Girls Aloud Tangled Up Live at the 02, Summer 2008

We watched this on DVD again at the weekend.

This is GA at their absolute best, at their all time peak. Better than the Spice Girls ever were or could have been. The Saturdays have a lot of potential, but they have a long way to go before they reach this level, if they ever do. GA set the bar for years to come with this gig.

A few classic hits are present - Sound Of The Underground, Biology, Stand By You and Jump - but this is mainly about songs from the Tangled Up album itself. And not just the three hits, but album tracks as well.

Sexy No No No opens the show, and Can't Speak French and Call The Shots come up later. Album tracks include Girl Overboard, Close To Love, Black Jacks, Fling and Control Of The Knife, which all work well live with guitar backing, as rock songs, a slightly different interpretation than the studio produced album versions.

We would have really liked to see a live version of What Your Crying For.
(And they still can't do Love Machine live it must be said>)

There was a particularly good rock version of Wake Me Up which flows flawlessly into Walk This Way (no Sugababes present or needed). There's also a cover of Salt n Pepa's Push It, which on paper sounds like it wouldn't work, but actually works out great as a live rock song.

Then there's a cover of Robin's With Every Heartbeat, which is OK, but taking up a slot that could have been better used by a GA classic, such as No Good Advice, which was dropped from this set, even though it's a great live rock song, or a TU album track (like What You Crying For).

Control Of The Knife, done live, is a great funky reggae style number, and a nice change of pace towards the end of the set.

GA always end their gig with Jump, and on this day they used the original Pointer Sisters arrangement of the song, which was all the better for it.

Then, in a stroke of genius, they came back for an encore of Something Kinda Ooh, with a final costume change, their sexiest song by far, and a great live interpretation.

Tweedy and The Bombshell look particularly stunning throughout the gig, and you realise what a great career Nadine could havd as a rock goddess (something we've badly needed for a long time now). Even Nicola looks OK for this one, with a flame red mane a la Carol Decker, and she finally holds her own on her vocal parts live.

It'll be a long time before we see a concert by a girlband as good as this.