Are Little Mix the new Girls Aloud?

Finally: a group has won the X Factor. The question is, will they do what Louis Walsh predicted ad nauseum after every single performance last weekend and become “the next big girlband?” Or, what he really means, the next Girls Aloud?

Despite the fact that they tend to do well commercially, X Factor history has long looked unfavourably on groups. Little Mix are the first to ever win the show.


In 2008 JLS, for example, were runners up on the series which was won by Alexandra Burke, but are currently the UK’s most successful act to have come out of a talent programme, notching up five number ones in less than 3 years.

Girls Aloud came second in the 2002 reality TV show, Popstars: the Rivals to boyband, One True Voice, but now have had an admirable four number ones to their names and 16 further top tens.

So in answer to Louis’ query, Little Mix are quite possibly the new Girls Aloud. For starters, they were born out of the X Factor’s new and cruel little ruse of creating a group out of rejected solo acts.

This auditioning format is a recycled version of the process used in Popstars: The Rivals, the ITV1 show which found Girls Aloud and which required them to audition as individuals and prove, quite publicly, that they could all sing, thus earning themselves each a right to be in a group.

Like Nadine Coyle from Girls Aloud, Little Mix already have their token ‘frontman’, in this case Gateshead’s Perrie Lewis, already tipped by Ladbrokes to go solo - as Nadine has already done. And the other three don’t look put out by this.

Or at least, have had their chagrin well edited. They’re “so grateful just to be here”, and 10 weeks in, “feel like best friends.” Which is pretty much what we heard when Girls Aloud got to the 2002 finals. It wasn’t until Nadine moved to LA that the cracks started to show.

Romford’s Jesy Nelson, 20, the cool one, later dubbed ‘the curvy one’, has suffered extensive online bullying over her weight, something Girls Aloud’s Kimberley Walsh also experienced although, in 2002’s pre-Twitter days, to a lesser extent.

Then there’s Jade Thirlwall, the pretty one - aka The Cheryl.

Telegraph