Last year, Parachute gave fans a taste of the kind of love-drenched pop Cheryl Cole was capable of producing – but whereas that was a mid-tempo workout with a suitably dance-focused video, The Flood represents the all out epic ballad, the perfect outpouring for all those emotions and feelings. It’s interesting to remember that Girls Aloud themselves hadn’t really brought out a ‘traditional’ ballad since their Chemistry album so the gentle touches of Cheryl’s new single make for a refreshing change. And by God is it good!
What I love so much about The Flood is that in essence it has two choruses, both as equally catchy as each-other. The poetic beauty hits you first, ‘You can’t hold onto water, it fills you up but never stays’, before the song its crescendo, rolling over you like a wave, sweeping you up into its depths. You can lose yourself completely in the layers of this song, each listen bringing something new. Those strings swelling in the background, the lazy tropical sounds of the beat, the sunny strumming of the guitar. This song transports you away to a magical fantasy world where it’s just you, Cheryl and the music – and it’s amazing. Her ad-libs are damn impressive too.
There’s a tenderness to the song, something the beautiful, picturesque – and the brilliant video only serves to further emphasise this. Set on the coast, all arty and windswept, it presents a more candid view of Cheryl than the hyper-stylised likes of the Fight for this Love and Promise This do. It’s all impossibly cute, like the song itself, picking you up on a buoyant swirl of love and emotion. This is Cheryl at her most natural, the acoustic flavours really suiting her voice. There’s a lush organic vibe to the whole thing, a sense of ‘rightness’, and as Cheryl sings ‘sitting on the shore all day, waiting for the tide to come’, we can think of fate and how we’re all waiting for that perfect moment.
The video can be seen on YouTube here.
