Girls Aloud 'I Think We're Alone Now'

Chart Peak: 5

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'I Think We're Alone Now' was originally a No.1 hit for Tiffany in 1988... The Girl's {sic} rendition got to No. 4 in December 2006, making it their fourteenth consecutive Top Ten hit and 11th Top 5 - more than any other girl group in UK chart history.

I don't know who writes these sleeve notes and I'm not entirely sure I even want to, but it seems unlikely that it's been the same person all along. There are occasional variations in style and more to the point, when Tiffany's version of this song appeared on Now 12 the note correctly identified it as a cover version. Either way, though, there's no dispute that this version is a cover: weirdly, the credits in the booklet here identify all five members of the group as co-writers, but that must just be a mistake. It was the second new single from their well-received greatest hits collection and does very much have that air of an act grasping for a cover version because they were in too much of a rush to come up with anything fresh; unusually for such an act, there were plans beyond the singles compilation so new material might have been saved for the fourth album, or passed to other Xenomania acts.

That said, throughout their career they had (have?) a habit of throwing out lazy cover versions. Whilst I don't wholly subscribe to conventional wisdom about the excellence of their original singles (which often feels tinged with inverted snobbery), I will follow the common view that their covers are a weak spot, and whilst the best GA has the sound of people playing with the possibilities of pop and a mass audience, this feels like the exact opposite, heading straight for the lowest common denominator. The best that can be said for this is that it's not as bad as their next hit, the aforementioned attempt on 'Walk This Way'.

Also appearing on:Now 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73
Available on: The Sound of Girls Aloud