22 October 2009
It came with a collective hiatus rather than an individual departure, but Cheryl’s imminent career move seemed to loom over her group for an age. She made a success of it too, with more solo number one singles in the UK (five) and Ireland (four) than Girls Aloud managed in either territory. Prime-time visibility every Saturday night with a judge’s seat on The X Factor helped, of course. If Cheryl’s hits haven’t lived long in the memory, those thrilling Girls Aloud-Xenomania singles are also somewhat forgotten now: when was the last time you heard one in the wild? Maybe a cold shoulder from posterity is the fate of chart pop, but with Girls Aloud there’s also a sense that TV and tabloid overexposure made them ’00s UK celebrities at the expense of records that deserve to be remembered.
Most pop singles will be vin ordinaire compared to prime Girls Aloud, but it’s the obvious place to start with ‘Fight For This Love’. Sonically it’s a sleeker electro-R&B sound than the giddy idiosyncrasy of Xenomania, but with the static fuzz polished down for wider palatability and less interference. As a song, its chorus is strong but its verses are strangely clunky: “Too much of anything can make you sick” goes the first line, shuddering to a halt on that last word, and things don’t improve. Cheryl gives a competent first solo performance, but I come away from the underwhelming ‘Fight For This Love’ with the feeling that something has been lost.
