In a more perfect world — a less embarrassing one (happy fifth anniversary, “Everything Is Embarrassing,” by the way), the press would dedicate their endless headlines not to The Grand Return of The Oh-So-Problematic Taylor Swift, She Of Questionable Reputation, but rather the comeback of Girls Aloud‘s Nadine Coyle and The Saturdays‘ Mollie King.
Luckily, I choose my own destiny and live in a bubble; specifically, a bubble that floats around the Xenomania cottage and pretends as though their streak of solid British pop perfection never sputtered out after 2014.
Sure enough, after all this time, the Xeno machine is getting all fired up again. (Eh heh.)
Nearly one year to the day since Miss Mollie gave us her unexpectedly chill and gorgeous electro-ballad solo debut with “Back To You,” the (drop dead) beautiful Sats singer-slash-Britney stan-slash-Strictly Come Dancing contestant is returning with a brand new track, called “Hair Down.”
Already, the title conjures an image of a wig on the ground — a step in the right direction.
The next positive sign? It’s with Brian Higgins, the Xenomania legend himself, who’s also orchestrating Nuhdeen 3.0 — and is described as an “immense track” and “in your face pop banger.” (Translation: party like it’s 2008.)
Sample lyrics include “Gotta let my hair down, I just wanna dance now” — a solid tie-in with Strictly no doubt, and the kind of lyrical complexity we’ve been waiting to hear for ages from Mollie.
“I’ve spent the last few months working hard in the studio developing my sound and experimenting with my solo music. I’m a huge fan of pop music myself and was thrilled about working with Brian Higgins again on this record. Brian wrote and produced ‘All Fired Up’ which was one of my favourite Saturdays songs; he totally gets pop and I think we’ve collaboratively come up with some amazing records that the fans are going to love hopefully as much as I do!” says Mollie.
Most importantly, the sole sonic receipt we’ve received thus far: this hair-flipping, heart rate-increasing teaser uploaded today (August 30), which (1) already sounds big and (2) suggests that Mollie may be on her way to breaking the world record for the amount of “na na na na“-s squeezed into one song.
Two days to go: the Xenomanissance is upon us.
“Hair Down” will be released on September 1.
