The other day we listened back to the live version of Turn Myself In from the Headlines tour and were struck at just how good a song it was. At the time of the tour, it had felt like little more than a cute live curio, a little bonus for the fans to fill out the set and offer a taste of what the next album might hold. Of course, as things turned out, said new album (On Your Radar) went for a direction far removed from the moody, rock-centric Turn Myself In, and you can kind of understand why the song was left off the record.
Praise must be given then to the girls for finally giving the song the proper release it deserves, the studio version serving as b-side to their excellent 30 Days. As far as fan incentive b-sides go, this is up there with the Nicola solo version of Memory of You on her Yo-Yo single, which we absolutely loved.
The studio version, interestingly, goes for a harder, crunchier vibe than the live take - the beats pack a real bite to them and the vocals have a smattering of vocoder laced all over them. The result is a haunting, introspective track that offers a fascinating look at what On Your Radar might have been like if the girls hadn't gone wholeheartedly down the dance route.
When I’d finished my first watch-through of the new Saturdays video for 30 Days, I had to sit back for a moment and just think. There was one thought above all others, one lingering notion of ‘Wow – they’ve actually done it’. But done what? Well, as I addressed in detail in a previous post, for quite some time now, it feels like The Saturdays’ chart success has been impacted on by something I like to refer to as the boyfriend-stealer principle, a subconscious worry felt by girls towards girl-bands that are perhaps ‘too hot’ for them to fully associate themselves with on an empathic level. And so, something had to be done, the issue had to addressed, the overall ‘image’ of what The Saturdays are – and stand for – had to be ever so slightly changed to re-welcome all those disaffected fans back into the fold.
And this is what the video for 30 Days does. No space-age lakes of black water or impossibly-white office blocks for The Sats any more – no, the setting for the new video is a humble American diner where that wonderfully quaint component of modern life is taking place – speed dating. The girls could have so easily followed the futuristic rave-athon vibe of their previous videos, but by bringing 30 Days firmly back to earth and grounding it within the cramped confines of a food outlet, they completely shift the focus of what 30 Days is about. Listen to the track alone and it sounds like a natural successor to All Fired Up, but combined with incongruous setting of the diner video, 30 Days strikes a far deeper emotional chord.
The video feels like one long series of interconnected in-jokes, of which we, the viewer, are in on. The Sats speed-dating their way through a plethora of guys is custom-tuned to show the girls’ personalities at their best, and allows them to be more than just the unreachable Pop Princesses of their other recent videos, but something far more relatable to the average fan. A very pregnant Una even gets to show off her tummy (giving baby Aoife a very early introduction to the Sats world!) and if that doesn’t go some way to elicit empathy, then I don’t know what will. Equally, when Rochelle flashes her engagement ring around, there’s a wonderful blurring between The Saturdays of the fictional-fantasy world they inhabit in their songs and videos with The Saturdays as real women that have their own individual lives. Here, they’re remade as the girls out on the lash (albeit where the only drinks are brightly coloured milkshakes), larking about and pulling funny faces. It’s universal.
Those facial expressions – well, I could watch them all day long. But the key thing here is that these expressions show of the Sats’ personalities in a way the impassive HyperBabes of All Fired Up never could. They’re now the girls you could know, the girls you do know, the girls you one day might know – all wrapped up into a right royal knees up where, despite the apparent failings of the speed-dating, everyone ends up dancing about and going home as friends. 30 Days – both song and video – become a moment of communion, of shared enjoyment and a bringing together of friendship so perfectly wrought in the longing of the lyrics: ‘each second I’m here thinking what I want to do when I get to you... one month, four weeks, too many hours...’
Sure, it doesn’t have the instant neon-flair of the All Fired Up or Notorious videos, but in terms of marketing The Saturdays to who they now so crucially need to be marketed to, 30 Days is spot on.
The short and sweet of it is that we love The Saturdays and we love cool dance mixes - well, Steve Pitron & Max Sanna's take on new single 30 Days is both. Accenting a real darkness to the track, the mix glistens with electronic trills and twists the chorus out into a shimmering, shadowed thing of real enchanting beauty. Mid-way it then all erupts into a massive, hands aloft Balearic synth riff which is all kinds of amazing.
The full 30 Days club remix promo contains the following remixes:
1. Max Sanna & Steve Pitron Club Mix
2. Ruff Loaderz Club Mix
3. Atomic UK Garage Vocal Mix
4. Ruff Loaderz Dub
5. Atomic UK Garage Dark Dub
6. Max Sanna & Steve Pitron Radio Edit
7. Ruff Loaderz Radio Edit
8. Atomic UK Garage Radio Edit
All that anticipation, all that waiting with baited breath for the new Saturdays single since the largely unspecified 'end' to the On Your Radar album campaign. And it lived up to our every expectation, exceeded them even!
Because what 30 Days represents is a new scale for The Saturdays, a fully epic club banger that builds on the All Fired Up formula and bolts on all the heartaching emotion of My Heart Takes Over for good measure. It put it in a wider scheme of things, it really is - as so many have long wanted from The Sats - their Call The Shots, their Untouchable.
As with all the best Saturdays songs, there's a top-notch middle-eight bit from Una and an incredible drum fill at 2.25 that sounds like a jet-fighter fly-by. The lyric video, in my eyes, totally fits the feel of the song - that sort of neon-drenched, fizzing realm of pure electricity - barely on the cusp of being constrained. 30 Days is that impossible, teetering moment on the edge of letting loose, of collasping into constituent atoms of pure energy. And boy does it sound good.
30 Days is released on the 13th May and a five-track iTunes EP is available to pre-order now including a karaoke version and the Ruff Loaderz Radio Mix of the track. More important though, is the studio version of fan-favourite Turn Myself In and a 'Saturdays Only' version of The Way You Watch Me (with no Travie McCoy guest raps!)
We haven't even heard the song yet, but some quick snooping on The Saturdays Facebook page has revealed this cover artwork for new single 30 Days!
What do we reckon? Speaking style-wise, it's very much in keeping with the On Your Radar look, so could this mean the single is fronting up a re-release of the album? One thing we know for sure, Una flipping her hair sure gets us overwhelmed. We like Vanessa's finger-gesture too, very Saturday(s) Night Fever.
Anyways, the song is getting its premiere on Radio 1 at 7.55am tomorrow morning - so make sure you listen in then.
While its status as the Saturdays' next single now looks non-existant, we'll always hold a bit of a torch for excellent On Your Radar standout The Way You Watch Me. And in this dance-up raveathon courtesy of 2nd Adventure, the track gets a second life as a pumped-up floorfiller. There's a bit of a Rhythm Is A Dancer vibe underpinning the whole thing, which we really like too.
Anyone that knows us will know that we adore the Saturdays. As such, we've been on the edge of our seat over the last couple of months eager for any miniscule snippet of info about their new single. And now, we've got a first tantalising glimpse of something!
According to website Chokolate TV (one of their dancers is featured in the video for the song), the new Saturdays single is called 30 Days! Throwing some ideas out there, we imagine there'll be lots of time-based metaphors going on in the song, and any track that renders part of its title numerically usually wins points with us (re. Britney's '3').
Some more rumours doing the rounds: Apparently the track's full sobriquet is 30 Days (To Love), which sounds very much like the type of thing you'd expect in a big Saturdays chorus. The track is also apparently pencilled in for a 29th April release date, and the fact the video has dancers seems to suggest it'll be rather dancey, which is good with us.
Or maybe it's self-referential and 30 Days is in fact 30 Satur-Days, and the five girls will get multiplied by six via CGI in the video, resulting in, yes, thirty actual Saturday girls!
Perhaps this is all going to amazingly postmodern too and it'll be 30 Days until we get to hear the track - but personally we hope it's earlier!
Two of our biggest passions are pop and sci-fi/fantasy, so when the two combine with brilliant ingenuity, we get pretty excited. Whether it be Cheryl Cole dressing up as Seven-of-Nine in X Factor press shots, Kylie appearing in Doctor Who or Madonna taking a styling lesson from the lands of Skyrim, we love it all.
So imagine how bowled over we were by this dreamy Saturdays photoshoot from their All Fired Up tour programme - we're going to dub it the 'Celestial Princesses' photoshoot. What with its wintery theme, it all fits very nicely with the Icelandic setting of the My Heart Takes Over video too. Because we like to let our mind run away with itself, we started musing about the photoshoot and the song and something began to crystallise within our consciousness. Play the track with this image in mind, and think of another time, another place, where all this is the beginnings of some Final Fantasy-esque epic of unparallelled levels of amazing.
Across the foreign oceans and the shores of black volcanic silt, up along the sharp craggy peaks and down through the valleys to a distant tower looking out on the realm arrayed at their feet - these five princesses hold a kingdom in the palm of their hands. Therein lies a song, of ancient orgins, passed down their royal lineage back through the hazy generations to the dawn of all creation...
Are you really walking away from this?
Can you really break this love?
Tell me, do you know - when is your heart in need?
If you leave, then leave
Make up your mind before you shut the door
Going back in time,
You know we have tried, too hard to let this fade
Almost disappeared, still we made it here
Look me in the eye, promise I won't cry
This is your choice to make
If you go, then go
You change your mind, I won't be here no more
If there's a chance
We might've missed
If there's a ray of light in this
If there's a small piece left of us
Somewhere in the battles we have lost
Look at me - this is where my heart takes over...
The sign of a good girl-band – and here we’re talking the ones that truly endure to place an indelible stamp on a decade of pop history – is how well they make that carefully balanced transition to ‘maturity’. Even the word itself is troublesome, because when we say ‘maturity’, we don’t mean mums dressed up all-sexy and riffing on the success of past glories (Spice Girls re-union anyone?). No, what we mean is that vital crux when the band crystallises within the public consciousness and take that step up to the next level, that degree of success where phrases like ‘national treasure’ and ‘pop greats’ can be employed with heft of not only long-standing enthusiasts, but with the voice of a nation whole.
Girls Aloud did it. Tangled Up (their fourth studio effort), via the cool, glacial beauty of Call The Shots, took them to the kind of band that could sell out arenas at the drop of a hat. Every member was a fully fledged celebrity (and woman) in their own right and with this album, that individualism was allowed to shine through in a way only glimpsed at before. It was a pop album that breathed richness and complexity in a way they only bettered in follow-up Out of Control.
And now the Saturdays stand at this point too – if we’re going by full studio albums (so Chasing Lights, Wordshaker and On Your Radar), they’re due their Tangled Up moment with their next release. And about time too. On Your Radar went by criminally underrated, charting poorly and receiving lukewarm reviews. Within a month of its release, it seemed to be already forgotten, in much the same way Wordshaker had before it. What was going wrong? What was stopping the Saturdays from becoming a band that could not only charm the airwaves with pop gems, but really make a stand in the album charts and linger around for weeks on end like your Adele types.
What did the reviewers (and perhaps more importantly, the public) want from On Your Radar? Maybe they wanted more depth, more meaning. But while On Your Radar might not be no 21, replete with love-lorn intensity and backstory, I’d argue it has meaning aplenty within it. As a pop album, it stands as brilliantly post-modern – an effort so sleekly synthesized that it almost becomes a girlband LP about being in a girlband. It posits the five Saturday girls as characters within their own contemporary drama, a world of celebrity get-ups, drink and glamour. It’s exciting, intoxicating; a world where the pace never dies and the every night holds its possibilities.
And this is the message the album sells to its fans. From the sexual politics and dancefloor allure of Get Ready Get Set and Move On U, the album propels itself forth on a hyper-drive of future-synths and breathy appeal. The album tells its listener: ‘this is the high life. We’re showing you what it’s like, now do you want a piece of it too?’. With a rub of well-oiled palms it invites you in throw the open door to a boutique paradise of hedonism, a sort of Great Gatsby for the pop age.
We hear the delectable Una Healy is working with Nerina Pallot on material for the next Saturdays LP – and for those in the pop-know, this is basically knee-tremblingly good stuff. Add in the fact there’ll be more Xenomania tracks (All Fired Up is for my money one of the best singles The Sats have ever released), and there really is the suggestion that the next Sats album could very well be ‘their’ Tangled Up. The girls still don’t have that long aspired-for No. 1 – maybe this time, that dream will finally become a reality. God knows, they deserve it.
Another week, another delving dip into YouTube for a Saturdays mash-up. This time, I found this exceedingly good mix between Forever Is Over and Deadmau5's Ghosts N Stuff. And it really works, turning the Saturdays' feisty pop number into a sprawling, epic club anthem.
What with The Saturdays delving into dub-step on their latest album On Your Radar (like everyone else in pop seems to be doing at the moment) someone called Lake Aurora seems to have hit upon the idea of giving one of their older hits (the brilliant Forever Is Over) a dub-step rework - the results are pretty decent!
And while we're on the topic of Saturdays remixes, this pitch-shifted male vocal version of All Fired Up entertained and amused me in equal measures. Basically, imagine the track as done by a boyband...
I love a good mash-up. I also love those ever-delightful Saturday girls. And in this dizzying, melting pot of a thing we call pop, throwing a bit of everything into the mix can quite often bring about the most surprisingly satisfying of results.
After hearing the Saturdays mash-up mix of their debut single If This Is Love on tour, I've become a little obsessed with tracking down some 'extra' version of it that exists beyond the bootleg live footage recorded by fans on pocket cameras during the live shows.
And so I came to stumble across this little number of YouTube - It's The Saturdays' If This Is Love mixed with Modjo's No. 1 hit Lady from the turn of the Millennium. Quite simply amazing. It's every bit as spacey and disco-tastic as the version they performed on tour, a fitting tune for any New Year rave-up occurring over the coming weeks!
Of course, what needs to happen next is for this mix to be then combined with this one (Moves Like Lady Jagger) for something of universe shattering proportions. When the Saturdays performed their very own mash-up on their On Your Radar tour, it was one of the undoubtedly highlights of the show - the hope now is that, in some format and by some means, the mix gets an official studio release.
(And speaking of the Saturdays, how amazing is the above photo - taken in 2007 before the release of their debut single - though it looks for all of the world like they've taken a trip in the TARDIS back to the mid 90s... Pop at its most colourful and brilliant)
The live setting typically presents most artists with the opportunity to mix things up a bit, to tweak a few of their songs, to try something a little... different.
Earlier this year, The Saturdays treated their fans to an awesome medley of Rihanna hits in a kind of pop-meets-pop live epic-athon. Not wishing to leave their new All Fired Up tour feeling underdone, The Sats have incorporated Maroon 5 hit Moves Like Jagger into their own If This Is Love for a new mash-up of suitably dancey proportions.
One thing's for sure, those Saturday girls have certainly got those moves like Jagger...
If there's one act in this year's X Factor that seems to have bucked all the usual trends, it's Little Mix. Normally, girlbands are the first to be booted out of the show as lacklustre support from the public sees them dropping like flies compared to the big personalities and individualism of the solo contestants.
Why have Little Mix managed to do so well in the live shows where so many of their predecessors have faltered? You could argue its down to styling, good song choices, a lack of strong competitors, but both the girls themselves and their mentor Tulisa have raised another interesting factor that bears considering.
Speaking to The Sun about Little Mix, Tulisa explains: 'They are endearing. They don’t seem like the kind of girls who are going to nick your boyfriend. They’re the kind of girls whose shoulder you want to cry on.'
On the level, the idea that a member of a girlfriend might actually steal a potential female fan's boyfriend is pretty far-fetched. What Tulisa is referring to is a far more sub-conscious level of the psyche. When we decide if we like a band or not a whole load of algorithms go through our head at lightning speed, many of them based on simple questions like do we actually like their music or not - but equally, many tap into deep-rooted fears and desires. One of these is - in the case of girls - is the boyfriend-stealer principle.
Here, the girlband prompts the paranoia part of our brain, stirring suspicions: 'These girls are really hot. I see them as competition. If my boyfriend sees them, he's going to fancy them. He's going to fancy me less compared to them'. Irrational fears, yes, but sub-conscious, automatic reactions - and all this plays into that on/off decision of whether the girl picks up the phone and votes for the girls or goes out and buys their single in the shop.
Speaking to Heat magazine, Little Mix revealed how their fanbase was primarily female:
'We don’t really get very much attention from boys, I think people think we’d get loads of guys asking us out, but we don’t. We get loads of messages from girls, but hardly any from boys.'
As Tulisa mentioned, these fans are seeing the girls more as pals than as potential competition. Why is this? Arguably, it is because Little Mix play to a more plain street-smart vibe than uber-glossy, super-sexy groups like The Saturdays. When The Saturdays are charting at a dangerously low No. 23 in the official album charts, it has to be asked why the connection with a young, female fanbase isn't there to the degree it should be. The boyfriend-stealer principle probably comes into it.
When it comes to purchasing music, the sub-conscious is often a powerful vibe. Continuing with the example of the Saturdays, go to one of their gigs or a club playing one of their singles and you'll undoubtedly see just as many guys as girls enjoying the music. But when it comes to buying the music, parting with their money to become the owner of a 'Saturdays CD' - far less likely. These guys might fancy the hell out of these girls and casually enjoy their music while in the company of friends, but their deep-rooted masculinity cannot extend to allow them to purchase the music.
These principles are only a small part of that innate music-buying, but sometimes, it's that small part that tips the balance, that makes the difference between a yes and a no.
When awesome new pop duo Oh My! meet modern day pop classic Higher, you know you're in for a treat. Here the feisty twosome girls tackle The Saturdays hit single with suitably rave-tastic results - imagine the song propelled through a Super Mario 8-bit sound card and you'll have a pretty good idea of what to expect.
With their flirty, uber-trendy pop credentials, Oh My! have already taken the blogosphere by storm, and this cover makes for a fitting celebration of the girls' opening night supporting The Saturdays on tour.
Every band worth their salt has that ‘magic moment’ when they hit their stride. When everything goes right for them. On Your Radar – the Saturdays’ forth (or third, depending on your point of view) album is their magic moment. Notorious, All Fired Up and My Heart Takes Over represent the strongest trilogy of pop singles you’ll hear this year and if that wasn’t enough, the album features a couple of straight-up all-out dancefloor stormers easily just as good.
Get Ready Get Set and Move On U – this duo of club-rocking energy and alco-pop drenched goodtimes are The Saturdays operating at their very best. Move On U in particular is the kind of sci-fi electro banger that pop fanatics’ wildest dreams are made of; accelerating to a frenetic Euro-influenced chorus, it’s the sound of the mythic everlasting night out. Add in the fist-pumping feistyness of Get Ready Get Set and you’re onto a winner. Faster rounds off the hyper-uptempo tracks with a neon-illuminated trancey chorus.
I’ve long been the first to say that I’d love the girls to do another Forever Is Over-esque track; to really get the guitars out again. The Way You Watch Me does so, but channels it in a far more light-hearted, New Wave-tinged way. In the process it actually ends up with the Sats sounding the most like Girls Aloud they ever have (with the exception of the rap interlude). In a post ‘Higher feat. Flo-Rida’ world, it was only to be expected that another Sats + rapper combo would crop up soon. To be honest, Travie McCoy makes a pretty passable effort and it helps add another dimension to the album. These pop/urban blends are the inescapable sound of ‘now’ at the moment, and it’s only fair that The Saturdays grab a piece of a pie.
Do What You Want With Me goes for a massive-sounding explosion of EpicDubstep – taking the skyscraper choruses of past Sats successes like Here Standing and lashes these into the mix with screwdriver synths. Along with For Myself and Promise Me (the dub-step is out again on this one), these songs form the meat of the album – by no means highlights, but prime examples of the now well established ‘classic Sats sound’ the group begun to create on Wordshaker. Four albums in and the group have undoubtedly found their feet, their place in the pop market; the confidence and solidity that affords them shows in tracks like these.
The Saturdays have never sounded as streamlined as they do here. The tracks are bigger, bolder and precision packed with hooks so big they’re positively bursting. Chanty vocals are a logical companion to the band’s forthcoming arena tour – a larger sound for larger venues. Despite this progression, it’s nice to know the girls haven’t forgotten their origins either – slower tracks like Wish I Didn’t Know are pure Chasing Lights-era, a return to the glossy, clean, charming-mannered sounds of that record’s brilliant title track.
Last Call deserves a shout out too – it’s by far the best ‘proper’ ballad the band have put their name to. The melody is spot-on and you can bet a tenner on the fact that if this was on the Adele album it would have been Number One for weeks. As it stands, it’s a shimmering, gorgeous bit of pop at its most heartbreaking. I’ll definitely be in tears when the girls perform this one on tour, and I’m sure I won’t be the only one.
Of all the tracks the Saturdays performed on their brilliant Headlines tour, it was perhaps the Rihanna medley that best showed off their true versatility and the sheer hotness of the production at large - all within the space of six minutes.
The Love The Way You Lie opening is surprisingly moving, somehow almost even more bittersweet than the Rihanna original when fed through Mollie's posh London vocals. Moving on to What's My Name, Rochelle and Vanessa prove their worth as the powerhouse vocalists of the group and Only Girl In The World remains every bit the pop party anthem.
If the girls' All Fired Up tour this winter is as good (if not better) than the Headlines outing, it's got a place within my top ten favourite pop concerts of all time already.
Nearly a year on, the London date of The Saturdays Headlines tour remains one of the best pop gigs I've ever been to. Sometimes, there's just an atmosphere, a vibe, a feeling in your bones that you're having one of the best nights ever.
The girls are releasing this very date as a live DVD available with the deluxe edition of their new On Your Radar album, and they've offered a preview in the form of Turn Myself In.
Originally touted as one of the tracks the band had recorded for the album, turns out that Turn Myself In won't actually feature on the final tracklisting - who knows where it'll end up, as a future b-side perhaps?
Either way, we have to make do with this live version for now - the track sees the girls going for a classy rock-based sound they haven't really dabbled with since the sublime Forever Is Over.
As the day-by-day gradual unlocking of the new The Saturdays album trundles along, we've fallen head over heels in love with a couple of the tracks on there.
Both follow in the tradition in the full-on dance fest that was Notorious and All Fired Up, tapping into the hi-powered Eurodance that's suddenly so popular all of a sudden.
First up - the fast-paced, feisty Get Ready, Get Set. Una veers close to quasi-rapping while Mollie coos 'You and me don't need an icebreaker, you and me just need a long night'.
Oh, and then there's the chorus: 'I can do it with my hands tied behind my back' - Is this a not-so-subtle reference to bondage? Ooerr indeed!
Album closer Move On U is possibly even better, bouncing on a funky synth-bassline that bursts into a trancey, acid-driven chorus. There's some nice chanty bits, perfect for shouting out in a club, shots in both hands.
This winter our favourite girls The Saturdays are certainly going to be getting the 'London Look' - they've just teamed up with Rimmel for their upcoming UK tour.
Speaking about the deal, the girls said: 'We all love experimenting with make-up looks, so when we heard that Rimmel London will be sponsoring our tour we were really excited. We all have Rimmel London in our make-up bags so they seem like the perfect fit to have with us on the road,’
It's not long to wait for the tour now and personally, we're already totally All Fired Up for it. Bring it on Sats!
