CD: Little Mix - Glory Days

Little Mix, like Girls Aloud before them, have developed fast from TV talent newbies into impressively sparkly industry professionals. They won The X Factor in 2011 and released a flabby cover of Damien Rice’s moany fist-pumper, “Cannonball”, but they’ve since honed their act to laser precision. No longer ingénues (if they ever were), they’re a polished showbiz machine with songs to match.

They first reached such a status with last year’s Get Weird album and its ubiquitous chart-topper, “Black Magic”. Their fourth long-player sees them snappily consolidate.

Glory Days already has a No.1 hit under its belt, the snappy lost-lover putdown, “Shout Out to My Ex”, with its bouncy riff redolent of George Michael’s “Faith”. It contains other tunes that could equally well become tween/teen phone sing-along regulars. Numbers such as the sassy waltz-jazz bouncer “FU” and the especially catchy “Oops”, featuring Wiz Khalifa collab pal Charlie Puth, both have the requisite cheeky bravado. The latter has a whistled ear-worm hook and deals sweetly with “accidentally” waking up beside an ex.

It carries it’s plastic raunch for teen dreamers with a certain aplomb

Come to think of it, cheating boys and exes are all over Glory Days and if I had any interest in how Perrie, Jesy, Leigh-Anne and Jade had been keeping themselves in the pap-shot sleb mags, I might know what those references were. But I don’t, so we’re left with the music, which is better than those who dismiss Little Mix without hearing them might imagine. Assisted by a who’s who of producers, including MNEK, Cutfather, Norwegian duo Electric (who wrote “Black Magic”), and Netsky/Dua Lipa associate Digital Farm Animals, Little Mix come up with grime-step (“Down and Dirty”), Beyoncé-goes-trap stylings (“Power”), a bubbly power ballad (“Your Love”) and more.

Of course there’s much sappy dross on board, too - the pan-piped tropical house of “Touch” and “No More Sad Songs” is especially unlikeable - but trim away the filler, hear the album from an appropriate 21^st century school disco perspective, and Glory Days carries it’s plastic raunch for teen dreamers with a certain aplomb.

Watch the video for "Shout Out to My Ex"