Disco dancing with the lights down low

Continuing my trip back through the 2003 album charts.

01/06/03 : Sound Of The Underground - Girls Aloud

I've never heard this, but I know and like the title track and have a lot of time for GA, so I'm looking forward to it a lot more than you might imagine.

Unsurprisingly it opens up with the title track, but I also remembered "No Good Advice" and their surprisingly decent cover of The Pointer Sisters' "Jump" (which apparently wasn't on the iniital version of the album, but it was on the only version available to me). The rest of the album is also surprisingly decent - there's not really a dud on there, although I did feel the beats were a bit relentless by the end of the album and a bit more variety across the album wouldn't have hurt matters for me. However, I do realise the album's not really aimed at me and you're looking for something to put on and throw yourself around to, then it feels like this would hit the spot.

We're at #2 with a new entry on the chart this week on the start of a surprisingly short seven week run (featuring a drop every week). And then things get weirder because it comes back for a nine week run, and then for a six week run and a few more single weeks here and there, with it last being seen for a single week in '23 (for the 20th anniversary release). The rest of the top five were Justin Timberlake, Evanescence, Busted and, quite obviously, a live triple album from Led Zeppelin (a new entry) and the next highest new entry was, also quite obviously, a Shirley Bassey best-of.

Wikipedia tells us this is their debut album and reminds me they were formed out of Popstars: The Rivals - and you get TWENTY points if you remember the name of the boy band who also came out of it.  There's quite a lot of text there (188 milliPeppers) but remarkably little content, although there is an amusing quote from the producer about the guitar riff on "No Good Advice" - saying it's "very very similar to the riff on the track "Michael" by Franz Ferdinand". Critically, it was well received although there's definitely a hint of "soooo much better than I was expecting" and commercially it got to #6 in Ireland and #20 in Greece (obviously!).

"Customers also listened to" The Saturdays, Sugababes, S Club 7 and JLS - yeah, they're all not a million miles away from each other. And Girls Aloud are definitely towards the upper end of such groups - they managed to maintain a decent level of quality across the years and this shows they started as they meant (and managed) to carry on.

And you get twenty points if you remember One True Voice!

25/05/03 - When it's good, it's very good
08/06/03 - Impressive, but...