GIRLS ALOUD | Watch Me Go

Available on:
x Girls Aloud - Chemistry (2005) CD

Credits:
Written by Miranda Cooper, Brian Higgins, Tim Powell, Joshua Chasez, Shawn Lee and Lisa Cowling.
Published by Xenomania/ Warner Chapell Music Ltd., Zomba Enterprises Inc.
Produced by Brian Higgins and Xenomania.
Mixed by Tim Powell and Brian Higgins.
Keyboards and Programming: Tim Powell, Brian Higgins and Tim "Rolf" Larcombe.
Keyboards: Nick Coler.
Programmed by Jon Shave.
Guitar: Shawn Lee.

Notes:
"Watch Me Go" is co-written by JC Chasez (of *NSYNC fame).

REVIEWS:
x "Watch Me Go" is the sparkiest that Chemistry gets, with a great old skool hip hop meme (Salt N' Pepa?) giving way to a Fun Boy Three skank over which the Girls sing gleefully - or are they gleeful? - about a Catherine Millet lifestyle of random sexual encounters. "Got the gasoline, pour it on, I'm ready to blow!" they exclaim rather more convincingly than when Gwen Stefani used the same metaphor a year ago. And there's a great moment at 3:01 when a Girl (Nicola?) purrs "for sure" over a spooky Dammers keyboard line. Spooky is the word, though, for the song's central refrain of a night (or afternoon?) of sex, counted off in hours as John Lee Hooker (!) once did - "Quarter past two, I was dressed in red, tied up to your bed, begging on my knees/Quarter past three, I was in the shower, almost half an hour, you were at the door/Quarter past four, you came back again, said your name was Ben, then we went for more." Troubling, again, in an Isabella Rossellini/Kyle McLachlan/Blue Velvet kind of a way - I was almost willing the Girls to be saying "Bent you on my knee" rather than "begging on my knees," but with this song and its shadow "Waiting" we have to face the unlikeable but unavoidable possibility that S&M games are being enjoyed here in both S and M ways. Even here, though, Cooper's lyric devolves into bizarre allegorical surrealism ("I'll take a little bit of pain, OK, and the beat of the big trombone") which in turn gives way to a cackling schoolgirl chant of "I know what you're thinking you've been thinking about my butt!" to fade. Who's really cracking the whip here? Marcello Carlin

x The JC song! Mega-excitement! The backing music is very JC as well, and there are a few "OW!"s in the background which are so definitely him. You can't get much more impressive in my eyes than an *N Sync member on backing vocals. I wonder if this song was originally intended for JC? Presumably he would change the lyric "said your name was Ben", maybe to "Jen" or...um...I can't think of any more. I also have to bless the Fannypack-esque talky bit in this song as the best of the many talky bits on Chemistry. Jessica Popper

x "Watch Me Go" takes Gwen Stefani's interpretation of J-Pop and then randomly fuses it to some sort of Shampoo-meets-Neneh Cherry girl band rap until all you can remember is Nicola going "I know what you're thinking about, you're thinking about my butt," and really all I'm thinking is that Chemistry isn't quite as good as What Will The Neighbours Say? for reasons not quite tenable. Dom Passantino