Girls Aloud's Long Hot Summer: In defence of a Xenomania classic
19.07.2022 - 17:23
/ officialcharts.com
With UK temperatures today set to hit 95 degrees in the shade (that's a rather ridiculous 35 degrees Celsius), the time feels right to finally speak our truth.
It's a belief we've held for almost 17 years. Something for which you may judge us, but could never berate us.
We're here to state that Girls Aloud's Long Hot Summer is a bloody brilliant pop song, actually.
Somewhat tarnished as the track that ended Nadine Coyle, Nicola Roberts, Cheryl, Sarah Harding and Kimberley Walsh's streak of Top 5 singles, all we ask is that you're open to reconsidering your stance on this barmy Xenomania bop.
Look, we'll start out by saying we're by no means claiming Long Hot Summer is Girls Aloud at their commercial, transcendent best. We're not dealing with a Love Machine, Sound of the Underground or The Promise here. We're under no illusion of that. What we do have, though, is a bonkers slice of pop brimming with Xenomania's quirks and a camp-as-anything delivery only Girls Aloud could communicate.
Looking back, Long Hot Summer had the odds stacked against it from the start.
Tasked with creating a soundtrack for Disney's 2005 movie Herbie: Fully Loaded, Girls Aloud production house Xenomania - famed for their unique approach to writing - struggled with the confines of the brief.
"Chasing the soundtrack disrupted us creatively," producer Brian Higgins once claimed. "It was making us miserable."
Brian couldn't have made his distain for the song any more obvious. "Something had to come out and that was Long Hot Summer. It was made in a panic. It was a disaster record. I can't stand it."
Now, we get that we're possibly fighting a losing battle here, but we simply cannot comprehend Long Hot Summer being described as a 'disaster.'
The