Beat Of My Drum

Those of you who've spent the last eight years feeling sorry for the mouse-like ginger kid in Girls Aloud can stop right now. In a move that not even the most on-point pop commentators saw coming, Nicola Roberts' debut solo single 'Beat Of My Drum' is a truly brilliant dance pop belter - an instant, hard-hitting, shoulder-popping triumph that marries electronic and urban sounds with lashings of energy. Only it's not all that clear where this energy came from. Roberts' voice has only ever been passable when followed by Sarah Harding's and Cheryl Cole's in quick succession, so all signs point to Philly producer Diplo (the man behind MIA's massive 'Paper Planes'), who's done an extraordinary job of transforming the thoroughly vapid pop star into a Gwen Stefani-calibre hitmaker. Adding to the conundrum is the fact that Roberts possesses zero charm (as evidenced by her MTV interview with Lady Gaga) and zero attitude (as evidenced by the music video for 'Beat Of My Drum', although somebody's done a first-rate job of masking that, too) and you've cemented Diplo's status as pop's answer to Henry Higgins. Most impressively of all, he's even managed to give himself a sneaky pat on the back within the framework of the song, in the line "Don't it make your heart go 'Wow'/How I turned this whole thing 'round?" To borrow a phrase from Higgins himself, the man is deliciously low.