The Saturdays have just release the video for “Notorious” with some considerable hype. Pretty much every UK music publication has written about it and analysed it on its own merits. This left us scratching our heads though. The Saturdays must be popular right? They’re everywhere, how can they not be huge pop superstars? The fact remains though that they’ve never had a number one. In 2010 their three offerings – Ego, Missing You and Higher – charted at number 9, 3 and 10 respectively. Their studio albums haven’t done any better, both peaking (if it can be called a peak) at number 9.

This seems nuts! They get an exposure other acts would kill for, yet the girls just aren’t turning out the fans to buy their stuff. Well let’s have a look and see if this one will be different:

Now to an untrained squinted eye looking from a distance this could be a Girls Aloud video. Right down to the speeded up twitchy movements and shots of ankles marching in a line it looks like an effort from their older girl group template. And perhaps here is where the problem lies. While we’re all used to derivative works in pop music, and even sometimes like the comforting nostalgic continuity of it, this band just haven’t brought anything beyond Girls Aloud.

To be fair they probably weren’t meant to. From the time rumours of Girls Aloud splitting up started, The Saturdays have been touted as the ones to fill their shoes – something which is yet to happen.

We like the girls, but we have to admit they’re not about the music. They’re about being pretty faces that can be added to a T4 On The Beach lineup, that can front a campaign for Dove, that can run a mildly interesting chicken korma ITV2 documentary to fill in when things are quiet between Pete and Jordan. They are, in the end, five celebrities, not five singers. While others would be dropped for such an ad spend to music sales ratio, The Saturdays go on. The reason? Pop music is just a fig leaf that adds a bit of credibility to their other, more lucrative, interests as celebs.

However if they miss the top spot with this song, it would be nice if they’d leave the whole music thing to someone else, and maybe a few other artists can take those precious air play slots.

Picture Courtesy of Beacon Radio

The Saturdays are arguably the brightest pretenders to the Aloud’s pop crown. Formed from a couple of former S Club Juniors and some other girls that can sing a bit, it might not have been the most auspicious start to a music career, but getting to do last year’s Comic Relief track was a huge profile boost for the quintet.

Obviously they don’t play instruments, or write lyrics (Deeper is the only track on Wordshaker in which the girls have any writing credit, and the cynic in me doubts that was more than a couple of words or a key change), so all its really fair to judge the girls on is their voices, which, for the most part, are good.

But the fact remains that there is a lot of filler on Wordshaker. It contains maybe three really good songs, two decent ones, and a string of sub-average ones. And there’s nothing here that suggests the band are anywhere near ready to make the step up in British pop’s dog-eat-dog hierarchy. Pop songs have to be memorable, have that killer hook or final refrain with a key change that lives long in the memory. And though the Saturdays often seem to be on the brink of making that breakthrough, it doesn’t quite happen on Wordshaker.

Annoyingly, the album is hugely American-influenced. The enunciation is often frustratingly wrong-side-of-the-Atlantic and downright cringeworthy; “wan shat”, “wit chu”, “nat good enaf” and so on. Girls, you’re British. Don’t be ashamed of it. And the backing tracks are usually rent-a-beat electro-pop affairs designed with dancefloor remixes heavily in mind, and the ballads are mostly just wallpaper. They’re there, but you can’t honestly say anybody notices them.

Also weirdly, both the lead single Forever Is Over (which just makes no sense) and probable next single Wordshaker tail off weakly after bright starts. It’s too daytime radio. A big, bold finish to the song would make it stand out. As it is, it meekly wanders off with its tail between its legs so Scott Mills or whoever can ladle his banal chit-chat over the last few seconds.

There are moments of quality though. Denial has the odd bit of sumptuous harmony vocal work, Here Standing is their best ballad so far and 2am is as good as anything on the album despite just being tacked on thoughtlessly as a bonus track.

Like Girls Aloud, the most prominent member is of Irish extraction. But Una Healy’s voice lacks the range, power and punch of Nadine Coyle, and none of the other girls provide any more than an interesting distraction in the background. She’s also,unexplained, a few years older than the others, which for some reason bothers me. It’s as if she’s babysitting them through the album and indeed their careers, and when they reach their peak, she’ll sod off and have a crack on her own and leave them to it.

X Factor reject Mollie King (the rah blonde one), Frankie Sandford (the short-haired S Club one) and Rochelle Wiseman (the other one from S Club Juniors/8) don’t seem to there for any other reason other than window dressing, and although youngest and poutiest member Vanessa White does show off an impressive warbling range on a few occasion and takes the lead more than on their first album Chasing Light, her voice lacks that certain something to make it stand out. And a cursory glance at Youtube reveals suspicion over their actual talent is warranted; they all struggle in a live setting.

But Wordshaker is a decent record, although it suffers from being over-polished in the production studios like many pop albums. I’d love to see a British pop group be brave and release something raw and powerful, with no unnecessary sheen added. I want to see someone ignore the tiresome r ‘n’ b sound from America and try to create something new. But the Saturdays were always going to be too manufactured to be that band.

It might not pick them up many new fans, but it secures them their place on the shoulder of Girls Aloud, although they still look a long way off taking their crown as Britain’s premier girl group.