Cheryl Cole - Promise This

“Alouette-ouette-ouette...”  Take the hook from a classic French nursery rhyme and transform it into a dance-pop classic.  It could only be Cheryl Cole.  And that little refrain will be stuck in your head all day. Guaranteed.  And despite Cheryl’s claims in Girls Aloud’s 2008 single Can’t Speak French, she manages to do a pretty good job of it here.  “Déployer les ailes” indeed.

Promise This sees nation’s sweetheart Cheryl doing just that, spreading her wings and building on her already considerable knack at coming up with some of the best pop music out there.  Teaming up again with songwriter Wayne Wilkins who she worked with on last year’s mega-hit Fight For This Love, her new single is all processed beats and a buzzing bassline driving away behind synthetic strings that could have come straight out of a lost 80s New Order floor-filler.  As the chorus floats in, riding on a wave of trippy piano that lends the track vibes of Ellie Goulding, Cheryl sings ‘If I die before I wake,” a line that in hindsight bears startling significance when taken into account with Cheryl’s malaria scare earlier this year.

Yet despite this potentially morbid subject matter, Promise This is brilliantly uplifting – a fitting anthem for a woman who through everything has always remained ambitious, focused and utterly driven on pursuing the career she loves.  The first single from her second album - wonderfully titled Messy Little Raindrops - the song presents a stronger, more confident Cheryl.  The energy and passion in Promise This is plain to see and the song has become another well deserved smash hit for Chezza.