The Sound of Girls Aloud: The Greatest Hits (Deluxe)

Album Review

After just three albums in three years, Girls Aloud had enough smash hits for a greatest-hits collection, The Sound of Girls Aloud: The Greatest Hits, which compiles a dozen Top Ten singles and adds three new songs. Since rising to fame on the television show Popstars: The Rivals in 2002, the all-girl quintet experienced remarkable success in tandem with the production team Xenomania. Not only did all of the group's singles reach the Top Ten of the U.K. charts, if not the Top Five; the girls were also well-received from a critical standpoint more often than not. The Sound of Girls Aloud includes the three singles from the group's first album, Sound of the Underground (2003), most notably the chart-topping title track, and the five singles from the second album, What Will the Neighbors Say? (2004), all of them Top Five hits. The third full-length effort by Girls Aloud, Chemistry (2005), was a bit less successful than the first two, failing to reach the Top Ten of the U.K. albums chart, yet it still managed to spawn the four hit singles compiled here. These 12 singles are sequenced non-chronologically. In addition, there are three new songs sequenced late in the album: "Something Kinda Ooooh," "Money," and a cover version of Tiffany's 1987 international chart-topping smash "I Think We're Alone Now." These Xenomania productions are welcome additions to the Girls Aloud catalog, especially the standout lead single "Something Kinda Ooooh."