I am standing in a stranger’s living room in the nether end of north London. It’s 11am, but the blinds have been drawn to a close, which makes me feel as though I might have been smuggled into a safe house. There are bouclé armchairs and elaborate chandeliers and there are fat wedges of lemon bobbing about in my glass. I could have predicted these boutique tastes would belong to someone who works in pop music, and I could have predicted the specific artists under his management: Goldfrapp and Jessie Ware and The Scissor Sisters. That is because there is a pile of artfully arranged disco balls at my feet, but also because I’m listening to Girls Aloud gossiping from the other side of the wall. I then hear a scramble of high heels clacking through the hall, as Nicola Roberts leads Kimberley Walsh, Cheryl Tweedy and Nadine Coyle into this plush set-up. “Right,” she says. “Where shall we all sit?”
And so: it is official. The most successful girl band of the Noughties – who garnered more than five million in album sales, a record-breaking run of 20 consecutive top 10 singles, four number ones and a Brit Award – will be reuniting for an arena tour in the summer of 2024. “I swear to God, I cannot for the life of me remember how we even came to this decision,” says Nadine. “I just remember diaries being sent through and thinking, ‘Oh well, here we are!’ Suddenly I’m getting all these emails about flying around the roof of the O2 again.” She sounds genuinely flabbergasted. It has, after all, been 10 years since Girls Aloud last gave an interview and 20 years since their first appearance on Pop Stars: The Rivals. “Just don’t call it a comeback,” Cheryl adds, with a laugh. “I see it more as a celebration of a milestone. And listen: it’s gonna be unreal. And it’s gonna be the nostalgia of your life.”
The official line is that Girls Aloud disbanded in 2013 so that its members could pursue solo projects. But rumours that interpersonal jealousies had led to a breakdown in communication remain a source of tabloid speculation. “At this age,” Cheryl says, “you gain perspective and you stop caring about all the stupid stuff that would drive you crazy in your twenties. I’ve never felt more comfortable in my skin.” It’s a hard-won resilience born from Girls Aloud’s unique engineering: voted into superstardom by 213,000 Brits when they were still teenagers. Nicola was just 16. It means the past decade – and all their extreme highs and earth-shattering lows – have been meticulously documented for public consumption. In 2021, the band tragically lost Sarah Harding – the sweet and spontaneous rockstar of the group – to breast cancer aged just 39. The rest of Girls Aloud found themselves reunited not as colleagues, but sisters.
A self-described “loon” – who once grabbed the mic at the 2009 Brit Awards and unleashed a blistering, “It’s about time!” when Girls Aloud won Best British Single – the absence of Sarah’s wit and candour does not go unnoticed. “It’s hard to talk about it,” says Nicola. “It’s hard for us to be here without her. It was our 20th anniversary last year but we were in no emotional shape to even contemplate celebrating it at the time. Everything went out the window when we learnt about her diagnosis. We just needed to be there for her and support her as much as we could.” In her final months, Cheryl would invite Sarah to stay at her Surrey home. “She turned to me once and said, ‘You know when I’m not here, you girls should do something.’ But when you’re face to face with someone that’s dying… We just thought some miracle was going to occur. We all thought we might be able to do something together,” she explains.
“It’s not easy,” Nicola says, her voice beginning to tremble. “Sarah’s always going to be such a massive part of Girls Aloud,” Kimberley continues, in a reassuring tone. “I think we channelled our grief into all the fundraising we did for The Sarah Harding Breast Cancer Appeal and that helped us a lot. And as tough as it will be, we want to give Sarah her moment on this tour. We need it. The fans need it. She needs it.” The group will not be recording any new music. “We couldn’t,” Cheryl says, “because Sarah wouldn’t be included in that newness. This is about celebrating the 20 years we’ve all had. So the tour has got to be inclusive of Sarah because she’s such a massive part of our make-up. It will never feel like the old Girls Aloud again but we’ve reached a point where we feel ready to celebrate all of it. Sarah included.”
It helps, then, that Girls Aloud’s Xenomania-crafted hits feel just as current now as they did in the 2000s. “It’s because our songs never fit into a trend,” Nicola says. “It wasn’t like ’90s pop. We’ve always had our own vibe and sound so it aged well.” Their best songs – “Sound Of The Underground” and “Call The Shots” and “Untouchable” (to name just a small selection of what Cheryl refers to as their “modern art” masterpieces) – are a full-scale collision of genres sutured together with head-thrashing choruses. This might spare Girls Aloud from enduring the same fate as other reunions: ie, a “Love Of Huns” cheese-fest. Which is something Cheryl – who once sniffed at the idea of a reunion in a now-viral TikTok – knows all too well. “I called her out on this the other day!” Kimberley says. “Because she was speaking about us being 30 and I’ve just turned 42!” Cheryl interrupts: “You have to imagine that I was 21 years old at the time and 30 felt so old and cringe. I was singing ‘Love Machine’ every day and I was probably sick to death of it.”
I wonder what a 21-year-old Cheryl might think about her 40-year-old self’s latest acquisition: “I’ve recently converted and accepted – shut up – Crocs. Someone brought us them and I thought, ‘Lord’, and then I put them on and they’re like walking on air. I wouldn’t wear them outside yet, mind.” It’s a sea-change from the “spingle spangle sparkle” of Girls Aloud’s Y2K wardrobe, which countless pop stars seem to be paying homage to in 2023. See: Dua Lipa’s red hair (which is surely a throwback to Cheryl’s “And no ammonia!” L'Oréal adverts) and PinkPantheress’s personal mood board, which features a screenshot of Girls Aloud at the 2005 Capital FM Awards in strappy camis and flared jeans. “I know exactly the photo you’re on about! The brown skirt and the big chunky belt?” Nicola chimes in: “Oh my god, did I have a big gypsy skirt on? I think we must have dressed ourselves that day.”
To set another rumour to rest: will Girls Aloud be headlining this year’s Glastonbury line-up? “We’ve spoken about this but the thing is, we’d have to take our stage and so the logistics would be hard,” Nadine says. “But we are touring at the same time so maybe we could get a jet in.” The band’s publicist offers a more realistic response: “Um, they’ve not actually asked yet, girls, and you’re already talking about the logistics of how it would work?” Nicola ignores this. “We’ll obviously come up with some spectacular opening,” she says. “But all my ideas cost billions of pounds, which is the problem.” At this point – and much to my chagrin when listening back to the recording of this interview – I start brainstorming potential entrances. Perhaps the girls should ride onto the stage on a fleet of custom motorcycles? Perhaps their bodies should be oil-slicked and their hair wet and wild and windswept? “Listen, I wasn’t asking for creative direction,” Cheryl replies. “But I guess it’s subjective.”
After informing me that the band will be working under the same creative directorship they always have, I suggest that I would like to see a Renaissance-sized spectacle taking place. “So do I!,” Cheryl says. “So do f***ing I. And all the costume changes, too.” She turns to her management team, does the universal hand gesture for “cash” and winks. “It just has to be fabulous and twinkly! And if the Mighty Hoopla crowd wanna join? Come in. We need all of them,” she adds. “You know, I think it’s a beautiful thing to do at this age. To be able to do what we love the most – in this frame of mind – is going to make it such a better experience.” Of course, Cheryl, Kimberley and Nadine have all become mums in the past ten years. Will that involve a hard launch of their children on stage, Spice Girls-style? “The problem is that I want Bear to have a normal childhood,” says Cheryl of her own little boy. “I don’t want people recognising him on the street. But he’s twigged that I’m famous. The other day he said, ‘How lucky am I to have famous parents?’ I said, ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He goes: ‘Yeah. But it’s pretty cool.’”
“It is, though,” Nadine says. “Cheryl, you thought your life would be over at 30, but look at us still being able to do the same things we did at 17. That’s going to be so inspiring to so many people!” Nicola – who was often the target of the tabloid’s malign and misogynistic rule during the ’00s – agrees. “Women are so scared of getting ‘old’ because of ageism. It’s a massive, massive thing. So it’ll be freeing to go out there and not have to adhere to those pressures.” “For the first time I feel excitement without pressure,” says Cheryl. “Like, If 20 years later you still haven’t figured us out? That’s fine! Don’t come. We’ll close the doors. Because we just wanna entertain. It’s not like we’re saving lives here.” To which Nicola replies: “Actually some people have said we did save their lives.” “Well,” Cheryl concludes. “What I mean is, it’s just gonna be a massive party, because we all wanna have fun.”
And, in the words of the late, great Sarah Harding: it’s about time.
Presale tickets for Girls Aloud The Show go live at 9am on 29 November here.
