Xenomania news: End of Decade: lists

End of Decade: lists
Posted at 8:33 PM, 29 November 2009 -

As the decade comes to an end, music publications and blogs are publishing their "best of the decade" lists. These are the Xenomania songs/albums that appear on those lists:

Observer Music Monthly:
75 best singles of the decade

23. Girls Aloud - Biology (2005)

NME - 100 TRACKS OF THE DECADE

39. Girls Aloud - Sound Of The Underground (2002)

Pop starts getting cool again…
The hangover of conveyor-belt comedy-awful manufactured pap was still prominent in everyone’s minds in 2002. Who’d have thought it would take the puppeteering of Louis Walsh on the back of Popstars: The Rivals to reignite people’s imaginations at pop’s possibilities?
The key catalyst at play here was the chap responsible for that weird vocoder effect on Cher’s ‘Believe’. Helmed by Brian Higgins, production house Xenomania would steer ‘proper pop music’ on course to become one of the defining buzz trends of the Noughties with a trend-bucking all-inclusive manifesto approach to their sound palette. JH

The Telegraph:
100 songs that defined the Noughties

15. Girls Aloud - Sound of the Underground (2002)

Xenomania's blend of electro and guitars set pop production standards.

Times Online:
The 100 best pop albums of the Noughties

62. Girls Aloud - Tangled Up (2007)

Working again with the lightning-bottlers at Xenomania, Cole and co leave the memory of One True Voice even farther behind. Not since Abba and Michael Jackson has pure pop been so unanimously praised.

The Decade blog - The 100 best tracks of the 2000s

61. Girls Aloud – Biology (2005)

Six months before Biology was released, the Crazy Frog was at number one in the UK charts after becoming an overnight ringtone sensation/irritation. This is only worthy of mention because of the precedent it set: if a guileless ringtone – a piece of music designed to last no more than a few bars – can be a hit, what would happen when a well-oiled pop machine took on the form? Girls Aloud’s finest moment, that’s what. Sure, Biology’s three utterly disparate sections could all be songs in their own right, but the decision to cram them together into some attention-deficit shuffle-mode playlist is the genius here. Every thirty seconds, another section is cut down in its prime, replaced by an even better hook. This tumbling, speedy feeling of Sunny D-esque sensory overload is allowed to build for two minutes before we get to the chorus, at which point the track is so high on multi-flavoured spangly pop sherbet that the only option is a broad grin to acknowledge the nonsense. Call it mash-up culture, ringtone pop or just plain nuts, what can’t be avoided here is that Biology is both brilliantly original and unconventional – something that, from the land’s biggest pop group, is deliciously rare.

Pitchfork: The Top 500 Tracks of the 2000s

245. Girls Aloud – Biology (2005)

RoberAwards.com
The Noughties: Honorary Mentions - Producers

XENOMANIA

In the UK, they have become the emergency choice for artists in need of a hit. The production team formed by Brian Higgins and Miranda Cooper has re-shaped the state of British pop thanks to their unique talent scouting skills. Higgins had his big break with Cher’s global smash “Believe”; since then Xenomania has been behind the hits of Girls Aloud, Sugababes, Annie and St. Etienne among many other pop starlettes.

Labels: End of Decade, Girls Aloud, lists