next GA entry will be VERY special indeed :D :dance:

Destiny's Child have 99 Souls to thank for bringing 'Girl' back into the public domain. 'Girl' was a sort of Sex In The City based song wasn't it.

 

'No Sleep Tonight' and 'Jump'. Only heard 'No Sleep Tonight' from a McDonalds MP3 Toy playing this song over and over again for some bizarre reason.

 

 

Keep up the good work.

 

 

The Faders song isn't as catchy as I remember it being.

11TH SEPTEMBER 2005

 

Pussycat Dolls feat. Busta Rhymes - "Don't Cha"

Official UK Chart peak: #1

 

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Goodness me, are we that far into the thread now? I'd all but forgotten we were about to meet this lot until I sat down to write today's entries. Partly because, and I say this with the full expectation that we'll be in agreement here, they are girl group in formation only. The rest, as we'll come to discuss over the course of their nine entries to this thread, is entirely up for debate. But let's begin, as always, with the back story.

 

The creation of Robin Antin, a dancer with an interest in the old style burlesque and striptease who looked uncannily like Janice from the Muppets, together with Hollywood actress Christina Applegate, founded the Pussycat Dolls as a modern day burlesque troupe in her garage in the early 90s. It wasn't however, until Johnny Depp happened upon it in 1995, that he took a liking to it, and they took up a residency at his night club, The Viper Room, in downtown LA. Carmen Electra was even a Doll at one point.

 

Fast forward into the early 00s, and the Pussycat Dolls (dance troupe), were the talk of Los Angeles, with a Playboy centrefold shoot, appearances in music videos for Pink and in the Charlie's Angels 2 movie, and they had numerous guest performers lining up to join them at their residency, including but not limited to Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Gwen Stefani.

 

It was the latter who was responsible for bringing them to the attention of Jimmy Iovine, president of her label Interscope Records, who realised there was a potential to make a girl group version of the troupe. Auditions were duly held, and joining existing troupe members Carmit Bachar, Ashley Roberts, Kimberley Wyatt and Jessica Sutta were singers Melody Thornton, and, perhaps most notably (for the US public at least), Nicole Scherzinger, former lead vocalist with Eden's Crush, winners of the first US series of Popstars.

 

 

The newly formed girl group of PCD (I think we'll stick to this as a natural abbreviation for future entries) started creating buzz as early as late 2004, when their covers of 'Sway' and 'We Went as Far as We Felt Like Going' made it onto the soundtracks of animated film 'A Shark's Tale' and Jennifer Lopez romantic drama 'Shall We Dance' respectively. But it wasn't until the spring of this year when they really made their breakthrough in the States - and then the rest of the world followed.

 

Originally recorded by session singer Tori Alamaze, and written by Cee-Lo Green (himself just six months away from making a record breaking debut at the top of the UK charts with his band Gnarls Barkley), I can remember quite clearly where I was when I first heard & saw 'Don't Cha'. The initial thought that went through my mind was firstly how upfront the song was, lyrically and musically it was far more suggestive than anything any UK girl group had put out in recent years to that point.

 

And whilst no one was buying for a second that the song was all about female empowerment and that 'inside every woman is a Pussycat Doll', this otherwise catchy, nay slightly witty in some cases, tale of boyfriend baiting, coupled with a guest rap from Busta Rhymes was always destined for big things, even if the whole world wasn't quite ready for it. In the UK however, where the rise of raunch culture - cf anything Katie Price and/or Jodie Marsh were doing, literally or figuratively, around this time - was on the up, it was an instant hit, crashing straight in at number one here in the UK and staying there for three whole weeks (in the US, it was stationary at #2 behind Mariah Carey's 'We Belong Together').

 

It ended up selling enough to become the fifth biggest seller in the UK of 2005 - and, try though many did to resist, if you weren't rocking up on the dancefloor by the year's end hollering 'Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?' after a few bevvies, you were literally not living. The doll domination was about to begin.

2ND OCTOBER 2005

 

Sugababes - "Push the Button"

Official UK Chart peak: #1

 

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t.A.T.u - "All About Us"

Official UK Chart peak: #8

 

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I think this may be the first instance in this thread where we've had A) a girl group replacing another one at number one and B) the first instance of both said bands holding the top for as many as three weeks a-piece. Quite an impressive fact that really. After a year's absence from the charts, Sugababes v2.0 were back, and were back in style. Mutya had just given birth to her little girl Tahlia (who was six months old by the time this single was ready to go), and the girls had been away in America working on their new album.

 

Whilst regular Suga collaborators - Xenomania, Craigie Dodds - were all on board for 'Taller in More Ways', their fourth studio album, so too was the legendary Dallas Austin, who we've already met production wise on his work for TLC. And it was he who was responsible for 'Push the Button', the album's first single. The product of in studio banter between Keisha and Dallas, the former of whom had been making eyes at a not-unattractive studio hand for one session in particular, he advised her that she needed to let him 'push the button' i.e. make the first move to chat her up.

 

 

And from that, both scintillating pop genius and the ladies' biggest selling single since 'Freak Like Me' and 'Round Round' was born. There's so little to fault with 'Push the Button'. It just really works and whilst it was very in keeping with British pop's then new found love of spiky, forward thinking electro sounds, it still sounds very fresh today and dare I say it, along with another entry still to come from the Babes, is timeless.

 

The fact it became their first single to hold the top spot for more than a week says it all. They'd really crossed all boundaries by this point - evident in the fact also, that on its third and final week at the top, the 'Taller in More Ways' album was at the top of the album chart whilst the single also held top of the download chart. Only however, from such rapturous peaks, can come devestating lows. New mum Mutya was beginning to get cold feet - the girl group equivalent of Christopher Eccleston starting to look a bit peaky before morphing into David Tennant - and on our next Suga entry, another generation is coming to an end...

 

Also back this week - after slightly longer than a year away from the UK charts - were t.A.T.u. As touched upon briefly at their last entry 18 months ago, Julia had, much like Mutya, fallen pregnant with her first child, hence the long gap before we heard from them again whilst she became a mum. They soon reconvened to record at the end of 2004 though, and 'All About Us', the first single from their second album 'Dangerous & Moving' was released.

 

It had been two years since 'All The Things She Said' by now, and with the facade of that single's accompanying video long since shattered, and the backlash that followed, Universal now had a tricky problem on their hands. The press releases for this single all heralded the return of the 'most controverstial act in pop', but this was purely trading on former glories, and the fact that one real hit of theirs was an accompanying B-side to this single did nothing to suggest otherwise.

 

 

I didn't even realise they were back until the CD:UK episode aired before the Monday of the single release showed a pre-recorded performance of the single from the Italian version of the show. The truth was, even though 'All About Us' was a fairly punchy little number, t.A.T.u were, to the UK at least, old news by now. They did well to get it to their third top 10 hit, but its swift descent to the lower rungs of the top 40 suggested it wasn't going to be a long return.

 

The 'Dangerous & Moving' album came out to even worse commercial fanfare a few weeks later, and the album's second single, 'Friend or Foe', conked out in the top 50 in February 2006 despite strong TV airplay. Though they would continue releasing and recording in the rest of mainstream Europe, the UK's strange but brief fascination with two Russian teenagers was over.

Edited January 24, 20169 yr by ThePensmith

2005 was a big year for girl-groups. PCD arrive, Sugababes make a grand return and Girls Aloud are soon going to release one of their best singles to date. :D

Two incredible songs there! In fact, two of the best singles of the 2000s decade imo. :wub:

 

Push The Button is my favourite of the two though. It really felt at that point that the Sugababes had reached yet another level of popularity, and then to top it all off they scored their first #1 album. :heart: A great time to be a fan!

 

Not so long after the album was released, they announced a tour in support of it. Believe it or not, at the grand old age of 17 I'd never been to a concert in my life, but I felt I really needed to see them, so mum got me 3 tickets for Christmas. <3 So they were my first ever concert! I saw them in March 2006. Not quite the same "them" as seen in the video above, of course!

Two defining girl group songs of the decade there. 'Don't Cha' and 'Push The Button'.

 

 

Afternoon all! I was a complete ninny and forgot to write about t.A.T.u's 'All About Us' in the last entry. It's now included for continuity. Onwards and upwards we go with our next 2005 entrants...

 

23RD OCTOBER 2005

 

Love Bites - "You Broke My Heart"

Official UK Chart peak: #13

 

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Da Playaz vs. Clea - "We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off"

Official UK Chart peak: #35

 

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Another double header week now, and up first, time to meet the second of the two 'girls with guitars' acts from 2005. We've had Polydor's answer to the 'Busted/McFly' phenomena with The Faders, now it's time for Island (the home to both bands) to throw their hat into the ring. Coincidentally, this next act also shared management with them.

 

Prestige Management - also to later go on and manage both David Archuleta and The Vamps - scouted and eventually found West Midlands teens Love Bites. Named after a Def Leppard song, Danielle, Nicki, and sisters Aimee and Hannah were quickly snapped up for a megabucks record deal and were duly sent out on the road as McFly's support act on their 2005 arena tour a month before their single hit the shops.

 

 

Island had obviously seen how much success it had bought McFly for their first album, being so closely interlinked with Busted who were well and truly at the peak of their powers, and thought a natural link with them and Love Bites would do likewise (hence the appearance of an interview with Tom and Danny as a B-side on this single). It didn't sit well with McFly's then - largely - teenage girl audience however, and thus, as with The Faders, they stalled just inside the top 15 before falling.

 

To all intents and purposes, 'You Broke My Heart' isn't a classic, it wasn't then and it isn't now. The lyrics are trite as anything but the chorus is deliciously fizzy and punchy - 'Well you broke my heart / so I broke your nose / And I'm not sorry that I got blood on your clothes'. However, like a sherbert lemon, it fizzes and evaporates without much else of an effect. Little wonder then, that McFly's audience were actually out buying a McFly single that week ('I Wanna Hold You' was the second highest new entry at #3). As for Love Bites, just one more single would come - 'He's Fit' tanked at #48 the following February - before they were dropped.

 

Still, as a song it had a lot more (relatively speaking) going for it than poor old Clea had. A year on from being dropped by Warner following the grave underperformance of their first two singles, they had soldiered on undeterred, and independent label Upside had signed the now trio formation of the band (Chloe had left not long after they were dropped, to 'go into fashion', apparently).

 

 

The first product from this rebirth - a so-so cover of Jermaine Stewart's 1986 Transatlantic Top 10 smash - was about a million miles away from the classy, evening gown and dramatic strings backed antics of 'Download It' or 'Stuck in the Middle', whilst they piled on more fake tan than their old Popstars contender Nicola Roberts did in the first three years of Girls Aloud, with a video totally missing the message of the original. One more single, 'Lucky Like That', stiffed at #55 the following year before they split to great indifference...

13TH NOVEMBER 2005

 

Bananarama - "Look on the Floor (Hypnotic Tango)"

Official UK Chart peak: #26

 

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Our second and final '05 entry from the Nanas now. And one which I struggled to recall or even had an awareness of that time. 'Look on the Floor' was a spiky offering of electro house, incorporating a sample of 1983 club hit 'Hypnotic Tango' by My Mine. Whilst it did provide them with their 25th UK top 40 hit, it could hardly be said to be remembered as one of their classics.

 

 

Quite strangely though, and more so in light of the accompanying 'Drama' album flopping hard in the UK and everywhere else around Europe, this single did find huge success on the Billboard Club charts in America - just on club play of the imported UK single, it peaked at an impressive #2, before peaking at #5 on the Dance Airplay charts once it got a full release there that July.

Edited January 24, 20169 yr by ThePensmith

Lovebites = Never knew they existed and after listening to that song, I know why, such terrible dreck, The Faders weren't that great either but at least they put a lot more effort into their songs. No wonder the girl groups with guitars never worked over here, with crap like that.

 

Clea = Don't remember this dire cover either, they had clearly given up by this point. Funnily enough I do remember "Lucky Like That" which again isn't very good, but better than this and even with that laughable video.

 

Bananarama = Actually liked this song "Look On The Floor", found it better than "MID" and deserved a better chart peak than #26. Even got the "Drama" album which is pretty decent, but they're 80's heyday is where they had their best stuff with classics like (Cruel Summer, Venus, Robert De Niro's Waiting, Love In The First Degree & I Heard A Rumour) such brilliance.

20TH NOVEMBER 2005

 

Girls Aloud - "Biology"

Official UK Chart peak: #4

 

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There are some entries that, over the course of this thread, I have written at length and in forensic detail about. Others have just had slightly more than a blurb written about them. Either way, they've all warmed me up and got my strength up to write the entry which, from my standpoint and yours, is gonna be quite a long one. For this is not only the BEST Girls Aloud single, but quite simply for me, the greatest pop single of the 21st century.

 

If "Long Hot Summer" was the Brian Higgins proclaimed 'disaster record' that went damp long before October, "Biology" was the opposite of that - and then some. This, for me, was the moment when five girls from the North who dreamt of becoming popstars, grew up and became well...popstars. I don't mean that in a glib or patronising way, but as we go along I'll explain myself a bit better.

 

As their success slowly but surely grew from that first number one, all around in the girls' camp knew that they had potential to have legs (metaphorical ones in this sense) way beyond the fickle confines of the show that had launched them. Why else was 'Sound of the Underground' their first single? The critics, the teens and the gay audience loved them, Joe Public at large, however, was yet to succumb to their charms, and its fair to say those three audiences were the key ones keeping them in a career for their first two albums.

 

But pop back then dictated that its girl groups and boybands aren't supposed to have careers beyond three albums if they're lucky. But then, Girls Aloud, as we've already seen, were never an ordinary girl group. Speaking ahead of the launch of the universally acclaimed 'Chemistry', their third album in December 2005, Cheryl said: 'You get prouder don't you? We're like little peacocks on this album. We're finally embracing what we are and we're good pop music, and we want people to join us and have fun with us.'

 

'Biology' is often seen as the true lead single from the album for many reasons, and I see it that way too if I'm honest. From the minute the hoardy sampled piano riff from The Animals' "Club A-Go Go" kicks in, a sudden rush of electricity begins and doesn't cease to leave you until its three minute thirty second time slot is up. Sounding like three songs in one, and with two choruses to its name, to the casual listener it may take a while to get their head around. Once it clicks though, that's where its full glory is revealed.

 

 

The video and the single artwork - making a gentle nod in the direction of X-Ray Spex - is another case in point. Around this time, after two album campaigns of rocking up in club wear from Romford market and/or random coloured vest tops with jeans (or spandex and tin foil), the girls' stylist Victoria Adcock came on board and would be responsible for styling every single, album and tour campaign thereafter - starting with this one.

 

The video, much like the song itself, is a kaleidoscope of styles and setups, building at each stage of the song, before it reaches its climax and the girls are seen together in that now iconic shot of them in the red and black pencil skirts. Though it was the first time they were all kind of 'uniformed', it was tailored to each specific member whilst presenting a strong, united front.

 

For the first time since their debut, they looked and sounded like a real force to be reckoned with. Pop is built on these superb, spangly, shiny moments of glory, of seeing a harmonious union of style, song and visual culminating into one unforgettable package. 'Biology' was their moment. It wasn't the moment when the public at large got them, true, but it was key into setting them up the path to there as we'll see with future entries to come.

 

Nonetheless, it did everything and then some that 'Long Hot Summer' had failed to do - it returned them to the UK top 5, and won them some of the best reviews of their career, and suddenly, Girls Aloud had evolved. They were becoming women, and three years on from that Popstars win, they were suddenly more than living up to that title.

 

It was just puzzling then, that the 'Chemistry' album hit the shops and for all its critical adoration ('Blur's 'Parklife' with lyrics rewritten by the editorial staff of Heat magazine', said The Observer, 'Genius', said NME), commercially it fell shorter than usual expectations (#11). Hence Polydor's decision - and a stupid one at that - for them to choose the single that would follow this up. More of which, as always, on the next GA entry. But let's instead raise a glass (or should that be test tube?) for now to 'Biology'. From the way that it walks, to the way that it talks, this is the gold standard for the 21st century girl group from THE 21st century girl group.

Edited January 27, 20169 yr by ThePensmith