GIRLS ALOUD | Sound Of The Underground

LYRICS:

Disco dancing with the lights down low
Beats are pumping on my stereo
Neighbour's banging on the bathroom wall
He's saying 'crank the bass,
I gotta get some more'

Water's running in the wrong direction
Got a feeling it's a mixed up sign
I can see it in my own reflection
Something funny's going on inside my mind
Don't know what is pushing me higher
It's the static from the floor below
And then it drops and catches like fire
It's a sound I, it's a sound I know

It's the sound of the underground
The beat of the drum goes round and around
Into the overflow
Where the girls get down
To the sound of the radio
Out to the 'lectric night
Where the bassline jumps
In the backstreet light
The beat goes around and round
It's the sound of the under
Sound of the underground

Chain reaction running through my veins
Pumps the bassline up into my brain
Screws my mind until I lose control
And when the building rocks
I know it's got my soul

Water's running in the wrong direction
Got a feeling it's a mixed up sign
I can see it in my own reflection
Something funny's going on inside my mind
Don't know what is pushing me higher
It's the static from the floor below
And then it drops and catches like fire
It's a sound I, it's a sound I know

It's the sound of the underground
The beat of the drum goes round and around
Into the overflow
Where the girls get down
To the sound of the radio
Out to the 'lectric night
Where the bassline jumps
In the backstreet light
The beat goes around and round
It's the sound of the under
Sound of the underground

I don't know what is pushing me higher
It's the static from the floor below
And then it drops and catches like fire
It's a sound I, it's a sound I,
It's a sound I, it's a sound I know

It's the sound of the underground
The beat of the drum goes round and around
Into the overflow
Where the girls get down
To the sound of the radio
Out to the 'lectric night
Where the bassline jumps
In the backstreet light
The beat goes around and round
It's the sound of the under
Sound of the underground

Where the bassline jumps
In the backstreet light
It's the sound of the under
Sound of the underground
INFORMATION:

Available on:
x Girls Aloud - Sound Of The Underground (2002) CD-S, cassette
x Girls Aloud - Sound Of The Underground (2003) CD

Credits:
Written by Miranda Cooper, Niara Scarlett, Brian Higgins, Xenomania.
Published by Warner Chappell / Xenomania Music.
Produced by Brian Higgins / Xenomania.
Keyboards, programming by Tim Powell, Matt Gray, Nick Coler, Tim "Rolf" Larcombe.
Guitars by Shawn Lee.
Mix and additional production by Jeremy Wheatley at Town House Studios for 365 Music Management.
Mastered by Dick Beetham at 360 Mastering Ltd. London.
Special thanks to Eve Bicker, Giselle Sommerville, Louise Griffiths.

Single information:
"Sound Of The Underground" was Girls Aloud's first single. It was released on 16 December 2002 in the UK, just 16 days after the group was formed on Popstars: The Rivals, and became the year's Christmas number one. The single spent four consecutive weeks at number one, achieving a platinum certification from the British Phonographic Industry.

Notes:
"Sound of The Underground" was one of sixty songs that Brian Higgins and Miranda Cooper wrote with the aim of launching their own girl-group. Higgins played the song to a Polydor boss who said he didn't have the right band to perform the song - until, a few weeks later, the idea of Popstars: The Rivals came along.

The song was originally recorded in 2001 by London girl group Orchid (Giselle Sommerville, Louise Griffiths and Eve Bicker), who disbanded before gaining a firm record deal.

REVIEWS:
x Watching the grisly early stages of Popstars: The Rivals in the late summer of 2002, the idea that the show would eventually produce a song as brilliant as Girls Aloud's 'Sound of the Underground' would certainly have seemed pretty outrageous. This deliciously overegged pudding of drum'n'bass beats, echoing surf guitar, day-glo girl group sheen and so-manifestly-bogus-as-to-be-gloriously-authentic punky lyrical attitude still functions as the perfect Xenomania manifesto. Ben Thompson

x Punchy, sassed-up pop over driving neo drum and bass beats captured the formula of the day and has set the tone for much of what's to come next.
Jacqueline Hodges

x One True Voice, the winner of the boys competition, were a convenient reminder of how underwhelming manufactured pop can be, but it was clear a little more time and effort had gone into Girls Aloud. Glimmering and dizzy yet perfectly poised, the group's first single, 'Sound of the Underground',� was a consummate calling card, vaulting them into the forefront of the nation's pop consciousness. From then on their position as our most nonchalantly daring pop group has barely been challenged. Paul Scott

x If you've never stopped to notice (...) that Sound of the Underground is the only No 1 record to whack a surf guitar riff over a drum and bass rhythm, therein lies the genius of the whole project. It takes a Trojan horse as photogenic as Girls Aloud to pull it off. Pete Pephides

x Sound Of The Underground, of course, started the story. Like its pop classic precusor, Vacation by Vitamin C, it's built around the kind of surf guitar 60s bands attempted desperately to hit, but failed miserably. There's a purring cat sound in the mix, deep down. Like the best work of Madonna, it's a song about dancing, about music, the beat, the rhythm - and yes, we hope calling it Sound Of The Underground DID annoy some tedious indie whingers. For Brian Higgins (also responsible for entry #1, All I Wanna Do, so the guy knows his way around a guitar sample), and the Xenomania team, it was another wonderful little pop milestone, but it would still take a while for the bands hierarchy and lowerarchy to become fully established, so it's not a brilliant song due to any amazing vocal tricks or flicks, but somehow it still wouldn't sound right sung by anyone else. It's an amazing debut single, at least in the all time top 10, and it's shot right throughout with a kind of liberating JOY the best songs are riddled with. By the end, the Girls sound rather possessed and demented, and caught up in the moment. If you aren't dancing by the end, there's probably not a lot of hope for you... ThePopGirls

x Girls Aloud's debut single, now the title track of their album, proved a first: it was a reality pop record that didn't make you want to do physical harm to everyone involved in its manufacture. Sound of the Underground featured Fatboy Slim dynamics and an irresistible chorus. Alexis Petridis

LINKS:
x video on YouTube
x Wikipedia page

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