Helen's Albums Of The Decade

In response to NME's rather unimaginative and questionable 'Albums of the Decade' list, Helen Of Troy... decided the only thing to do was to put on our proverbial thinking caps and come up with our own lady-led version.

Doing the list was all kinds of fun, but it also made us feel really freakin' old!

So here, in alphabetical, rather than rank, order, is our top 20 lady albums of the naughties.

Bat For Lashes – Fur And Gold

Britney Spears – Blackout

CSS – Cansei De Ser Sexy

Feist – The Reminder

Florence And The Machine – Lungs

Girls Aloud – Chemistry

Gossip – Standing In The Way Of Control

Gwen Stefani – Love, Angel, Music, Baby

Kelis – Kaleidoscope

M.I.A.- Arular

M.I.A. - Kala

Madonna - Music

Patti Smith – Trampin’

PJ Harvey – Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea

PJ Harvey - White Chalk

Roisin Murphy – Ruby Blue

Sleater Kinney - The Woods

The Long Blondes – Someone To Drive You Home

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Fever To Tell

Yelle – Pop Up

Did we miss anyone off?

Tracks We Can’t Stop Listening To - Old And New, Just For You, And This Time Legal!

Unfortunately, we got ourselves in to a spot of bother over our last post, and as a result it was deleted. Fear not though, we've learnt our lesson and have come up with a completely legal and ehtical alternative... a Spotify playlist. Yes we're rather limited in what we can point you in the direction of, but at least this way we get to keep our good name!

Anyhoo, here are our slightly amended, current musical obsessions. Enjoy!

Click here to listen to the below via our nifty Spotify playlist.

1. Britney Spears - Circus

2. Tegan And Sara - Walking With A Ghost

3. Brazilian Girls - Never Met A German

4. Metric – Monster Hospital

5. Grace Jones - Williams Blood

6. Girls Aloud – Love Is The Key

7. Saint Etienne – Only Love Can Break Your Heart

8. Eartha Kitt – I Want To Be Evil

9. Florence And The Machine – You’ve Got The Love (Candi Staton cover)

10. Sky Larkin – Fossil, I

Wanna see what else we’re listening to? Then check us out over at Last.FM

Album Review: Girls Aloud - Out Of Control

Girls Aloud have always excelled at producing frothy, fun-as-fuck pop, but with Out Of Control, our favourite five-piece have managed to mature without leaning towards being boring or worthy. Not only have the Girls' and their excellent Xenomania producers honed their infectious, eclectic pop sound, they've managed to add real soul to their songs with a selection of bloody beautiful lyrics. As Adem With An E pointed out in his excellent review, it doesn't get much better than Untouchable's 'without any meaning, we’re just skin and bone, like beautiful robots dancing alone'.

Anybody who's heard lead single The Promise knows it's pop perfection. It gets better with every listen and has Helen Of Troy... grinning like a loon and feeling like a film star as we sing 'here I am, walking in primrose' while making our way through the sometimes less-than-glamorous streets of Manchester.
It may be perfect, but when Helen Of Troy... first heard The Promise, we were a little worried that the mighty GA were going to jump on the 1960s girl-pop bandwagon and produce an album of Ronson-alike sweet soul songs. Happily, Out Of Control is a completely mixed bag, lurching from high-energy electro tracks like We Wanna Party to the skiffle-icious Love Is The Key.

Though all tracks on the album are excellent, real stand-out moments include the Pet Shop Boys-penned The Loving Kind, which oozes the kind of heart-breaking yet detached emotion that makes Tennant and Lowe's back catalogue so consistently brilliant and the shake-your-ass-tastic Revolution In The Head, which manages to be cool-as-fuck in spite of Nadine Coyle's ill-judged Alesha Dixon-alike 'gimme the ting' rap.

Where as GA's previous offering Tangled Up really only became excellent around the track seven stage, Out Of Control is fierce from start to finish. We never fell out of love with Girls Aloud, but it's all too easy to just remember their singles. OOC reminds us that a great Girls Aloud album is more than just four singles surrounded by fillers. A great GA album is an eclectic joy from start to finish, which is more than can be said about the majority of albums by 'serious' artists.

9/10

Released: 03/11/08 Label: Polydor

Helen Of Troy Does Audience Participation

After a recent conversation with fellow blogging chum Adem – check out Adem With An E - about the greatest female pop acts of all time, we thought it only right that we pose the pertinent question to you lovely people and ask for your insightful thoughts on the matter, while starting a wee debate in the process… hopefully! Over the next few weeks we’ll be releasing our top three favourite female rock, hip hop, punk, electro and leftfield acts, and in return we’d like to know yours.

Anyhoo, after a few conversations with our friends and a little time for mulling over our choices, we both came to the conclusion that our top three female pop acts of all time are:

1. Madonna – needs no explanation.

2. Girls Aloud – we get a lot of stick for liking the might GA, but Biology is, quite simply, one of the best pop songs of all time. They’re the hardest-working girl group of the last decade; releasing five albums in as many years, not to mention the countless Arena tours and side projects, and have put out consistently good singles for longer than we can remember. They’re also extremely likeable, which is more than can be said for the super-surly Sugababes.

3. Janet Jackson – she may not be everyone’s cup of tea, what with the Nipplegate fiasco and her sometimes-sickly singing style, but songs such as Rhythm Nation, Nasty, What Have You Done For Me Lately and Black Cat, amongst others, are undeniably worthy of a listen to this very day.

So ladies and gentlemen, it's over to you...