Pop group Girls Aloud have announced a massive reunion tour for 2024, bringing their 11-year break to an end.

Cheryl, Kimberley, Nadine and Nicola will hit the road in May, playing “all the hits” and “a few favourites of our own”, they tell BBC News.

The shows will be dedicated to their former bandmate, Sarah Harding, who died of cancer in 2021.

“We’re going to do our absolute utmost to celebrate her in the most enormous, magical way,” says Nicola Roberts.

“For us, it will feel very much like she’s there,” adds Kimberley Walsh. “She came alive on stage. That was the happiest she ever was.”

But tabloid reports that the band have also recorded a new album and filmed a music video are untrue, they say.

“There is no new music and there is no video – although we’ve shot a commercial,” says Nadine Coyle.

“Making new music without Sarah would be odd,” confirms Cheryl. “But celebrating what we made together? Fabulous.”

Girls Aloud were formed 21 years ago on reality TV show Popstars: The Rivals. The format required that they be pitted against a “rival” boyband, One True Voice, with both acts competing for the Christmas number one.

All eyes were on the boys, but Girls Aloud blew them away with the eccentric, skittering drum-and-bass anthem Sound of the Underground.

They went on to score 20 more top 10 hits, including three further number ones and Brit Award-winning single The Promise.

In an era of formulaic pop, they were a blast of fresh air. Their songs were ballsy, anarchic and defiantly anti-boredom – from the two-finger salute of No Good Advice to the melancholy beauty of Call The Shots.

They first parted ways in 2009 after playing Wembley Stadium with Coldplay, before reuniting for new music and a 10th anniversary tour in 2012-13.

A second reunion was planned to celebrate their 20th anniversary, but then Sarah was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Read more: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67491420

I am standing in a stranger’s living room in the nether end of north London. It’s 11am, but the blinds have been drawn to a close, which makes me feel as though I might have been smuggled into a safe house. There are bouclé armchairs and elaborate chandeliers and there are fat wedges of lemon bobbing about in my glass. I could have predicted these boutique tastes would belong to someone who works in pop music, and I could have predicted the specific artists under his management: Goldfrapp and Jessie Ware and The Scissor Sisters. That is because there is a pile of artfully arranged disco balls at my feet, but also because I’m listening to Girls Aloud gossiping from the other side of the wall. I then hear a scramble of high heels clacking through the hall, as Nicola Roberts leads Kimberley Walsh, Cheryl Tweedy and Nadine Coyle into this plush set-up. “Right,” she says. “Where shall we all sit?”

And so: it is official. The most successful girl band of the Noughties – who garnered more than five million in album sales, a record-breaking run of 20 consecutive top 10 singles, four number ones and a Brit Award – will be reuniting for an arena tour in the summer of 2024. “I swear to God, I cannot for the life of me remember how we even came to this decision,” says Nadine. “I just remember diaries being sent through and thinking, ‘Oh well, here we are!’ Suddenly I’m getting all these emails about flying around the roof of the O2 again.” She sounds genuinely flabbergasted. It has, after all, been 10 years since Girls Aloud last gave an interview and 20 years since their first appearance on Pop Stars: The Rivals. “Just don’t call it a comeback,” Cheryl adds, with a laugh. “I see it more as a celebration of a milestone. And listen: it’s gonna be unreal. And it’s gonna be the nostalgia of your life.”

Read more here: https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/girls-aloud-reunion-tour

The first song I fell in love with

The Drifters – ‘Saturday Night At The Movies’

“I thought this song was brilliant. I loved everything about it and tried to sing like it all the time. I was this small child busting out ad libs and stuff, so my family would be like, ‘Wow, she’s really going for it, she’s actually really good.’”

The first album I bought

Sugababes – ‘One Touch’

“It’s the first Sugababes album – the one before ‘Angels With Dirty Faces’. Remember when you would go into Virgin Megastore on a Saturday and queue up to listen to CDs on those fuzzy headphones? You’d think you were super-cool going up town with your friends to do that. I remember listening to this album on the fuzzy headphones and then buying it with some babysitting money I’d managed to gather up. And now I know the Sugababes!”

The song I can’t get out of my head

Kylie Minogue – ‘Padam Padam’

“This song has been dominating my thought processes since it came out in May. Me and my little girl have conversations to ‘Padam Padam’. Like, we’ll sing ‘we’re going to the shops, the shops…’ to the tune of ‘Padam’, it’s a big thing in my household.

“I actually saw Kylie at the airport recently – we were heading to the BA lounge and there was Miss Padam in all her glory. I know Kylie because we used to share the same manager, but I still wanted to say ‘padam’ to her because I’m so used to putting it in every conversation. Luckily I managed to calm down and have a normal conversation with her. Sadly we weren’t on the same flight – she was going to LA and I was flying to Nice.”

Read more here: https://www.nme.com/features/music-interviews/nadine-coyle-girls-aloud-3529191

We’ve all lost our passport at some point or another, haven’t we? Nadine Coyle certainly has and it’s not a moment she’s likely to live down anytime soon. “When people see my passport, I think it’s triggering for them!” she tells GAY TIMES, reflecting on the iconic Irish Popstars scene in which she got her own birthday wrong back in 2001. “I’ve literally had people gasp in airports because they’ve seen my passport. They’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s the passport!’”

Just one year later, she would go on to join Girls Aloud, which would eventually become one of the most successful bands the UK has ever seen, with a whopping 21 top 10 hits and four number one singles under their belt. The group’s legendary debut album, Sound of the Underground, recently turned 20 – something that Nadine finds hard to get her head around. “I was 17 at that time,” she explains. “It’s crazy to think that it’s been two decades and that it’s still able to go and we’re still able to do so many amazing things with it. It’s so, so great.”

Since the disbanding of Girls Aloud in 2013, Nadine has released a solo album, EP and solidified her legacy as a gay icon through various appearances at Pride celebrations and, perhaps more importantly, the numerous memes she has spawned. “I am aware that there are multiple memes,” she says. “Am I an actual meme? Like, am I an actual walking meme? A lot of stuff that I do seems to turn [into a meme], I don’t know! I am just innocently, humbly minding my own business and then these things just take on a life of their own, I think.”

One thing Nadine didn’t do, much to the dismay of fans everywhere, was make a cameo in Derry Girls. “It would have been iconic,” she shares, explaining that the show is based on the school she attended as a teenager. “We had the same green uniforms, we had a nun, Sister Christopher, as the principal [and] we got the yellow buses to school,” she continues. “It was based on that, that whole experience. So when you look at the actual Derry Girls, that was me and my friends running around Derry going to that school!”

Here, Nadine talks to GAY TIMES about all things Girls Aloud, her love of Drag Race UK and her upcoming headline show at the Clapham Grand…

Read the whole interview here: https://www.gaytimes.co.uk/originals/nadine-coyle-girls-aloud-gay-times-interview/

Spooky season is upon us, but you will absolutely not find Girls Aloud star Nadine Coyle trick-or-treating, watching scary films, or scouring her local graveyard for spirits.

In 2006, the 38-year-old, Derry-born singer and notorious Gemini was the only member of Girls Aloud to opt out of ITV series Ghosthunting With Girls Aloud, telling furious host Yvette Fielding that she was “so, so scared… of ghosts, birds, dead things – anything”.

Nearly 17 years on, and celebrating Halloween is still off the cards. “I’m completely terrified,” she tells PinkNews via Zoom from her home in London, curled up on the sofa in a white hoodie, sipping from a cup of tea.

“Absolutely not. No ghost hunting. No seancing. I feel bad even saying the word.” She feigns a gasp: “Do I even say the word? Who knows what you’re conjuring up!”

Read the rest of the interview here: https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/10/19/girls-aloud-nadine-coyle-lgbtq-ally-hun-rupaul-drag-race/