The Promise

THE PROMISE, GIRLS ALOUD

(December 2008)

Christmas in London: "The Promise" by British girl group Girls Aloud is playing everywhere. It's the Christmas #1, hence it's always on BBC Radio1. It's playing in Harrod's when Daniel (who's visiting me since I can't go back to the States for the holiday) and I visit. It's playing at the Pizza Hut near Piccadilly Circus. It's playing on TV. It's playing at HMV. It's playing on New Year's Eve on Embankment by various BBC Radio1 DJs. It's everywhere, and slowly but surely, sinking its way into my brain.

I had become aware of Girls Aloud's existence in the months before moving to London, when I was trying (and failing, in hindsight) to absorb as much about the UK and London that I could. This meant reading endless travel books on London and watching "Skins" on BBC America. Somehow, I came upon a clip from a now-defunct (I think) show called "Generation XCess," which was a sort of 20/20 on teenage behaviors, and the clip focused on an amateur northern rugby team from Cheshire that indulged in, like, a thousand pints of beer a night, lots of bar-diving, and quite a bit of homoerotic behavior. At one point, they're all dancing in a pub to Girls Aloud's "Something Kinda Ooohh," and with all these macho guys singing along to this poppy girl song, I was like "What?" and decided I needed to know who this was. Hence, discovering Girls Aloud.

When I got to London, a week or so into my stay, I was watching TV with my housemate Stacey when the video for "The Promise" popped up (being the first time I heard it). I asked who was the group singing this '60's-soul-influenced pop song, and Stacey told me it was Girls Aloud and went with introducing me to the members, sorta: "That's the hot one (Cheryl), she's the one with a proper ledge of a voice (Nadine), she lives in Camden (Sarah), she likes to smoke pot (Kimberley), and that's the rubbish one no one cares about (Nicola)."

It's a great song, I think. It has a great backing, with these horns and awesome strings, which led a lot of music critics at the time to accuse writers Brian Higgins and Xenomania of jumping on the Amy Winehouse/Duffy/Joss Stone Brit-soul-girl thing, but I disagree with that assessment because, while on a superficial level, you can agree with that, but if you really listen to it, "The Promise" is not at all a traditional pop song in its structure: there's the catchy chorus, for sure, but each verse is constructed differently, to show off each of the girls singing, something a girl group in the States would never ever do (Destiny's Child, I'm looking at you). The first verse, which mimes the opening horns, is sung by all five of the girls, then chorus, then a verse with a new melody sung by Cheryl and Sarah, then chorus, then another verse by Sarah with a whole new melody, then another new melody by Nadine and Nicola, then chorus, then bridge (?) by Kimberley... it's a bit of a mess of a song, yet it completely works and you don't think about it when you listen to it. Because it's still an amazing song.

In the utility room of 43 Clarendon Court, which is where I lived with Matt and Stacey in Golders Green, we had a poster of "You Can't Mess With the Zohan" that we got at the Freshers Fair during our first week at Central that we dubbed "The Pissed Poster," meaning that anytime that any of the three of us were drunk (which was often), we would scribble a drunken message on the poster. At one point in early January, after Daniel had gone back to the States and Central had started up again for the spring term, I had gotten drunk at the pub (which meant drinking, like, a beer or two) and had "The Promise" stuck in my head, so I decided to scribble the lyrics of the chorus on the poster: "You're gonna make me, make me love you! Nothing at all that I cannot do! The promise I made, promise I made, starting to fade, starting to fade!" Matt and Stacey were thoroughly amused by this.