The time has come that the oft-feted chameleon of pop David Bowie may have to hand over that very label – there’s a new girl on the block – and she just so happens to be one fifth of the greatest girl band Britain has known. Yes, I’m talking about Girls Aloud’s Nicola Roberts.
‘Shyness is nice, and shyness can stop you, from doing all the things in life you’d like to…’ sang the Smith back in October 1985, when little Nicola was just one year old, growing up in the Northern climes of Liverpool suburb Runcorn. Fast-forward some twenty-odd years, and Nicola is the shy one no more; the ‘baby in the corner’ is all grown up, and with her debut album Cinderella’s Eyes, it’s clear she’s got a hell of a lot she wants to say.
Nicola is the heart achingly pretty girl at the back of the classroom, the one that doesn’t quite realise how beautiful she really is. She’s the magic and sparkle of something indefinable, something truly unique.
With her singles Beat Of My Drum and Lucky Day, she conjures up the kind of percussive-heavy shot of quirkiness that indie kids can dance to in clubs, while simultaneously sending pop lovers into shivers of ecstasy. There’s a kind of shiny, plain-faced bouncy joy to the tracks and I defy anyone not to sing along with Beat of My Drum’s ‘L-O-V-E’ chorus. Sometimes, the most simple pop hooks are the best, and Nicola’s first step into the solo world proves that time and time again.
Yo-Yo is one of the album’s strongest tracks, a delicate anthem to that tortured position of bewilderment that we all find ourselves in at some point. ‘Will it be a yes or no’ – where do we go from here? How do we even start to find a place for ourselves in the swirling medley of chaos that is life? Both Yo-Yo and the album’s title track find Nicola channelling a kind of Kate Bush meets Tron vibe, a baroque sci-fi medley of influences and sounds. The chorus is a bold, empowered ‘little girl, you got to do it for yourself’ style affair. In its references to childhood stories of enchantment, Nicola becomes the epitome of the fairy tale princess, crafting her storybook world around as she goes.
The album’s more intriguing, outré moments come in what is surely the most exciting pop collaboration since Gaga & Beyonce got together last year. Pop princess Nicola and indie gentleman Joe Mount from Metronomy. If ever there was a meeting of minds to finally close the bitter rift between the two musical camps, this would be it.
I could just as easily sit on Metronomy’s Mercury nominated The English Riviera. Like Nicola might try on another impossibly fashionable outfit - and for it to look just right on her - so to does she meld herself effortlessly to other musicians’ trademark sounds. But most importantly, it never has the tawdry cheapness of a ‘feat. so and so…’ – these songs are every bit her own.
Fish Out Of Water, the other Joe Mount co-write is full of grimy, menacing electronics and disturbing horror movie sound effects. It’s halfway between Bat for Lashes and something Thom Yorke would cook up on a day off from Radiohead. What’s so mind-boggling good about tracks like this is that it blast Nicola out of every notion of pop sensibility. You’d never find a track like this in a million years on the LP of an X Factor winner. In an instant, Nicola transforms herself into east London hipster, bewitching the masses of Hoxton’s hyper-trendy bars and clubs with one flip of her flame red hair.
Her voice is not the one you’ll remember from her Girls Aloud days – it is that of a far newer, bolder, more ambitious woman. With that long, sky-piercing note in Porcelain Heart, Nicola reaches heights that you’d scare believe possible from the girl the ‘haters’ used to dismiss as the 5th wheel of the band. Perhaps even more surprising is the sheer fullness of tone she goes for. In Girls Aloud, Nicola’s voice was ghostly, ethereal, but now there’s a grit to it, a teeth-clenched passion to every lyric that sees every word hit its mark. This is a Nicola that has truly found herself, one that has stared down ten frantic, bewildering years in showbiz and emerged the other side stronger than ever.
The album’s high-point comes mid-way with the spellbinding Say It Out Loud. Laced with touches of The Cure at their most pop, the song basks in bursts of 80s synths and feels like the kind of thing the producers of Skins can only dream of when soundtracking their latest episode. Here, Nicola is the fully-fledged popstar, burning the brightest she ever has. It’s the song you know she always had bottled up in her heart. Across Cinderella’s Eyes as a whole and in particular here, Nicola becomes not just one voice, but twelve – every track, every lyric, is a facet of her personality, a chapter in her storybook. The 80s love continues in a pretty cover of Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime - Nicola treats the track with such heartfelt tenderness you’d be forgiven for thinking it was one of her own songs.
Gladiator, the album’s most up-tempo, dancey number is a kind of oestrogen-powered Example. Here, Nicola is the girl that’d drag you kicking and screaming from the club if you dared cross her. Or maybe she’d just dissolve you into atoms with a soul-crushing gaze.
Take A Bite is pure M.I.A., all rumbling low-fi beats and buzz-saw techno wizardry which suddenly catapults into 8-bit Super Mario bleeps. Again, childhood emerges as an overriding theme in Nicola’s work - She is the eternal youth, the heart of a young girl that’s grown itself a skin of steel to shield itself from the cutting, sniping insults of detractors. Oh, and Nicola even finds time to rap – Time to up your ante Cher Lloyd.
“I had to feel like I would say and mean every single one of these lyrics, I’ve absolutely put every last bit of heart and soul into it,” says Nicola of writing the album, and boy has she done exactly that. It’s not so much that she’s singing the songs, but almost as if she’s pouring her very soul out in the form of her voice. Singers can boast all they want in interviews of how their latest hastily cobbled together effort is their most genuine, authentic, bare-boned record to date; but the truth is that the majority of them never even get a fraction of the way to the level of sheer honesty Nicola has gone for on Cinderella’s Eyes. The good, the bad, all of it is laid bare here – nothing is shied away from – and the result is quite often as heartbreaking as it is beautiful.
Never is this more true than on the album’s final song, Sticks & Stones. Over a backdrop of sweeping piano chords, you feel that Nicola is not just singing for herself, but for everyone who’s ever been made to feel like the odd one out, the one that was different. And then the slowly dawning realisation that it’s ok to be yourself, that it’s ok to be who you want to be, that everything’s going to be alright...
‘At home I cry, bet that you think that you’re on your own, and you’ve no-one’s hand to hold. Wouldn’t it be wrong if we’re all the same, don‘t surrender, don’t you change...’
