The late, lamented Bill Hicks used to do a viciously funny routine about the fiendish schematics of the corporate mindset.

“If there’s any advertising people in the building tonight,” he’d wail mid-show, “do us all a favour – kill yourselves!”

However, acutely aware of the capitalist imperative to make a buck at all costs, Hicks could immediately feel the flow-charts being drawn-up and marketing discussions getting under way:

“You see, I know what you ad-exec types are thinking right now – ‘Bill’s going after that anti-corporate, anti-advertising dollar.’ Goddamn it, I’m not doing that!!”

Well, Bill was right: these days, a marketing hook can be found for just about anything. Girls Aloud – a group of almost chillingly average lasses with such unremarkable musical abilities they were actually surplus to requirements on Popstars – are currently being sold as renegade, maverick talents, too attitudinal and individualistic for the reality TV shows. Julie Burchill – a one-time bleeding-edge exponent of pop-cultural journalism, who these days fritters away her time writing entire tomes about David Beckham – has ventured forth with the not-entirely ingenuous claim that this album is the most important record since Never Mind The Bollocks. Truly, at this stage, pop hasn’t so much eaten itself as cannibalised the entire musical canon, subsequent to which it has now begun re-heating the regurgitated leftovers.

As This Mortal Coil once opined, it’ll end in tears. Whilst Girls Aloud’s debut album, Sound Of The Underground, is a reasonably diverting slice of mainstream pop, it’s about as substantial as tissue-paper and twice as expendable.

The likes of ‘No Good Advice’, ‘Life Got Cold’ and ‘Girls Allowed’ are so formulaic – to such an extent that they should probably feature the parenthetical addendum “DAYTIME RADIO PROGRAMMERS PLAY THESE!!” – as to be almost sinister. Even when the girls do vary the template – as on the Dee-lite-flavoured, early-90s-dance homage, ‘Love Bomb’ – the tune is still smothered by the same suffocatingly bland, headache-inducing production sheen.

Stick with Justin and his Off The Wall pronouncements, kids.