The Singles Jukebox

Q: Why did The Saturdays eject the Chris Brown CD?…

[Video][Website]
[5.69]

Frank Kogan: Comedy, Britain, 2009, 102 mins. Financially strapped impresario promotes imaginary girl group, intending to pocket advance payments and disappear. Local shopgirls with no singing chops are mistaken by press and fans for the girl group, play along as a lark for several days. When, through a series of mishaps, all of nation’s actual girl groups implode, impresario and shopgirls find themselves stuck with each other and having to make a go of it. Many witty scenes as good-natured girls cope with promoter’s ever-increasing hysteria; tone wavers two-thirds through because film can’t decide between sentimental uplift, with the girls rising to brilliance, or eye-level comedy, the girls remaining amused realists who never mistake their sparks of talent for genius.
[7]

Kat Stevens: Oh god if their new album really was called ‘Colonial Masses’ that would be so awesome, but I fear that it’s just someone mucking about in Wikipedia. If this song was a C19th colony then I think it would be somewhere like New Zealand – isolated, sparsely-populated and indistinguishable from Australia until 1841, but making good progress in terms of female emancipation.
[5]

Doug Robertson: They sacrifice their previous sound in favour of, well, not sounding like someone else’s offcuts and, while they don’t yet sound like a band who are carving out their own unique niche, it does at least sound like a band who are finally getting first dibs on the available tracks.
[7]

Pete Baran: Not going away long enough to risk their precarious standing as the UK’s number three girl band, The Saturdays manage to cement that position and even make cheeky overtures at the number two spot: Sugababes MUST TRY HARDER, Girls Aloud OFF ON THEIR HOLS. “Forever Is Over” is clearly a stab at “Since You’ve Been Gone” style powerpop which the Saturday’s belt out as if their lives depend on it. The overly autotuned slow start notwithstanding (surely if you have five singers you don’t need autotune?), and it does have a disappointingly underpowered rhythm track, but it is by far the best thing they have done.
[9]

Anthony Miccio: The Brit torch-pop vocals remind me why even Girls Aloud can’t cross over stateside, but that is one genuinely rocking groove. What kind of prefab pop puts the personality in its rhythm section?
[7]

Martin Skidmore: They’re decent singers, but apart from the fine hookline of this, it’s a little clumsy, despite some sharp and varied production. I like it, but I’m not sure it will convince anyone they have great durability.
[7]

Alfred Soto: The nasty Love and Rockets guitar break is the only reminder that a gaggle of Paula Cole soft-focus femmebots isn’t putting “Since U Been Gone” through the paces.
[5]

Hillary Brown: Dust in the wind. Medium follows message.
[2]

Michaelangelo Matos: Video: “I was caught in a place/Far away from the light,” Temptress #1 pouts while sitting on the sill of a window framed in zebra print. But wouldn’t some of the light bounce off and some of it be absorbed? Zebra patterns: tricky. Less so: the old-fashioned rotary phone that exists solely for the purpose of being slammed in half-assed “whatever” fashioned during a key line, a clear plastic hammock, viciously highlighted cheekbones, leopard print backdrops that make London apartments look even more exceptionally tiny than I’ve long gathered them to be, and the leftover wardrobe from a year’s worth of Playboy’s Book of Lingerie. Song: knockoff Taylor Dayne.
[5]

Keane Tzong: I will never understand why girlbands seek to display their maturity by performing ballads whose lyrics suggest a deep-seated loathing for the English language. Give me the immaturity of color-coded, enjoyable electronic pop textures and stick a pacifier in my mouth instead.
[4]

Martin Kavka: There is a hilarious moment in the video, right at the end of the middle eight, when Una, looking forlornly out her window, presses the delete key on her laptop to change the 72-point “LOVER” into “OVER.” Why would she — why would anyone — have a document on their screen with LOVER written in 72-point font? The answer to that is as inscrutable as the answer to “What exactly happened to sour this relationship of which The Saturdays sing?” or “Why did The Saturdays’ producers stereotypically decide to communicate angst by adding electric guitars?”, or “Why did the Saturdays’ handlers hire the guy from Busted to write a song for them? Were they impressed with the Eoghan Quigg single?”
[5]

Additional Scores

Matt Cibula: [7]
Chuck Eddy: [4]