The Saturdays put down the poppers for 'My Heart Takes Over' - listen to the premiere now!

Not Girls Aloud.

The Saturdays, in all their handlers' infinite wisdom, decided to chuck in the R&B-lite sound they had since their inception, and go for a full-on club attack on their new album 'On Your Radar' - a new album which has already had three singles taken from it, and won't even be out until next year.  So basically it will be a compilation album of a bunch of singles you've already heard, and some filler tracks that after hearing you'll wish you hadn't.

But insane state-of-the-industry rantings aside, we're totally fans of The Sats' new direction, albeit in an apathetic "meh" kind of way.  Sure, they're chasing the Britney/Rihanna/Everyone Else trend, and yeah, they haven't put out even one song in their entire history that could qualify as a "classic," but is anyone really expecting any sort of artistic achievement from these ladies?

The answer is no.

To be completely fair (AS WE ALWAYS ARE Ed: this is blatantly false. Delete.) the album's second single 'All Fired Up' was a bit of an underrated masterpiece of forward-thinking pop, but again, to be completely fair (Ed: STOP SAYING THIS) the band themselves really had nothing to do with it other than showing up for a few minutes and yelling into an autotune machine.

For album single number 3,  the girls have done one of those songs that happens during a concert right after the band has said something like "if it's all right with you, we're going to slow it on down."  Inevitably, in those situations, it most certainly is NOT alright with us, but it's something we all have to deal with and sometimes we all have to realize not everything can be glitterbomb donk fierceness all the time.  As mid-tempo ballads go, it's actually not half bad, but it's got a shelf-life of about a week on our iPod after which it will fade into oblivion only to be recalled in the context of the group's Wikipedia discography.  

Long story short, at the end of the day we're left with some girls who sing what their told to, some label execs who have made relatively wise decisions regarding their repertoire, and the comforting personal knowledge that the Sats' new track is fine and that when the album FINALLY comes out after another six singles and a stadium tour, it will be fine too.

Which is good enough.

Today is the day The Saturdays got a budget for a video - watch 'All Fired Up's' teaser now

"there is a lot of sex at our college."

The Saturdays have crap videos.  That's just something we have all accepted and learned to deal with.  Which is why it came as such a shock to see this teaser appear on the interwebs for their new single 'All Fired Up' - which became available for download yesterday in the UK. 

It's almost classy looking (!), and has a cool water bit to boot (!!).  It's not going to end up on Twitter associated with tags like #AMAZEBALLS or #GROUNDBREAKING or #WERKYOURPUZZY, etc., but we're talking about the band who gave us the American Eagle-advert that was 'Missing You,' for chrissake, so let's have some perspective.  Seriously, look it up.  You'll vomit.  (yay skinny!)

We already talked about how 'Fired' is one of those songs you have to let grow on you - a bit like a slow-moving fungus that is completely innocuous until it reaches your brain stem, at which point it makes you do a few booty bumps, rip off your clothes and TWIRL TWIRL TWIRL on the dancefloor - but the video at first glance is an in-your-face, moderately-budgeted clip that isn't really special in any way but can at least keep up with whatever botoxed-miming that the Sugababes have coming down the pike. 

AND THAT'S ALL WE EVER REALLY WANTED FROM THEM.

The Saturdays' new single is a grower not a shower - listen to 'All Fired Up' now

Always put your best foot forward.

Until very recently (read: yesterday) we weren't really sure how to feel about The Saturdays.  They started out as a sort of Girls Aloud/Sugababes hybrid, and looked, for a while, poised to step into the vacant ULTIMATE GIRLBAND POPFORCE FIERCENESS shoes that were left behind when both those bands went on a spa holiday or whatever the hell it was they were doing instead of making music.  

For whatever reason, though, The Saturdays just never had their breakout moment.  Sure they've been holding it down as a solid second-tier group with a string of top tens under their Gucci belts, but they've not really given anyone a reason to really care about them as a musical force. Until now.

'All Fired Up' finds The Saturdays pushing the envelope for the first time in their four years of existence.  And it works pretty damn well, since for once they aren't trailing after everyone else, chucking out tunes that sound as if they were cobbled together from superior groups' leftover scraps.

As tonally arresting as the tune is, though, there's no hook to pull the casual listener in.  It takes a few listens to really appreciate what The People Who Tell The Saturdays What To Sing were trying to do, but once it clicks, IT CLICKS.  And oddly, the fact that it's not an obvious hit might be exactly what makes it huge.

Every Saturdays song so far has been so straightforward and rudimentary that it could be consumed fully in one listen.  They were songs that made hundreds of thousands of people say "oh, that's nice, I think I'll download it and then never listen to it again," - songs that get the job done, but that can never turn a girlgroup into a PROPERLY GENIUS BAND.

So really what we're saying is that The Saturdays needed something special, and finally, 3 albums in, they got it.  'Fired' premiered yesterday, and it's a tuneless, raved-up, lyrically nonsensical clubfest that leaves the listener confused, sweaty, exhausted and smelling of Jaegermeister. 

And it is amazing.