'New Order inquired about working with the girls'

In 2003, talent show winners Girls Aloud were tasked with recording a make-or-break second album. 'What Will the Neighbours Say?' ended up being one of the oddest records in UK pop history. Gary Grimes speaks to those involved

In November 2002, the British public voted a fivesome of aspiring singers into a pop group. It was not immediately obvious that they would go on to become the UK’s biggest-selling girl band of the 21st century. Formed on the ITV talent show Popstars: The Rivals, a boyband versus girl band spin on a format that had one year earlier birthed the speedily vanished Hear’Say, Girls Aloud immediately differentiated themselves from the sanguine radio pop of peers such as Atomic Kitten and Westlife.

Most significantly, Girls Aloud – comprised of Nadine Coyle, Cheryl Tweedy, Nicola Roberts, Kimberley Walsh and Sarah Harding – were cool. Their debut single “Sound of the Underground”, with its surf guitar and jittery drum-and-bass lines, sounded like nothing else at the time of its release. Their sound as a band would be polished and pop, but with an edge that always veered into the utterly bizarre.

It wasn’t, however, a smooth ride. “Sound of the Underground” rode a wave of ITV hype to top the charts for four weeks, but sales of their debut album of the same name had underwhelmed their label Polydor. A second album – and there was no guarantee they’d even get one – would need to alleviate fears about the band’s longevity, their musical identity and the ambiguity of the five women in the group.

As the band prepare to embark upon a sold-out reunion tour of arenas across the UK and Ireland – which also serves as a celebration of Harding, who died from cancer in 2021 – we sat down with many of the players involved in the making of what would become 2004’s What Will the Neighbours Say?