The Battle of Alloyed Gulls (or, A Review of the New Nadine Video)

After the rushed release of Kheryl Kerl's 'Frere Jacques' Belvedere-flavoured L'Oréal Lip Slurry video, you may have been forgiven in believing that she had emerged smugly triumphant from the Girls Aloud solo career battle (which probably isn't a battle at all and any insinuation of one is probs v misogynist and anti-woman and snidey snark tabloid-filler of the lowest Perezian calibre, but whatever, it's a controversial journalistic 'angle' and I'm a woman so it's fine and not at all suspect etc etc etc). But wait! Nadine wouldn't let it lie, and the video for "Insatiable" has emerged from the ether (that being T4 a couple of days ago).

A later release could have worked as a unique tactical move: it would give you more time to hone/develop/refine your over-all concept or visual riposte - if it was one, which I'm sure it isn't and in saying so reduces both artists to wrestling topless in a paddling pool full of jelly in Nuts/Bollocks/Baps Digest/Mammaries Monthly and reduces them of any integrity as both artists and women - or not. For such a boozy-woozy-floozy sort of song (you have failed the imaginative adjective test) the video could be described by PR sorts as 'understatedly glamorous' or by others as "I'm sorry, I wasn't watching as I fell into a boredom coma and drowned in my own dribble" and/or "dull". As 'The Singing One' (and awkward dancer), of GA a full on ballet wouldn't have sat well, also because Cheryl was 'The Dancing One' and staged an am dram version of Swan Lake in 'To Be or Not to Be... A Horse! A Horse! A Kingdom for a Horse!' (We think she means "Promise This" - Ed). More reductionist Zoo journalism there for you.

So Nadine spends the video doing just that - singing. Singing in front of a hyperactive wind machine, singing sultryly into her microphone whilst writhing through some suggestive mic-handling choreography (with extra arabesques) and Glee-reminiscent hairography or whatever that episode was called where everyone tried to remove eyeballs with flicking hair follicles at high speeds -it had Eve in as the manager of the plagiarising headbanging rivals-, singing in nothing more than a black napkin, and with some crazy eyes as seen on Beyoncé.

But is it not a bit ironic that in competing with a fellow bandmate who now adjudicates a reality TV show, Nadine's video looks like one of the videos that gets made by a Cheryl-mentored X Factor winner, not by a fellow GA member (you have failed to grasp the basic concept of irony).

All the cliché's are there: rain machine, cringey band (espesh guy brandishing Essex White guitar), swooping shots, overlit closeups with blank background and a deliberately inoffensive, corporate (and cheap, rushed Christmas Release) feel. There's also that bit in the middle where she's wearing an awful teal coloured leather-bolero-aviator jacket over a half-arsed-GCSE-silk-painting-experiment-gone-awry swimsuit that makes her look a bit like that one in Hollyoaks that always wears hoop earrings and has a high ponytail. And she's also nicked that massive LED screen last seen in the ill fated Girls Can't Catch/Throw/Leave the Kitchen "Echo" video.

So, has Cheryl been trumped? The jury got bored and went to Boots to get a Meal Deal lunch and eat it by the ominously pungent water feature in the shopping centre. Despite the overriding sense that the record label were a bit hungover/generally shit/inexplicably transformed into Simon Cowell zombie hybrids at the time of The Nadine First Single Video Ideas Meeting at 8:30 on a dreary Monday morning plagued by tube strikes and freak snow storms, too much bronzer and a questionable Pat Butcher shade of lipstick, it's still all right. Nadine can, and most probably will, get by on that whole MiMi Carey 'Diva' evocation - that being that you're like, so megatalented that you can court bats with your vocal sonar and all you need to do to carry off a music video is stand about in a teeny little dress and a fantastic blow dry.

Which she does. Although it would have been at least 2000% better if she'd been a female James Bond in the Prohibition era who had accidentally stumbled across the Alesha Dixon "He Never Does the Washing" video held in an arms factory in Minsk coincidentally filled with dancers in matching suspenders, severe bobs and audacious prune coloured lipstain all directed by Ellen Von Unwerth.

Compare 'n' Contrast: Cheryl vs. Nadine

We know it is perhaps lazy, perhaps snoresome and perhaps even sexist to pit Cheryl against Nadine. But whatever, you knew it was coming, and we're going to try and keep it classy and pertinent, so hush youse.

What it is is is Cheryl Cole's comeback-post-malaria-sophomore-album-lead-single-survival-anthem. What the other thing is is is Nadine's debut-solo-lead-first-album-lead-single about being addicted to glasses of water (or something).

Right off the bat we feel we should just tell you that Nadine's single is about 23.8 times better than Cheryl's. It just is, there is absolutely no way round it. It's not just because Nadine can actually sing, and Cheryl can only whine melodically, like a classically-trained gnat. No. It's not even because Nadine clearly has wider and less face-palmy influences than Cheryl. Whilst Ms. Coyle has worked with GENIUS WILLIAM ORBIT, the much-maligned but still incredible Xeno-to-the-mania and a bevy of songwriting and producing people that you have probably *actually* heard of, Cheryl (who seems to be in a perpetual state of wishing she was black, American and signed to Def Jam - sorry, love it ain't gonna happen) has worked with a lot of hit-making urban producers in a bid for relevancezzzzzz. The irony is that Nadine's song sounds fresher because it's trying less hard.

"Promise This", the Cheryl single, starts with a bizarre and frantic repetition of the french word 'alouette' which, in the wise words of Wiki is "a popular French Canadian children's song about plucking the feathers off a skylark, a small bird. It originated with the French Canadian fur trade." Quite what Cheryl is trying to say with this, we may never know. But it feels unnecessary and unfortunately is the most interesting thing about the song. The rest is a hyper-uptempo-affair in which Our Cherly sings morbidly about dying before she wakes over a sub-Taio Cruz synth symphony. It's not offensive to our ears, and is, in fact, a million times better than the "Fight For This Love" a.k.a. THE MOST BORING SONG EVER WRITTEN, RECORDED AND/OR RELEASED. But it's not (probably not - we're not actually clairvoyant) going to stand The Test of Time. There's something peppy and irritating about it. This is pop music journalism at its absolute NADIR.

Anyway, by contrast, Nadine's song, "Insatiable", is a huge Alanis-meets-Duffy-over-some-synth-pads A N T H E M that is both immediately catchy, holds up to repeat listen and feels both current and classic. It's probs not going to make our end of year best songs, and it might not even make it onto our iPods/Phones (delete as applicable). BUT, and it's a big but (not a 'big butt', but a 'big but') it's a song we certainly can imagine ourselves thrashing about to/choreographing interpretive dance to/wailing along to in the car. Anyway, even if you don't agree with us, you have to concede that Nadine wins this round by default because she's also named her album Insatiable whereas Cheryl has called hers... wait for it... *drumroll*...

MESSY LITTLE RAINDROPS

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.