Perfect shallowness - Why the Cheeky Girls are genuinely good
"Cheeky girls? Rubbish girls more like." Moody middle aged man to five year old son, Chepstow WH Smith 23/12/2002, and badly missing the point.

I'd rather have boring lyrics and good music any day. There are far too many Q listeners in Britain who confuse intelligent words with true musical talent. So many bands are dull dull dull and think they can get away with this by swallowing a dictionary. The Ramones never wrote a song about anything remotely profound but yet are remembered long after Kingmaker (who?)
This brings me onto The Cheeky Girls. The way to watch their only hit (the whole thing will be spoilt if they have any more hits) is with an involuntary expression of amusement mixed with horror. It's so surface. There is no depth whatsoever, and that is what makes it the perfect Europop record. Even Whigfield's Saturday Night had a slight wistfulness in the chords. The Cheeky Girls even manage to add a new dimension to the sexual bravado that Europop traditionally has by adding an English twist with the frankly seaside postcardness of "Touch my Bum". In fact the lyric "We never ask what you do" makes it a record out of season - such a sentiment is speaking volumes about holiday romances.
The only problem with the record is that in the UK at least, the sound - bouncey techno pop is dated - the Christmas number one, that five years ago would've been the Cheeky twosome a dead cert is instead Girls Aloud, which is a record that manages to contain influences of both drum and bass and Duane Eddy (in the twangy guitar).
But ultimately the story of the two Transylvania Pop Idol losers is one of success - cash from chaos and at a wider level one of the few positive images of Eastern European immigrants in 2002.

Their Mum wrote the song. Couldn't see it happening in Worthing could you?
posted by Neil at 4:59:00 PM