1/10/2023 0 Comments Sarah harding real wild child“That idea that a young woman could have such ambitions, and execute them through sheer force of will, was, to us, inspiring.” It was a bumpy journey to fame. In Hear Me Out, Harding quotes two hardcore fans who crystallised her significance. “It’s about time!” she roared, quickly followed by: “I think I’ve just wet myself” In 2017, Jesy Nelson – whose intoxicating mix of power and vulnerability recalled Harding’s – referenced that acceptance speech after Little Mix scooped their first Brit. Accepting the award, Harding summed up the moment. It took until 2009 – six years into a streak of 20 consecutive UK Top 10 singles, a litany of rule-breaking, genre-splicing pop behemoths – for them to win their first Brit award, for the single The Promise. After Boy George disparaged Girls Aloud as “just a bunch of pretty girls prancing around on the stage” at an awards show, Harding confronted him at a hotel bar months later and made him apologise. Harding was also unafraid to stand up for herself. Sarah Harding performing on the Girls Aloud reunion tour, March 2013. (Tellingly, her favourite Girls Aloud single was the pummelling, guitar-led Wake Me Up.) As a teenager in Manchester, she was a huge fan of Liam Gallagher, and brought a rock’n’roll ethos to a manufactured band that could easily have defaulted to rote media-trained sheen. Post-Spice Girls, UK pop had become polished and pre-teen again, but with Girls Aloud there was a sense that you should expect the unexpected. It was Harding’s energy and passion that often gave Girls Aloud an extra frisson of excitement on stage, whether she was endearingly stumbling through dance routines or hitting the odd bum note. It quotes a lyric (“We’re heading for war”) accompanied by text that hammers the message home: “Fighting talk from Sarah.” It’s the perfect encapsulation of the pop persona that Harding, who has died from cancer at the age of 39, attracted and often relished: the unruly, fun-loving, tomboyish rebel – or, as she described it in her 2021 memoir, Hear Me Out, the “rock chick, blonde bombshell, party girl, the caner of the band”. While Cheryl Tweedy is coquettish in cat ears for the stylish Love … mag and Nadine Coyle graces the cover of the Hello!-esque Aloud!, Sarah Harding appears in army fatigues on the cover of Girls, her warpaint augmented by a huge sparkly grin. F or the release of Girls Aloud’s signature 2004 single Love Machine, the girlband juggernaut’s long-term graphic designers Form created a fictional magazine cover for each member.
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