Nicola Roberts is the new pop diva to watch out for - listen to the premiere of debut solo single 'Beat Of My Drum' now!

And THIS, ladies and gentlemen, is how you make an epic single cover

Nicola Roberts was always the sort of forgotten one in Girls Aloud - well, along with all the other ones who weren't Cheryl Cole.  But then she got kind of fashionable and then she got kind of fierce and with the debut just now of her first solo track, she also has VERY PROMISING MUSICAL OUTPUT.

Produced by some people that did things for Goldfrapp and a guy that made Britney sound like she gave a shit, 'Beat Of My Drum' does a great job of introducing Nicola as one of the very few artists who are not afraid to chuck out something that sounds completely different to everything else that is on the radio.

It's urgent, it's frantic, it's a barely-contained hurricane of beats and samples, but every time it verges on getting a little too messy it pulls it back and dives head-first into a brilliantly catchy chorus.  It does just what a great debut pop single should do - it pushes the boundaries but doesn't go over them, guides the conversation instead of just being part of it, and it makes a GIANT FLASHING NEON STATEMENT to the throngs of pop plebs chomping at the bit.

And that statement is: "Nicola is about to be huge."



"Wicked."