Album Info

Tangled Up (Bonus Track Edition)

Tangled Up (Bonus Track Edition)

By Girls Aloud

Pop - 2007

In the half decade since Girls Aloud were formed on Popstars: The Rivals—during which they released three albums and a... more

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About Tangled Up (Bonus Track Edition)

In the half decade since Girls Aloud were formed on Popstars: The Rivals—during which they released three albums and a greatest hits collection—the band had graduated from manufactured reality TV construct to become the most successful girl band in UK chart history, notching up more Top 10 hits than the Spice Girls. Nadine, Sarah, Cheryl, Kimberley and Nicola, at least according to them, were no longer the gobby teenagers and notoriously outrageous young women of the past. This newfound maturity perhaps explains why the kitchen-sink approach adopted by Girls Aloud’s regular songwriting and production partners Xenomania has been reined in a smidgen on the group’s fourth album Tangled Up. It is, in fact, a far more sophisticated-sounding record. That’s not to say that Xenomania and Girls Aloud’s innovative approach to pop is absent; there’s still a lot of weirdness to be found. Those wondering what the industrial edge of Pendulum’s rock-laced drum ’n’ bass might sound like paired with a melody lifted from a Pointer Sisters song will have their curiosity satisfied by the charging electronics of “What You Crying For,” while fans of Blur’s “Song 2” and Geri Halliwell’s spoken word verses in the Spice Girls’ “Naked” might find something to enjoy on the pogoing “Fling.” Meanwhile, “Can’t Speak French” is as preposterous as it sounds, smushing together jazz melodics, plastic ’80s electronics and a swinging beat, the band insisting that they’ll “let the funky music do the talking” over a backing track that is as far from funk as you can imagine. Still, there’s a traditionalism that prior Girls Aloud albums shied away from. “Black Jacks,” a Northern soul-indebted swinger, follows a more conventional song structure than “Biology” ever did, as does the scuzzy handbag house of “Girl Overboard,” an aching cautionary tale about excessive partying and falling off the wagon. “Call the Shots,” a glitter-soaked electro ballad, has a similarly melancholic texture. “I won’t cry for all the hunger in my heart,” Nadine sings on the pre-chorus, before Cheryl and Sarah add: “No, I won’t cry because I’ve stumbled through this far.” It’s a rare glimpse of vulnerability from a band renowned for their ballsiness and sees Girls Aloud subverting expectations once again. It’s understandable why so many consider it, and Tangled Up, their crowning achievement.