Nicola Roberts | Cinderella's Eyes

[Thriller]

Yeah if she can line it up with a killer second single AND get a big performance slot she could well be looking at a #1 album. Though I'm not sure how likely X Factor is after everything that's happened.

[Tom92]

I personally don't like the '2 singles' approach. They should just release the single, then drop the album. Go at it all guns blazing.

I'm the opposite - just as long as the second single is good though. I think all depends on how good the single that the album's released after is. So hopefully her next single will be just as good as BOMD.

I think its the cowardly thing to do, and shows that you don't have faith in the first single to sell the album. The thing is, if the 2nd single isn't as successful as the first, it slows down the whole project.

[Thriller]

Well Gaga's just done it!

I don't think it's cowardly, sometimes it makes more sense. It used to be common that pop artists would wait until single #3 before releasing their album because they couldn't just rely on their fanbase and needed people to know a couple of songs.

[Brad]

I personally don't like the '2 singles' approach. They should just release the single, then drop the album. Go at it all guns blazing.

I kinda agree.

[danimal]

I personally don't like the '2 singles' approach. They should just release the single, then drop the album. Go at it all guns blazing.

I kinda agree.

Me as well. Let's say BOMD is a big hit, but then god forbid the second single flops. People will forget how good BOMD is and won't buy the album.

This is all just a "what-if" situation though. I'm sure it will be fine!

[Cactuar]

If Beat of My Drum smashes, there's no reason for the second single to flop unless it's completely horrendous (highly unlikely in this case), I think the two singles approach is suitable for a debut artist because it makes them a bit more familiar to the public. In my opinion, most albums put out after only one single is usually chock full of filler material.

That said, I'm extremely curious to know if Radio 1 will A-list Nicola.

[urbanmusik]

Releasing 2 singles before an album works better with new or unestablished, normally pop acts. Unless you're the Sugababes,whereby releasing 3 singles before the album is the only way you can get a hit.

[xtofer]

That said, I'm extremely curious to know if Radio 1 will A-list Nicola.

I hope so!

I think releasing two or more singles before the album is the best way for the album to sell.

[alxx]

Well I can safely say this is my most anticipated release of the year at the moment, even above Beyonce

The lead single has just blown me away! Wow.

[UKMusicLova]

In the great pop wars of 2003, Matt from Busted called Nicola from Girls Aloud a "rude ginger bitch". She responded by daubing "I am a rude ginger bitch … Botherd!" on the back of a skirt which she then wore on stage, instantly becoming the best member of Girls Aloud. "I've still got it," nods Nicola Roberts, eight years on. "It's in my wardrobe. I want to get it framed, actually. I'm going to put it where my plaques are." For the quietest member of Girls Aloud it was certainly ballsy. "Well I had to be," she says, suddenly more serious. "What else would I have done? Gone on stage with tear marks? What else?"

Eight years older, Nicola is, in showbiz years, roughly 80 years wiser. Sitting on a sofa in a private members' club in London, with a gold matador-ish jacket draped off her shoulders, she's very much the glamorous pop star, more polished than the girl in the hand-painted skirt, but still a fantastic jumble of tough, sweary, vulnerable and funny. She's spent the past couple of years working on a brilliantly odd solo album called Cinderella's Eyes, roping in the likes of Dimitri From Paris, Diplo and Metronomy to help her make the most of an extended break from Girls Aloud and a near decade-long adventure in pop and fame.

Nicola was 16 when she auditioned for Louis Walsh, Geri Halliwell and Pete Waterman on ITV's Popstars: The Rivals, eventually being voted into Girls Aloud, even though Walsh had taken a dislike to her. "And I knew that," she says, eyes narrowing. "I could see that he clearly didn't want me there. Don't tell me to smile, seriously. There ain't one inch of a smile in me right now when your eyes are like that, thinking, 'Please God don't let her be in the band.'" After the show, Walsh was supposed to be their manager, but unsurprisingly, it didn't work out, so they began looking after themselves. They learned a lot about the business, she says, telling me that she'll speak to new bands who don't have the first idea about who does what for them. "F*cking hell, a lot of people are so sheltered. We had to struggle for what we've learned, but we're so thankful."

Nicola describes her nine years in Girls Aloud as "weird". "It feels like day one was a million years ago, and everything in the middle is a blur." For the first time, the girl who's clearly a talker, who excitedly fires out sentence after sentence whenever we hit on a subject she's enthusiastic about – psychology, studio production, bright colours in fashion – starts to falter. "It's like, I can't, er, I can't personally quite deal with how it went from there to there. I struggle with that bit in the middle. It's almost like I need somebody to explain to me why this all happened." On the album, she goes into detail about what she struggled with in a heartbreaking slowie called Sticks & Stones, in which she describes begging her driver to buy her vodka when she was underage. "How funny that I was too young for so many things/ Yet you thought I'd cope with being told I'm ugly/ Over and over …"

She coped with it, she says, by getting away whenever she could. "If I finished work at five, and didn't have to be back till midday, I would go home [to Runcorn] and drive back in the morning. I hated London; I was so lonely. We'd have lawyers' meetings all day, a TV show, a meeting at the label, then we'd be finished, then I'd drive home, go and get in my friend's little Corsa. I'd hang around the shop, get chips and gravy. People would be like, 'All right Nic, what are you doing tomorrow?' 'Oh I've got bloody CD:UK!' You know, crazy. But I was two people for a very long time," she says, sadly. How did you get through it? "I didn't."

'I had to harden myself to the press treatment. Inside, I was dying'
She shrugs: "Well I did, but it was quite exhausting, to get home and switch back into this person again: 'Make sure you put extra gravy on them chips!' I'd be trying to get into a club when I was obviously underage, being normal, then getting back to London and having the head of Universal [puts on plummy voice] 'Hi girls! So we're going to take you all out for dinner and we're going to the Ivy.' And then we'd be in the restaurant and none of us understood the menu. I remember saying to the head of Universal one day, 'What the f*ck's coriander?'" She giggles. Harder to handle was the attitude of some of the tabloids, which pointed out "flaws" on a regular basis: her tan was too bright, her clothes were wrong, she didn't smile enough. Eventually, she realised the only thing she could do was toughen up. "I just had to harden myself to it," she sighs. "Actually, inside, I was dying." The fact that all of this comes out in the lyrics of her new songs was never in question. "That's normal for me. It would have been stupid for me to make an album that meant nothing."

So she didn't, quietly working away on material she knew she was happy with, without telling her friends or even her record label. "If I'd had a deal [for the album] straight away, I'd have been summoned to make a record that maybe I wasn't necessarily that comfortable or confident with, and I would have had to release it, whether it was shit or not," she says, frankly. "I didn't want to play it safe and I didn't want to make a record that was a guaranteed commercial success."

A long-time MIA fan, doing things her way involved roping Diplo in to produce her first solo single, Beat Of My Drum, a Major Lazer-style bratty dancefloor stomp, full of "quirky sounds, hard dollops", as she puts it. It may come as a surprise to people expecting a Nadine-style MOR wail-a-thon or a Cheryl-esque standardised chart hit. "I had to ring him [Diplo] and … you know when you ring a boy for the first time? I knew I only had one chance, so I just fired at him. 'I want this, I want that, don't send it back like that. I'm going to send you the session again just so you've got it.' He reassured me a bit, and I put the phone down, thinking, it's not in my hands now …"

'It's taken every last bit of confidence just to release this record'
When she got the track back, she was so nervous she couldn't bring herself to listen to it. "It meant so much to me that I was frightened I'd be let down by it," she explains. "I was at home in Liverpool and I put my little brother and sister in the car, burnt it off on to a CD, drove to this deserted field and put it on so loud that the trees were … [does an impression of a wobbly tree]. I looked at my brother, this 14-year-old lad, and he went, 'That is cool.' Then my little sister, she's 21 and a real girls' girl, said, 'That is fly.' I'm so proud of it. I can't believe it's mine. The man is a genius."

Her other surprise collaborator was Joe Mount of Metronomy, who co-wrote the album's strangest and best song, I, with her. He was thrilled to be asked, he says: "I didn't have to think twice; Girls Aloud are a very clever pop band." I is a candid jumble of observations, set against an eerie synth line. "I hope that one day we stop striving for perfection/ I hope that everybody loves my new direction", goes one line. "I don't like that you won't let me speak controversially/ Because you think that it won't sit well universally", runs another (that hers and Girls Aloud's label is under the Universal umbrella is surely a coincidence). She says it's her favourite, too. "I love it. It sounds like a funeral song. When we first started working, there were loads of tracks, and some were really commercial. I think [Joe] assumed that was what I was going to do."

Not Nicola Roberts. "What would be the point in me doing that?" she shrugs. So what she's made is a pop album, certainly, but one flecked with MIA, Robyn and Kate Bush, one that's as happy as it is sad, and one she knows is good, even if she's reluctant to believe it could be successful. "It's taken every last bit of confidence just to release this record," she explains, before doubting herself, instantly. "Or maybe I've just brainwashed myself into feeling more confident. I don't know if it's good, or if I've just told myself it's good." Maybe it just feels like you, I say. "I think it does," she beams. "It just feels like me."

So we now have:
Beat Of My Drum
Sticks N Stones
I

[johnny_d]

Thanks for posting the interview. It is wonderful.

I have fallen in love with Nicola all over again these past weeks. I'm so excited for her this era.

[Cactuar]

Amazing, amazing interview. Extremely excited to listen to the rest of the album, and I wonder how did the song sound like before she sent it off to Diplo. I'm so glad that she let him do his thing though rather than sit with him and have veto over his decisions.

[topopMAC1]

That interview is indeed wonderful! She's exuding so much personality in this campaign already compared to her time in Girls Aloud, I can't wait to hear the album.

[xtofer]

That interview made me cry and smile! I love her so much!<3

[xtofer]

The title of the album is ‘Cinderella’s Eyes’. We like it a lot! Can you explain it please?

Cinderella’s Eyes is a song on my album that I wrote about a year ago… It’s about a girl called Sleeping Beauty who wakes up and wonders what life has instore for her… “Will she meet any baddies or goodies and will she lay with any Princes or Hoodies”… She asks Cinderella “Are you happy with your fella and your nice home”, and tells girls “They have to do it for themselves as cards are so randomly dealt.” I think it represents my views on happy endings..

SOURCE

[pollei]

Nadine-style MOR wail-a-thon or a Cheryl-esque standardised chart hit

Best part of the interview

[alxx]

That interview was great, love how she's not afraid to really tell things how they were! #Proud2BeGinge

[Fan]

That was a very good read, I remember reading The Ivy story before but it still makes me laugh It is really sad though how lonely she was in the first few years of Girls Aloud. She was so young back then, I'm not surprised she felt that way. Especially with everyone calling her 'the ugly one' and such. It's so stupid though because she is absolutely gorgeous and has always been.

[Star]

That interview made me cry and smile! I love her so much!<3

Awww <3 <3

[Colin]

That interview was great! It was really so unfair that she had to suffer all of the torture from the media about how she looked when she was only a child. I'm so glad that she didn't succumb to it and that she came out better from it.

[HBIC jamesssxD]

She is a really strong person! I like

[88_alex_22]

can't wait to hear the album!
i need it!

[CrazyCrazy]

I knew there was an M.I.A. influence!

Good on her though for coming with something unexpected of her. Track is growing on me...?

[shake_yo_ass]

Well Gaga's just done it!

I don't think it's cowardly, sometimes it makes more sense. It used to be common that pop artists would wait until single #3 before releasing their album because they couldn't just rely on their fanbase and needed people to know a couple of songs.

NO WAY! most people wouldnt buy the album after hearing one single unless they were a fan. Usually its best to come out with a BETTER follow up single because its more likely to peak more peoples interest--and its helps to followon from single 1.

The only people to release the album after 1 single are really established artists (even then they usually do 2 singles (gaga/britney/beyonce) or if the first single was a huge unexpected hit (katy perry)...

[Tom92]

I really think this will be a great album though. I like how the songs will be like diary entries