SUGABABES | Red Dress

REVIEWS:
x (...) 'Red Dress' is a thumping tour de force from Xenomania, the hitmakers behind signature Sugababes hits 'Round Round' and 'Hole in the Head'. Not unexpectedly, it flirts vivaciously with pop songwriting convention, boasting not one but two killer choruses. Peter Robinson

x The Sugababes are getting as bad as Oasis once were, what with losing all these original members. Keisha may be the only original 'babe left in the line up now, but it's still business as usual for one of the few manufactured groups it's cool to like.
Red Dress is fresh, sassy and as catchy as hell, with new girl Amelle Berrabah's vocals sounding, well, not all that different to the departed Mutya's to be honest. There's also thankfully no 'message' behind the song unlike the rather contrived 'why can't we all just get along' lyrics of the girls' last single Ugly.
It also sounds a bit similar to Girls Aloud, which is no doubt due to the presence of the Xenomania team on producing and writing credits. John Murphy

x Xenomania are a production house in every way. Each sound is tailored to their singers. That's why generally they co-write when an artist commissions them for a part-work on their album. Each production tic and melody is designed to work with that singer. That's why Nothing Good About This Goodbye had to be tweaked and sped up for it to work with Rachel Stevens, or why Here We Go had to be made less plastic-rock to work for Girls Aloud. Interplay of textures. Aligment of sound with word. Attention to detail and precision.
And then, in comes Amelle, and pronounces "cooler"¯ slightly differently and the tightly-wound logistics and machinations of the pivotal opening part of the song no longer work. She doesn't fit, the spell is broken even though she does perfectly fine with every other word and line she sings, actually. When the "whoa, turn the candle light"¯ bit comes overlaid on the top, it doesn't mesh, because the best part of the hundred-headed pop behemoths that Xenomania turn out is that everything clicks into place naturally and you don't hear the seams (say, The Show), or, if the seams are there, they're made as pluses through the use of oddball tempo or dynamic switches (as in Round Round). Red Dress falls very much in the former category - a rapid-fire but perfectly joined double-chorused wonder and now you can see the working it just doesn«t sound as magic - what once seemed like alchemy now seems very dodgy indeed.
I haven't been this cross since Atomic Kitten re-recorded Whole Again with that useless slapper Jenny Frost. Edward Oculicz

x (...) the monstrously funky "Red Dress," a Xenomania track reminiscent of their frisky Girls Aloud productions, that makes excellent use of a rejiggered horn section sampled from a '60s Northern soul cut ("Landslide" by Tony Clarke). Ross Hoffman

x 'Red Dress' is top of the range pop (...), demonstrating that Xenomania don't keep all their best songs for Girls Aloud. Stuart McCaighy

x Re-recorded to replace all trace of the departed Mutya with sparkly new member Amelle Berrabah, Red Dress is an irresistibly funky effort from the amorphous trio and their producers - good enough, in fact, to erase all memory of its disappointing predecessor, Ugly. On first impression it sounds rather like they've swiped a large leaf from Girls Aloud's book, which is probably why we love it - shedloads of quirky sassiness mix with an infectious, fuzzy bassline, borrowed from Tony Clarke's Northern Soul classic Landslide. It's little surprise, then, to find that Xenomania, the team behind Girls Aloud's many hits, are the production force behind this single. Virgin.net

LINKS:
x video on YouTube
x Wikipedia page