End of Decade: lists (part 3)
Posted at
4:47 PM,
16 January 2010
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The online music websites are publishing their "best of the decade" lists. This is the third round up of the Xenomania songs/albums that appear on those lists.
See also: part 1 and part 2.
Associated Content: The Top 10 Greatest Albums of the 2000s
 7. Rachel Stevens - Come and Get It (2005)
The second solo album by British pop singer Rachel Stevens, of S Club 7 fame, "Come and Get It" was deemed a chart failure and Ms. Stevens's musical career was put on indefinite hold although the album was a critical success, even making a list of the "1000 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die." It has gone on to become a sort of cult phenomena in the U.K. The album spawned the singles "Negotiate with Love," "So Good," "I Said Never Again (But Here We Are)," as well as underground hits "Crazy Boys" and "Nothing Good about This Goodbye."
NME: 100 Tracks of the Decade
97. Sugababes - Round Round (2002)
Xenomania in excelsis, and one of the ’Babes finest moments
 Probably one of Xenomania’s most perfect tracks, ‘Round Round’ is mean, it’s taut, it’s sexy and it’s awesome. Preceding ‘Sound Of The Underground’ by several months, it never falls into the slightly nudge-nudge Carry On ‘knowing’ territory that Girls Aloud often do – Sugababes were by far the cooler proposition. The chugging, locomotive introduction and whip-smart rhythms are totally dancefloor irresistible and the classic Destiny’s Child you-ain’t-all-that lyrics (“I don’t need no man, got my kicks for free”) perfectly nonchalant, in the days when they could still draw on Mutya’s sultry drawl.
The Stylus Decade: Top 100 Singles
65. Girls Aloud - Biology (2005)
 "Biology" is all hooks—sprouting in all directions, stuffed with more complex subtext than they're often credited with, hooks that build and build until "they give it up, and then they take it away/a girl's got to zip it up, and keep her head in the shade." And that's not even the chorus, or at least not the only one. You can't mistake their biology, but whatever Girls Aloud's genesis or growth, the reason they're so beloved is because they're pretty infallible at making this kind of surprisingly, loveably deep (with hooks, with ideas, with personality) pop.
Cambridge News: Soundtrack of the decade
Girls Aloud - The Sound of Girls Aloud (2006)
 While the girls themselves spent the decade looking impossibly glamorous (and occasionally, in the wee small hours, a bit “tired and emotional”), evil genius Brian Higgins and his Xenomania writing/production team have doggedly applied themselves to creating some of the finest, shiniest pop records of all time.
From the moment Sound of the Underground’s driving surf guitar riff merged into those retro electro beats and that urgent, panicky vocal about “water running in the wrong direction”, it was clear we were in uncharted territory. Since then, Higgins and co have barely put a foot wrong. From the plangent twang of No Good Advice to the frankly bonkers free-for-alls of The Show and Biology, this singles collection is pure, lipglossed pop perfection.
Girls Aloud - Biology (2005)
Why use one chorus when five will do?
GayDarNation: Albums Of The Noughties
5. Girls Aloud - Chemistry (2005)
Purists can talk all they want about innovation, sincerity and credibility, but as much as it might hurt them to admit, the quest for the perfect pop song will always remain music's ultimate goal. If, by the time of their second album What Will The Neighbours Say?, Girls Aloud had stepped out the shadow cast by Popstars: The Rivals, with Chemistry, their third album, the foxy five-piece took a stiletto heel to any memory of the reality show and stomped it to death. They were a real band, with killer songs.
Of course, Brian Higgins and the rest of the Xenomania hit-making team were the real geniuses, but could anyone have delivered this album's closer ‘Racey Lacey’, which lambastes promiscuous females, with such tongue-in-cheek brilliance? And no matter what anyone says, ‘Biology’ is among the best singles of the last 20 years.
Labels: End of Decade, Girls Aloud, lists, Sugababes
End of Decade: lists (part 2)
Posted at
8:59 PM,
19 December 2009
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As the decade comes to an end, music publications and blogs are publishing their "best of the decade" lists. This is the second round up of the Xenomania songs/albums that appear on those lists. (See the first part here.)
MSN writers' 20 best albums of the decade
Girls Aloud - Chemistry (2005)
The decade of the X-Factor has produced exactly one good group from the talent show format. Something about Girls Aloud has always had them being warmly received even amongst those who would normally sneer. After two accomplished but safe records, Chemistry was Girls Aloud and Xenomania's difficult third album. Almost title track Biology is really odd, like four separate tracks welded together. It ought to sound like a car crash, but it works. Long Hot Summer was the straight pop hit whilst Swinging London Town and Racy Lacey did for this decade what Blur did for the 1990s.
The Guardian: Alexis Petridis's noughties mixtape
Girls Aloud - Biology (2005)
A perfect example of postmodern noughties pop, this daring, brilliant song, performed by a reality TV band, sampled the Animals and sounded like three choruses rolled into one.
 Daily Mail - 50 best albums of the Noughties
20. Girls Aloud - Tangled Up (2007)
WITH the help of Xenomania, Britain's best girl group transcended their reality-TV roots to produce a pop masterpiece. It turned them into national treasures.
Key track: Call The Shots.
 Spinner: Best British Songs of the 2000s
8. Girls Aloud – Sound of the Underground (2003)
These TV talent show graduates have rightfully proved themselves much more than a flash in the pan, thanks in no small part to this sassy debut. Not your average girl band fare, this Xenomania produced track had bags of street smart attitude and bizarrely a bit of drum n' bass too.Labels: End of Decade, Girls Aloud, lists
End of Decade: lists
Posted at
8:33 PM,
29 November 2009
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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
End of Decade: Sound Of The Overground
(NME article, November 2009)
Posted at
4:37 PM,
-
NME magazine has published a special "End of Decade" issue, celebrating the changing shape of music over the last ten years. One of the key features on this souvenir issue is about Girls Aloud and Xenomania. You can read an excerpt of the article below (the rest of it focuses primarily on Timbaland and The Neptunes):
 Published: NME (End Of Decade souvenir issue)
Written by: Emily MacKay
Pop music since the turn of the century has been more exciting, more subversive, more forward-thinking and more downright danceable than ever.
When they predicted back in the '80s that pop would eat itself, they weren't wrong. What they didn't realise was that by feeding on its own internal organs, pop would only make itself stronger.
In 2002, when Girls Aloud won Popstars: The Rivals, reality TV was still in its fairly early days. Big Brother was only in its third series and the country was already well over the hysteria and subsequent undignified demise of original Popstars winner Hear'Say, but we hadn't quite reached the relentless conveyor belt of moon-faced idiots and exploitative freakery the genre ultimately descended to. It could still surprise you. That said, nothing could have prepared us for the Girls' "Sound of the Underground".
Wisely avoiding either the generic kiddy-pop route or the slough of sugary balladry that many subsequent reality TV stars have taken, it instead raced down the path the Sugababes had beat out with "Round Round" - sharp, danceable, relentlessly modern pop. The hard drum'n'bass rhythms, the ridiculous rockabilly guitar sample, the tense, abstract lyrics. Rather than trying to tack on an edge of credibility, it was made by people who knew exactly what they were doing. As a result we had the only decent Christmas Number One of the decade. It was smart, sexy, witty and it was... popular. It was a bit of a shock.
In the US, the influence of hip-hop and r&b had been pushing pop to new heights via the likes of Destiny's Child, Aaliyah and Kelis. British pop, however, had failed to meet the challenge of dance music, drum'n'bass and garage, remaining stuck in the novelty rut carved by the Spice Girls (you can bleat on about girl power all you want, but the plain fact is the majority of the Spice Girls' songs were naff as hell), Boyzone and B*Witched. "Sound of the Underground" (and "Round Round" before it) was a whole new kind of pop. It didn't glory in its own cheesiness. It wasn't wholesome Royal Variety Show family entertainment. It was shiny and sexy and perfect. While Kimberley, Nadine, Sarah, Cheryl and Nicola deserve their own credit (if you think you can give a song like that to just anyone, imagine the twins from this year's X Factor singing it), it made us start to think about chart its in a different way.
Growing accustomed as we now were to looking behind the scenes, peeling back pop's perfect skin to prod at the mechanical workings underneath, the producers of the track, Xenomania, became stars of a sort themselves. Seven years later we're excited about Mini Viva because they're produced by Xenomania. We're not excited by Xenomania because of Mini Viva. Xenomania leader Brian Higgins' previous biggest credits had been working with Dannii Minogue and Saint Etienne and writing and producing Cher's "Believe" (whose bizarre use of Auto-Tune is arguably still an influence in hip-hop today). Following "Sound of the Underground" and "Round Round", though, Xeno have sprinkled their magic dust over Kylie, Annie and the Pet Shop Boys, becoming a byword for wickedly clever, saucy, superficial, heartbroken pop. If you take all their writing and production credits together, they've had more UK top 10 hits than Madonna, Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears put together.
TOP OF THE POP
Brian Higgins of Xenomania on how pop got hip again
«The decade started with Hear'Say - to many people as bad as we could get. The rise of very cool pop music ties in with the decline in television. TV was the vehicle of pop and up until 2001 the Internet hadn't taken hold, hadn't become ubiquitous within culture. As a result you were still able to market things very heavily through the TV screen. People had less access and less ability to check how good something was.
«Britpop went terribly wrong. It was about four or five groups that were fantastic and everything else was rubbish. The Spice Girls and All Saints came along, freshened that up and changed it. Then you had four or five years where everybody followed on from that, so the quality was diminishing and diminishing and diminishing and it ended up with an attempt to revitalise the genre.
«We were just desperate to make uptempo dance-friendly records. It was about risk-taking, about being unpredictable, sonically, but still being catchy as hell. I feel people are much more up for taking risks sonically, which is fantastic. But at the end of the day, the number of people who can produce a strong musical idea, deliver a melody that fulfils an idea, is low. The person who can nail a great melody is a rare commodity in the music business.
«The emergence of La Roux and things like that don't give the general public enough credit - if you give them something challenging they can accept it and digest it brilliantly. La Roux is an example of a record that on the surface sounds difficult but listen to it a few times and you can pick up on the magic within it.» Labels: Brian Higgins, End of Decade, Girls Aloud, interviews, press
Xenomania news roundup
Posted at
11:43 PM,
27 September 2009
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- Girls Aloud's "Sound Of The Underground" was selected by The Telegraph as one of the songs that defined the decade. The article says that «Xenomania’s blend of electro and guitars set pop production standards». See the full list.
- The new single mix of Jessie Malakouti's "Standing Up For The Lonely" premiered last Friday on Scott Mills' Floor Fillers - skip to 0:44:00 to listen to the song. "Standing Up for the Lonely" will be released in November.
- The limited edition of Annie's Don't Stop is available to pre-order here. The special edition comes with an exclusive bonus CD.
- Alesha Dixon's latest album will be re-released on November 22nd. The album, retitled The Alesha Show - The Encore, will include three new tracks.
- Pet Shop Boys' Chris Lowe said in an interview that the reason the duo worked so well with Xenomania is because «there was such enthusiasm and such enjoyment of pop music»: «You don't meet that many people who are really into pop and the joy that you can get from listening to a great pop record — that euphoria, that shiny sound.»
In another interview, Chris also said that part of the pleasure of recording Yes was being part of the “whole pop experience” that is the Xenomania hit factory: «Girls Aloud were hanging around. You’d go into the sitting room and they’d all be there with their laptops. We had lunch with Alesha Dixon.» The experience reminded the Pet Shop Boys of the 1980s music scene, when they were pivotal figures in nightclubs, the Top of the Pops studio and European music festivals.
Labels: Alesha, Annie, End of Decade, Girls Aloud, Jessie Malakouti, lists, Pet Shop Boys
2000s: The first decade in which pop was never a dirty word
Posted at
11:41 AM,
08 September 2009
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 Pitchfork invited some of their favourite artists to share their thoughts and choices for outstanding records from the past 10 years. Bob Stanley from Saint Etienne is one of the guests.
He writes: «It's been the first decade in which pop was never a dirty word, not once. (...) It's been a time in which there was more of a willingness to squeeze adventure into pop than at any time since 1978-82.»
Bob Stanley mentions Girls Aloud's "The Loving Kind" and "Biology" as two of the highlights of the decade and also talks about the importance of the emergence of Max Martin, Timbaland, and Xenomania. Read the full article here:
Bob Stanley, Saint Etienne
THE DECADE WITH NO NAME
It's been the first decade in which pop was never a dirty word, not once. At the start of the 90s, Miles Hunt was telling girls they don't belong in studios and Jesus Jones were making hamfisted efforts to merge the magnetically repellent (in their hands, at least) rock and dance; now it's all a melting pot, we're in agreement, and all influences are up for grabs. It's all pop. In 2009 I read blogs by boys and girls alike writing beautifully about Britney/Dylan/Tinchy/Sneddon with the verve and bile of Lester Bangs or the NME's peak period writers. Possibly it's how the majority always felt before the internet gave them the means of expression, though the emergence of Max Martin, Timbaland, and Xenomania around 1999/2000 certainly helped to force the issue.
It's been a time in which there was more of a willingness to squeeze adventure into pop than at any time since 1978-82, from Oxide & Neutrino scoring a #1 single in 2000 which would have barely qualified as music 20 years earlier to Girls Aloud's 20th straight Top 10 hit-- "The Loving Kind", a four-minute purr-- in 2009. And at the other end of the spectrum, following hard on Westlife's ill-shod heels, we had the rise of the everyday balladeer on Pop Idol, X Factor and Fame Academy. The latter is almost forgotten but I feel obliged to mention it because it gave the UK its most musically inept #1 single ever-- "Stop Living The Lie" by David Sneddon. You think I exaggerate? It's impossible to hear the opening line: "He's drowning his tears in a bottomless cup of coffee" without exclaiming, "But surely...".
It's been "Get Ur Freak On", "Bound 4 Da Reload", and "Biology" vs. "Stop Living the Lie", Darius's "Colourblind" ("You make me colourblind"-- the decade's most confused compliment?) and indie landfill (too many offenders to mention). Pop is always at odds without itself, it's natural to take sides, but I can't remember a time when so many different musical camps were happy to feed each other. Ghettoization was out. It was smashing. My favorite single of the decade: "Flowers" by Sweet Female Attitude.
Also in Pitchfork:
- The Decade in Pop - article by Tom Ewing that examines 00s pop - critically acceptable, mixed with hip-hop/R&B, and more transparent than ever.
Labels: End of Decade
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7. Rachel Stevens - Come and Get It (2005)
Probably one of Xenomania’s most perfect tracks, ‘Round Round’ is mean, it’s taut, it’s sexy and it’s awesome. Preceding ‘Sound Of The Underground’ by several months, it never falls into the slightly nudge-nudge Carry On ‘knowing’ territory that Girls Aloud often do – Sugababes were by far the cooler proposition. The chugging, locomotive introduction and whip-smart rhythms are totally dancefloor irresistible and the classic Destiny’s Child you-ain’t-all-that lyrics (“I don’t need no man, got my kicks for free”) perfectly nonchalant, in the days when they could still draw on Mutya’s sultry drawl.
While the girls themselves spent the decade looking impossibly glamorous (and occasionally, in the wee small hours, a bit “tired and emotional”), evil genius Brian Higgins and his Xenomania writing/production team have doggedly applied themselves to creating some of the finest, shiniest pop records of all time.
