Cheryl Cole: Her Story - the Unauthorized Biography by Gerard Sanderson

distinctive sound courtesy of production team Xenomania. While it was clear that the girls had the better of the two songs, they wondered if the record-buyers were indeed ready for such an unusual pop tune. Would young female fans vote with their hormones and buy the boys’ record with the cute guys on the cover? The girls thought so and decided just to enjoy the ride and take pleasure in the fact that their song was considered cooler.
    With just days to go before the singles’ proper release, the girls discovered just how much hard work went in to being a popstar when they were told they had to shoot a video for the single in a freezing cold, disused London warehouse at 5 a.m. sharp. When they arrived, Cheryl and her fellow bandmates were surprised to see how large the production crew was. As they wandered inside, tired but with eyes as wide as saucers, it felt as if they had just walked onto a Hollywood film set. Crew members were busy erecting a metal cage covered in light bulbs inside the warehouse, while wardrobe assistants were busy setting out costumes for the twenty-two-hour shoot.Meanwhile, director Phil Griffin strolled around trying to find the best angles for shots while runners asked record company reps if they fancied any refreshments.
    The girls, who were so not used to this way of life, took it all in, open-mouthed, before they were taken to one side and told what was required of them during the day. They were told that they would be filmed as a group singing and dancing along to a backing track in the bulb-lit cage. Then each of the girls would be shot separately for the cut-aways. The girls were then packed off to hair and make-up to be transformed into popstars.
    The shoot itself was hard and tiring, but once their initial awkwardness at being in front of the camera had passed, the girls really got into the swing of things. Although she was nervous at the prospect of filming a real music video, Cheryl enjoyed everything about the day, aside from the early start and 3 a.m. finish. And she knew for sure that the long day had been worth it when she saw the finished results: the video was stunning, especially when compared to the boys’ video which had them walking numbly through London’s Docklands and sitting on an escalator that – rather tellingly – was going nowhere.
    The week the singles hit the shelves, the battle between the two bands intensified. Both groups did the rounds of TV shows, but it was the girls with their stunning looks who landed the more high-profile interviews, including a seven-page feature in OK! magazine. ‘The boys were dead in the water,’ one journalist who would work with the girls over the years at a leading teen mag said. ‘The styling was atrocious, the song a dreadful eighties throwback and just a lazy misjudged disaster. The thing is, the boys weren’t to blame. Pete Waterman was the one who chose the song and gave it such an out-of-date sound … Ofcourse, it doesn’t help that the girls were a lot more polished. Their styling was sassy and superior, the song extraordinary and their marketing campaign clever and memorable. The boys just didn’t stand a chance!’
    When it was revealed that midweek sales figures had the girls a little way ahead of the boys, the gloves really came off and the competition got personal. The boys, who had thought success would come easy to them, resorted to name calling, branding the girls a bunch of talentless singers.
    ‘Girls Aloud can’t sing,’ Anton sniped to the Sun. ‘So they are using their bodies. Suddenly the clothes have fallen off. They are doing everything they can to get to number one but they are making themselves look stupid.’ Bandmate Daniel Pearce, also talking to the Sun , didn’t hold back either and made his opinions very clear about what he thought of their performance that he’d seen at London clubnight G-A-Y, at the Astoria. ‘They sounded so flat, they just can’t sing. They can’t harmonize. They