The Most Exciting 23 Seconds of Music You’ll Hear All Year..

When Girls Aloud started winding down for the inevitable solo career / reality tv show phase of their career, the smart money was on Cheryl or Nadine to become the new saviour of smart pop.  Then maybe Sarah.  Or Kimberley.  In fact, the smart money was basically on anyone other than little redheaded Nicola Roberts from Runcorn.

So here we are, two years later and, for all the tabloid inches they’ve collectively amassed, nothing has even been one seventeenth as thrilling and as exciting as Biology or Untouchable (or, heck, even The Promise).  Sure, Cheryl is pretty much the most famous non-royal in the whole entire world right now but even Promise This is a Girls Aloud album track at best.

For a long time, it looked like all pop-related music hope was gone.  And then THIS emerged..

AMAZING.

And then the advance reviews starting pouring in (you could, and SHOULD, read about it all HERE).  Suddenly, the prospect of a Nicola Roberts solo album became less about being some sort of musical equal opportunity project for people of ginger heritage and more about the very act of saving Credible British Pop.  Collaborations with Diplo, Dragonette, Metronomy and Dimitri hint at the very kind of experimental, cutting edge and oh so hooky pop that Girls Aloud (or, to be fair, Girls Aloud’s production house wunderkinds Xenomania) made their calling card.

So imagine the excitement today (or maybe yesterday, or, potentially, some time in the last four days – I have a life, you know) when this 23 second clip of Nicola’s first solo single Beat Of My Drum leaked..

Ladies and Gentlemen, all together now – “AMAZING”.

The perfect blend of catchy, shouty but defiantly british pop that is missing from the world music scene right now.  Sure, some might say it’s a little too hasty to be calling such things yet, but if the other 2,557 seconds of her debut album are of up to even half this standard, it sounds like we could be looking at the BEST ALBUM OF ALL TIME.

HOORAY!

(That’s another picture of Nicola.  You could very well imagine that she’s thinking something similar to “Hooray” in her head right at the second.  Know what I mean?  No?  Right then.. *trundles off*)