girls aloud

[16] Pet Shop Boys, ‘Where The Streets Have No Name (Can’t Take My Eyes Off You)’

Pet Shop Boys

I used to put this on the jukebox in the hall bar at university, just to antagonise the rockists. The Jimi Hendrix lookalike and his Led Zep pals would become particularly vexed, often because it tended to interrupt their ‘American Pie’ loop.

This record’s a thumb of the nose – it couldn’t be anything else with the merging of the Andy Williams camp classic – but there’s affection too. The Pet Shop Boys’ aural soundscapes (wow) are wide enough to do justice to the sweep of the song, and it’s all big and dramatic like Bono thinks he is. I’m sure they’re not JUST taking the piss. Ok, I’m not sure. It’s great, though; I hadn’t heard it for years until this morning, and I still love it.

I’ve banged on about this before, but it’s interesting (well, sorta) that the PSBs and Prince should own the ’80s but then lose the plot at about the same time as each other. Can’t think of any proper good PSBs singles after this – honourable mention, however, to the bit where it goes mad at the end of ‘Go West’.

Junior was rather smitten with this, the Hi-NRG beats bringing forth the cockateel moves. I’ve really brainwashed the poor kid. She’ll be writing her own version of ‘Being Boring’ in about 30 years:

“I came across a cache of digital photos,
And countless blog entries from my dull old father;
He played me records and voiced my opinions,
And Girls Aloud got him all in a lather,
In my 20-noughties…”

Spice Girls, ‘Wannabe’

Slam your body down and zig-a-zig-ahh. Euan, Paddy, OP and I did some impromptu street theatre on the Edinburgh Fringe the best part of 10 years ago, trying to show how the Spice Girls’ orders could be carried out. We decided that you couldn’t really slam your own body down, assuming that you had to land with said body horizontal to the floor for full slamming effect. You couldn’t get the full force behind you; it would be mere falling.

I didn’t ask Junior to replicate the slam but, like many little girls before her, she found the Spices’ song and message beguiling – although the fact that she was managing to do the zig-a-zig move as demonstrated in the video was more down to maternal manipulation than free will. 

So, whatever happened to the Spice Girls? One minute it was world domination with infectious tunes and sketchy empowerment poses, the next it was, well, we know what it was. Eye-wateringly bad solo careers, babies with silly names (Junior’s a very sensible name) and desperately misguided attempts to bed George Michael.

In our very first entry we mused on who would win a fight out of the Spice Girls and Girls Aloud. It’s time for you to decide. These are the bouts:

Mel B vs Sarah
Mel C vs Nicola
Baby vs Kimberley
Geri vs Nadine
Posh vs Cheryl

[3] Girls Aloud, ‘Biology’

“The way that we TALK, the way that we WALK”. Junior finds this frustrating. Are they teasing her? She’s still laughing at me standing by the stereo, but it’s a CD so I’m not even trying to be the superfly DJ. Those new-fangled CD decks are just cheating anyway. You don’t get the chance to hit the stylus arm by mistake, and you never need to balance a 20p coin anywhere to stop it jumping.

I could be the muso about this song’s unusual structure. Girls Aloud and Xenomania eschew your standard verse-chorus arrangement to fling in a load of highs and “can you see the join?” splicing. It shows ambition that a lot of modern pop lazily avoids, whether you like the record or not, and it’s a gamble. They don’t get the Number Ones you might expect, and perhaps they don’t appeal to “the kids” as much as they do to the pop scholars.

Pop scholars: Paul Morley, Paul Gambaccini, writers at Stylus and Pitchfork, the NME to satisfy the occasional whim, and hey, me. And Junior. Will she be defending this sort of stuff when all her friends are into the 2018 equivalents of Sum 41, the Kaiser Chiefs, the Killers and 50 Cent? Don’t fail me now.

[8] Girls Aloud, ‘Long Hot Summer’

They have power, astonishing power no doubt, but not even Girls Aloud can change the season. Junior and I ignore the Christmas tree for three or four minutes and put some effort into imagining it’s a July morning and we’re shaking like cool lemonades. She gets better results than me, because she’s not sitting there tackling the existential question of how on earth one can shake like a cool lemonade. Is it the bubbles? Or is it the movement of the liquid when the ice cubes are dropped in? Perhaps the lemonade shakes because Nadine, Kimberley et al are holding it while they sashay around the CD:UK stage? Like “I was 21 years when I wrote this song, I’m 22 now but I won’t be for long”, this latter theory would beg the question of how the performance came before the lyric.

We’re getting bogged down. Junior likes the song, and how could she not? It has at least two different bridges, a half-rapped middle eight and an unexpected ad lib at the end instead of a thoughtless repeat of the chorus. And it has “ba ba ba”s, making it a contender for First Song That Junior Will Actually Sing Along With.

It has competition from ‘Hey Jude’, ‘Telegram Sam’ and the Pearl & Dean theme.