Albums of the Year 2012 - #4 Girls Aloud - Ten

“Those who think that Ten shouldn’t count in end of year best of lists because it’s a greatest hits and pop music can f*ck right off. How can any album that has the likes of Biology, Love Machine, Call The Shots, Sound of the Underground and The Promise not be one of the best albums of the year? To deny it shows that you’re some sort of smug intellectual who doesn’t understand pop music.” Those were our somewhat angry and animated words a few months ago and we’re standing by them. OK, maybe we’ll take the bits about smug intellectual back and the bit about understanding pop music as well, but as any fan of any band will know, sometimes being a fan means losing objectivity.

So why Girls Aloud? Why Ten? Because Girls Aloud are the antithesis of everything that so called ‘real’ and ‘non-manufactured’ artists like Jake Bugg stand for. It’s very easy to criticise manufactured pop music, but the reality is that every piece of music that is recorded in a studio is manufactured in some way unless it’s recorded in one take and the sounds are not altered in any way beyond their natural form. Got a fuzzy guitar pedal? Put some reverb on the vocals? Oh hello, you’ve just manufactured your music. The manufactured brigade are often the same gang who also have issues with ‘authenticity’ - another concept that our ears couldn't give a flying fig for – all we want is a good song, irrespective of if it’s been created by a robot in a studio or three bearded men playing acoustic guitars in a cider house. And this is what Girls Aloud have – not cider or beards – but great songs. Forget their celebrity / tabloid coverage, forget their start as puppets in a TV Talent Show, forget their lame solo careers (except for N-Robz who produced one of the most exciting pop records of last year) and focus on the tunes.

Ten is stuffed full of the things; hooks, melodies, killer-choruses, big-pop-bangers, beats to dance round your handbag to and just enough edge and sassiness to set them apart from the banal dirge that masquerades as chart pop in the UK in 2012. “You better watch you’re back, we’re the leaders of the pack,” they chant on Something New, the fierce single used to promote the album. Yes, Girls Aloud know they’re good and they’re right.

Ten is at four in Breaking More Waves Albums of the Year 2012 series. Now that’s something kinda ooooh.

Girls Aloud - Biology

Some Things About Girls Aloud and Something New

*We apologise for any swearing in this post. Girls Aloud make us feel like that. In a f*cking good way.

So by now you will probably know that Girls Aloud are back. They have a new single imaginatively titled Something New and it’s sh*t out bricks brilliant. You will also soon be able to purchase Ten, a greatest hits album, released in November, which like all the best Greatest Hits albums will actually contain all of their best songs, because that’s what pop bands are about – singles not albums. So it’s a Best Of and a Greatest Hits.

Here are some further thoughts:

Nicola Roberts is Girls Aloud’s pistol in the pocket.

Girls Aloud’s secret weapon has always been N-Robz. N-Robz is what makes Girls Aloud different. Girls Aloud have finally realised this. Look at where she’s positioned in the picture above. Not to the side, or tucked away at the back but right in the middle. It is this transition from Nicola the ginger that couldn’t dance, couldn’t sing whom no one wanted’ to ‘N-Robz the sexy talented intelligent human and amazing pop star’ that completes the Girls Aloud journey.

After the 2013 tour Girls Aloud must never get back together again.

This tour needs to be like having sex with someone you not only fancy the pants off but love truly and deeply, but knowing that because they are about to die or move to another part of the world to marry someone else you will never get this opportunity again. In other words, a proper final passionate, sweaty, romp.

Girls Aloud are the best female only vocal pop group since the 1960’s. Fact.

Spice Girls ? Pah. Destiny’s Child ? Bleurgh. Bananarama ? Nowhere near. The reason ? None of those bands Greatest Hits LP’s would have so many great hits on it. Nor do any of them have N-Robz.

When the girls tour next year the set must only be about Girls Aloud.

But if they insist on performing solo career stuff only Cheryl (Fight For This Love) and N-Robz (Beat Of My Drum, Say It Out Loud and Take A Bite) should be allowed to perform. Throw fairness out of the window – it needs to be about quality.

It doesn’t matter who you are, tweeting pictures of your food is dull.

The girls need to improve their new twitter feed. It took less than 20 tweets before we saw a picture of their breakfast. Next they’ll be tweeting pictures of their pussies  cats to the world – the ultimate in dull tweets.

The music shouldn’t end here though.

N-Robz should have another crack at a solo album. The first one was the most honest and exciting pop record of 2011. Next time maybe she could transfer those qualities into a commercial success.

The Greatest Hits album will be one of the best albums of 2012.

Those who think that Ten shouldn’t count  in end of year best of charts because it’s a greatest hits and is pop music can f*ck right off. How can any album that has the likes of Biology, Love Machine, Call The Shots, Sound of the Underground and The Promise not be one of the best albums of the year? To deny it shows that you’re some sort of smug intellectual who doesn’t understand pop music.

The new single (below) is something kind of ooooh… No, it’s something kind of f*cking amazing. 

F.U.C.K.I.N.G  A.M.A.Z.I.N.G  No need for asterisks.

Girls Aloud - Something New

Blogger Poll : British Albums Of The Decade

Phew, once more today we’ve broken our own rules and posted more than one blog. Here is our final one before Christmas as we get ready to close until January 1st.

The rather good Faded Glamour blog recently got twenty or so British bloggers together in a virtual way to vote for their favourite three British albums of the decade. Breaking More Waves cast its vote for three diverse recordings. We chose one from each of three of our favourite genres - Contemporary Rock, Folk and Pop. One of our choices came in 5th.

You can see the Blogger Poll: British Albums of the Decade top ten at Faded Glamour here and read commentaries by some of the bloggers, including ourselves. All of the bloggers choices with blurbs can be found here . We have a strong suspicion that one of our choices (from the pop world) will be met with snorts of derision, but we’ve hopefully provided a valid argument as to why it should be included as a choice. The argument has been edited on the Faded Glamour site due to space, so instead here is our full explanation that we wrote to Faded Glamour of why we chose Girls Aloud and Chemistry as one of our albums of the decade:

It seems to us that with the hundreds of end of decade lists that are currently floating around, pop music is getting short changed. Now of course there’s a reason for this. Pop music is very NOW (that’s why the Now That’s What I Call Music Compilations are so cleverly named) and ultimately its bubblegum stylings are meant to be disposable. It is for these reasons that serious rock critics don’t nominate pop acts for such lists. They are long since forgotten. Yet go to any wedding or a retro bar or club and the sounds you are likely to hear are not the sounds of the greatest albums of the decade, but pop music. Think Abba Dancing Queen or Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out Of My Head (one of the greatest singles of this decade). We think therefore it is important to remember the importance of pop music in our culture and celebrate its resonance to the masses.

The noughties have been the decade of reality TV. From Big Brother to X Factor you simply cannot get away from it. And near the start of the decade Popstars : The Rivals created Girls Aloud. Of course it is easy to mock Girls Aloud, but here’s a funny thing - Chemistry is actually a dizzyingly great pop album. It’s full of great electro pop production and big hooks, with lead single Biology having about ten of them. With Chemistry Girls Aloud did the unthinkable and produced something for those who were prepared to listen with open ears that was sassy, fun, sexy and packed full of brilliant tunes. It wasn’t meant for the dustbin.