Girls Aloud - The Curse: Part II

In the first installment of The Curse we described Girls Aloud's own brave experiences. How it hit them all at different points in their career but they still survived. And how the girls gained control of The Curse and used it's power to their own advantage. But where's the evidence? And who have they destroyed with their dark force? All is revealed here on DangerousWitchcraft.com in The Curse: Part II - The Victims


The Hitlist
Over the five years of Girls Aloud's career, the members have written up a hitlist of people who fully deserve to be struck down with the Curse. They are not heartless girls. They are willing to give anybody a second chance. But they will not be taken for fools, and when their career as a band is put at risk by somebody, or they just severely piss the girls off, they will use their powers. Moggy, our cat detective recently brought us back a copy of the hitlist after sneaking into Cheryl's bedroom. We don't think it is a complete list, but it is still truly shocking to see the amount of people who have felt the might of the girls' power:



The girls hold a grudge against these people for very good reasons. You would think everyone would have realised by now that taking a pop at Girls Aloud is a big risk, yet the list grows as more careless popstars and celebrities put their life into the girls' hands.


The Curse Begins - One True Voice

Early occurrences of the curse are not well-documented because at this point we were not aware that the girls could actually use their curse. The first victim set to get cursed was One True Voice. Nicola was all set to use her new powers against the rival Popstars: The Rivals band as they made it to The Hitlist. Everyone predicted that the boyband would win the competition and grab the Christmas number one spot in 2002. But after Nicola had recorded the first Girls Aloud single, and then heard One True Voice's attempt, it became clear that she wouldn't be needing the assistance of The Curse to win this battle. The song was terrible, the manager didn't have a clue, the band wanted to kill each other. Girls Aloud started to pity them and decided to let nature take it's course. And as seen in this video clip, things only got worse for the boys. The second single, Shakespeare's (Way With) Words was just asking for failure. And within weeks of it's release, the group were history.




Simon Amstell & Miquita Oliver

Girls Aloud had this to say about the Popworld presenters: “Oh, God, those two knobs!” says Kimberley. “Pair of idiots. They have a go at us every time they get the chance.” Thus begins a string of expletives from the Girls, Nicola crowing that Oliver looks like the type who doesn’t wash, then declaring Amstell to be “a right horrible bitchy old queen that needs his hair cutting”. Cheryl pauses for a second. “I think he’s one of those people who was bullied at school. You can tell by the way he tries to have a go at people now. I don’t think he’s a happy person. I think he thinks slagging people off is a way to make friends. You know the type. The best way for us to deal with it is just to be brilliant. They slagged us off when we first started and said we wouldn’t be around for five minutes. It hurt then, because we didn’t know that we would be. But here we are. That’s my answer to them, really. You think you can do something better, go and do it.”

The band couldn't afford to curse the presenters of a show that could give them such good promotion at first. But they soon realised how insignificant the programme was, and Nicola sent both offenders the following picture though the post, which soon put an end to their careers as Popworld presenters:




Busted

Matt Willis of Busted was the first Popstar since PS:TR to bravely take on Girls Aloud, by calling Nicola a "rude ginger bitch". He obviously knew her quite well as they lived in the same apartment complex. But Louis Walsh didn't like this stab at his new girlband, and claimed that Busted wouldn't last a year. As it happens, he wasn't too far off, but Charlie from the boyband claimed that Louis needed to 'eat his own shit'. Nicola, on the other hand wasn't 'botherd' by the situation at all, until Matt apparently missed the point of her G-A-Y bum message, and complained "she can't even spell!". Nicola won't abide such stupidity and she afflicted Busted with the curse immediately. Rumours of Charlie being more interested in his new emo band started and eventually turned out to be true. The band split the following year as Charlie became a 'serious' musician, James formed a clone Busted boyband under a new name - who failed miserably. And offender Matt was quite lucky to release one decent solo single, but before long was competing in rubbish reality shows and releasing sub-standard pop.


Louis Walsh

As the girls' manager, Louis made the strange decision quite early on, to write the girls off. He spread constant rumours that the girls would only last one more album, that they were about to split, that Nadine would be an amazing solo singer before long, and the girls have lives to live and were no longer interested in being in a band. He got the sack.


Divisions of Power

But the power is not divided equally between Girls Aloud. Some are more skillful and have a stronger hold of it than others. Three of them; Cheryl, Nicola and Kimberley are more important when it comes to The Curse. Kimberley first brought it to the band and so has the duty of being responsible with their powers, and usually draws up the masterplan of how they will go about striking their next victim. Nicola has a very dark relationship with The Curse that only she really understands. She is skillful and discreet with her spells. But by far the most successful bearer of The Curse is Cheryl.

The Curse Of Cheryl

Cheryl's trick is that she is so blatant with her power that the world seems to accept her attacks as normal behaviour. She has many a success story.

Ulrika Jonsson

After Cheryl was struck down with The Curse, which led to her court case, Ulrika made the mistake of criticising her in her newspaper column. She branded Cheryl an "arrogant bully" and an "abysmal example to young women". We think she was talking out of her arse, literally. We don't know exactly how Ulrika was affected as we haven't heard much from her since, but we think that was the purpose in this incidence. We have tracked down the moment Cheryl imposed the curse on Ulrika. It happened during an interview on The Frank Skinner Show. This was Cheryl's first experience of cursing, and her inexperience meant she accidentally cursed in public. The version that was shown originally had the incident cleverly edited out, but this version was broadcast on a late-night repeat by mistake:




View the full interview here: Part 1, Part 2

Charlotte Church

Cheryl has had a particularly long-term feud with this mouthy soprano. It was actually started by Girls Aloud fans before escalating into a huge media battle, as Cheryl explains:

"Oh, it pisses me off. What happened was, we were at a radio station and everyone kept phoning in saying 'Crazy Chick' was a rip-off of Girls Aloud, and I said it doesn't really matter because we don't sound like that any more. Then Charlotte started with her nastiness and it just escalated. It's ended up being very petty and childish. The minute it came out of me mouth I knew what was coming, and the next day, there it was on page three, big spread, 'Battle Of The Babes.'" Cheryl recently found herself in a dressing room opposite that of the Cardiff soprano. "She didn't say anything to me. I think she was frightened. She shouldn't be so mouthy then, should she? If she's going to be mouthy, back your mouth up and we'll have a conversation face to face."

Charlotte Church was somehow offended at being complimented on her new pop sound, and so the feud started. After a few months Charlotte claimed to be bored with it, yet continued: "I think she needs to grow up and get a hobby, golf or something, but stop having a go at me cos its getting pathetic. First of all it was quite funny, but now it's just pathetic.
I'm going to knock her out if I ever see her." But as the video on the left shows, Cheryl got in there first. This is just a reconstruction of the actual event but we do know that Charlotte has not looked the same since. Her pop career has come to an end and she has become the smug presenter of her own terrible chat show. She also does occasional crisps adverts. From opera singer to bitter old loser; we think that is mission accomplished for Cheryl.

All Saints

Next to feel the wrath of Cheryl's curse were flopstars All Saints, who had the audacity to start criticising her band after making a very unwanted comeback. Cheryl, along with Kimberley and Nicola saw that the comeback bandwagon of pop in 2006 was rolling on a little too far, and had something to say about it in the following MTV interview:

Taking the bait, All Saints obviously felt rather threatened by the girls' words and responded:
Melanie Blatt said: "That's so true because Jump For My Love is so where I wanna be. We could only aspire and dream to be like them. Hopefully one day we will achieve that. For now we will have to make do with copying them".
Shaznay Lewis added: "In all honesty they are stupid little girls and we don't really give a fuck". Feeling that All Saints had taken it a bit far, Girls Aloud left a message on Shaznay's answerphone. Their version of Never Ever: (click the play button below and you can sing - well speak along)






"A few questions that we need to know/
Is it because you needed the dough?
/We need to know why you came back/
With such a blatant Girls Aloud track/
Is it coz we've had more hits than The Supremes/
You couldn't do that in your
fuckin' dreams/
Either way you're going out of your mind/
For ever getting back
together after all this time ... SUCKERS!!!!"

It did the trick. All Saints were cursed, and were forced to back down. They had this to say in an interview with Boyz:

Boyz Magazine: We’ve been enjoying your spat with Girls Aloud
Mel: We weren’t rude about Girls Aloud
Boyz: Were they rude about you first?
Shaz: Yeah. They went [makes a noise like a little dog] and we went [makes a noise like a big dog]. That was it.
All: [laugh]
Mel: They’re young aren’t they!
Nic: Yeah, but I was young and going out and having a good time, what’s wrong with that?
Mel: I don’t know – I was just trying to find excuses for them!
Nat: Well don’t!
Nic: It’s not becoming of people. It’s just a bad quality to have and people aren’t going to like you along the way. I wouldn’t like to think that people didn’t like me along the way.
Boyz: Are you rude back just to get headlines?
Shaz: We’re not interested. We’re big women compared to them, so I suppose we shouldn’t have said anything.
Nat: If somebody starts something, then it’s almost like they want the headlines.

And All Saints amazingly faded without trace. The comeback album, Studio 1 peaked at #40 in the charts before plummeting into obscurity. And the album's second single failed to chart. This was another good job done for Girls Aloud.

Lily Allen

Pop yob, Lily is probably Cheryl's biggest nuisance so far. The ongoing feud with Lily has been such a problem because she has got a big mouth on her, even bigger than Cheryl! She insults her fellow popstars at any given opportunity but she also makes very good pop music. So when Cheryl heard Lily's b-side,'Cheryl Tweedy', she was flattered:

Cheryl: I'm really flattered Lily's written a track about me. But I don't know why she sings about wanting to be as pretty as me as she looks stunning. I'd like to look like her. It's about time we had a really cool British girl out there on the music scene".

But Lily was furious that Cheryl had taken the song as a compliment, and responded:
"I don't want to look like Cheryl Tweedy! It's tongue in cheek, it's meant to be ironic.I don't have anything against her as a human being but I think the portrayal of her being the right thing for kids to look up to is wrong. It was a joke that not many people got. Of course nobody really wants to look like Cheryl, they just think they do".

Not satisfied with her initial, quite tame response which gained little reaction from Cheryl, Lily turned against other members of Girls Aloud. In a handbag review for The Times, she described one bag as: "So heavy”, “It’s soooo Sarah Harding”, referring to the blonde Girls Aloud member, before delivering her final, damning verdict: “It’s fucking vile". She also referred to Nicola in one interview as "the ugly one".

Then Cheryl and Kimberley were invited onto cabbage-faced Gordon Ramsey's TV show, The F Word, where he questioned Cheryl about her feuds. As seen in this video, he called Lily Allen a chick with a dick.

Lily was a tad upset by this, and posted her blubbing photo on MySpace to prove it. She also claimed that she was "fat, ugly and shitter than winehouse". She was probably a bit bit harsh to herself there. One out of the three was correct but we would have said "not as talented as Winehouse".

She soon changed her tune after her compliment-fishing post, though. After recieving hundreds of messages of support, Lily posted the following rant on her MySpace:
"I know I've said bad things about people in the past , though the majority of them
have been blown wayyyy out of proportion , but this i mean Cheryl if you're reading this , I may not be as pretty as you but at least I write and SING my own songs without the aid of autotune . I must say taking your clothes off , doing sexy dancing and marrying a rich footballer must be very gratifying , your mother must be so proud , stupid bitch". At first we thought that a 12 year-old fan must have hacked into Lily's site but apparently it was genuinely her.

Most would have succumbed to Cheryl's wrath by now, but Cheryl had more ammo reserved for Lily, and she made the following retort:
“I’m currently on a big arena tour with the girls singing live each night.Lily, I could find you a spare ticket if you’d like to come and experience what a live arena tour is like . . . as that’s the closest you’ll get to it.”

We think this finally did the job. A cruel series of seemingly coincidental avenging acts occured in the weeks following Cheryl's comment. Lily's New Look 'clothing line' was dwarfed by a rival Topshop line, designed by Kate Moss. Lily was forced to face up to her ridiculous hypocricsy and retracted her ugly-Nicola comment. She stated: "I did call Nicola ugly but that was at the beginning of my career.
I couldn't remember her name so I said 'the ugly one in Girls Aloud'.
I don't think she's ugly at all."

As well as that, Lily cancelled her US tour and got banned from the US altogether! Then at the Glastonbury fastival Lily had a mic stand thrown at her by the lead singer of New Young Pony Club. Unfortunately it missed. Are there no limits to the power of Cheryl's curse? We'll be keeping a close eye on Cheryl for future developments.



Other Possible Victims

The following people are currently at risk from The Curse:

Edith Bowman
She's either a bit deaf or has a strange form of tourettes syndrome, because each time she is forced to play Girls Aloud's Love Machine, she feels the need to say "I prefer the Arctic Monkeys version". Not a good move, Bowman.

Beth Ditto
Beth spewed: “Fuck Girls Aloud. I’d rather be a fat chick with a dick than an asshole", regarding Gordon's Lily comments.

Ricky Wilson (of Kaiser Cheifs)
Ricky waded into the Cheryl/Lily arguement too, adding: "The thing is, when you start seeing yourself on TV and in the papers and you get snide comments like those from knobheads, you start doubting yourself".

Pete Doherty
The girls are not fans.
Kimberley: "I guess that if you like brown teeth and mouldy fingers, he's your guy".
Nadine: "We could make a record that sounded like him, but could he make one that sounded like us?".
Cheryl: "That junkie idiot - the problem I have with him is that I've lost friends to heroin and I just don't get the idea of glorifying it. I think it's disgusting, there are enough drug problems going on without him being in the public eye for it and sticking needles in his arm in the press. If he kicks his habit he'll be a lot more respected."

Calvin Harris
He branded the girls 'boring', and added "God no, those people I would never work with.I know they can all sing but it wouldn’t be an enjoyable experience at all. They really need to change their sound. It’s getting extremely boring now - but it’s not for me”.

Westlife
Kimberley said: "I'm not being funny but they're so boring aren't they? They're just four dull men now. I don't think people are interested in what they're doing in their evenings when they're sat in with their wives do you?"

Betty Boo
Although this pop princess has worked with Girls Aloud in the past, there has been a bit of a falling out. Betty claimed in a radio interview that she has been writing songs for Cheryl's solo album. But Cheryl denies that there is a solo album, and said “It’s sad that people have to say these things to get a little bit of publicity". Betty continued “Yes! I need the publicity? Silly old cow. We need to have fisticuffs together, but she is good at that. I think she is really nasty, Northern girls wee up the wall". We're not quite sure what Betty means by this but we think Cheryl should be careful with this one.



So there it is. The strongest evidence available that the Girls Aloud Curse is a very real phenomenon. Cheryl and the rest of the girls continue to curse their opponents and yet most of the world is oblivious to it. This is how they get away with it. And their powers will only become stronger and more sophisticated. So watch out GA bashers! But we still haven't explained the real origins of this curse. Find out soon in the next installment of The Curse.