Nicola Snippets! Beat of My Drum and Porcelain Heart

And so, at long last, we're hearing it. Yes. Nicola Roberts, singing on her own. Without the other Girls. The prospects of Nicola's solo career have driven Twitter into something of a frenzy of late, and earlier this week saw a brief instrumental teaser clip of her debut single Beat of My Drum. Well, now we have another brief teaser clip... only this time it's got vocals on it!

'L, O, V, E' - That's Nicola rapping away, and with real gusto too. Of course, it's hard to judge the whole track on just a 30 second clip but there's a definite vibe of what I like to call either ArtyPop or CoolPop. M.I.A., Mark Ronson, Santogold - they all come under that same umbrella. There's a trend of stitching together twitchy beats and bleepy synths in a glorious whirlwind of sonic wonderful-ness.

It is resolutely pop, but so far removed from what Blue are trotting out for the Eurovision song contest or anything like that. And it doesn't sound like Girls Aloud - a risky move to make perhaps when you helped revolution pop with your sound, but then Nicola and the band as a whole have never been ones to play it safe. And you admire Nicola all the more for doing something completely different and out there like this.

Nicola Roberts - Beat of My Drum [Snippet] by paganpoet

Porcelain Heart - Beat of My Drum's very own b-side - is of course not a song about a person with a heart made of fine china (cos that'd be impossible), but rather employs the whole 'porcelain' business as a lovely metaphor about feelings. This kind of poeticism fits Nicola's own complexion and style to perfection, as does the icy stomp of the synth line in the chorus as Nicola cries out 'Please don't break my porcelain heart!'

Keen Girls Aloud fans will be quick to testify that Nicola has always had a considerable set of lungs on her, but that she never really got to show them off to the extent Nadine and Cheryl did. Well, now is Nicola's moment and while her voice still has much of that ethereal beauty to it, there are moments here where she really belts it out too.

Compared to Beat of My Drum, Porcelain Heart is far closer to the traditional Girls Aloud 'sound', and as such is sure to appease fans (how brilliant is it that we're getting a proper b-side anyways, in an age where they're increasingly dying out).

Daring, bold, adventurous - Nicola is all of these things. And a bloody good pop star. We salute her.

Beat of My Drum and Porcelain Heart are out to download on iTunes on the 5th June and can be pre-ordered here.

Nicola Roberts - Porcelain Heart [Snippet] by paganpoet