For me the reunion wasn't half hearted in terms of promotion or the tour. They had a fairly busy promotional schedule and the tour was really well received. What I found half hearted was the music. I think the solo Nadine Xenomania tracks are ok but nothing Xenomania did in the 2010s comes close to what they were doing in the 2000s with Sugababes, Girls Aloud, and other artists. If GA had continued into the 2010s, we would've had albums full of stale EDM like what Brian is producing for CuteBad. I'm content with them having split in 2013 because no new music would've came close to Chemistry, Tangled Up, or Out of Control.
Cheryl and Nicola have been open about the fact they didn't work with Xenomania because they wanted their solo music to be of a different sound than GA tracks. And Kimberley was never going to work with Xenomania considering she didn't want to release pop music. I don't think it stacks up that Chimola were sick of Bryan and Nadine and wanted to work with other producers when 3 out of the 4 new tracks were Xenomania ones, including both singles. I'd imagine they know Xenomania are what made GA special, and they were happy for Nadine to do the demos and then go in to record their parts after. No part of that process suggests to me that they wanted to push Nadine and Brian out of the way. I think Chimola are attached to BCYLM because Nicola wrote it, and Nadine only has the "my baby" vocals on it because she personally doesn't like the song.
Beautiful cos you love me is absolutely not a Xenomania track. It was written and produced by someone else entirely.
OTM was produced by the little men.
Only something new, and ENAT are Xenomania from 10.
Personally, I don't think we can say with any certainty that GA would have definitely gone to
tit or gone stale so it was best they split when they did, if they carried on with everyone in the band in agreement and giving it their full 100% and sticking to the prescribed formula that had worked for so many years....sadly we'll never know now.
Wouldn't have expected Cheryl or Nicola to use Bryan solo but there was much conversation in music magazines at the time that 10 came out that this was "the first time girls aloud have released non Xenomania material since sound of the underground the album" with people speculating why this was, the general consensus on the pop justice forum at the time was that there was unease between some of the girls and Bryan. Nadine later confounded this with the "they didn't like me cos I got more lines than them" interview in 2018. She said: "But yes, a thing that did cause stress in the band was the fact that I was given more lines and the girls didn’t like Brian [Higgins, Girls Aloud collaborator and the man behind production team Xenomania] as a result of it."
All the trouble seems to have kicked off in the OOC era, so seems to me no coincidence the next album released they made a point of going somewhere other than Xenomania when that was something they hadn't done since 2003.
The songs that Xenomania wrote for sugababes and Kylie in the noughties don't even come close to even some GA b sides for me, I've been listening to the GA podcast recently and the host said both GA and Xenomania were at their best with each other and I totally agree
In fairness, Miranda has left Xenomania now so the lyrics aren't as quirky, which is sad
![Frown :( :(](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
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