Girl band third albums: The lead singles ranked

With Little Mix preparing for a renewed assault on the charts with new single Black Magic this week, we thought we’d mark Jade, Perrie and co.’s upcoming third album by celebrating the other girl groups who have made it to that surprisingly rare milestone.

As the recent demise of GRL and Neon Jungle has shown, it’s some feat for an all-female group to stick around long enough to get to LP number three – but if the list of (mostly) unabashed pop stompers below is anything to go by, when they do, they tend to really hit their stride.

We ranked the ten best third album lead singles offered by the world’s biggest girl bands from the last 20 years, and the result is pretty much our pre-Saturday night out playlist. Take a look below and see if you agree…

10. Atomic Kitten – If You Come to Me (2003)

Don’t lie, you don’t even remember this one. Much like the band that spawned it, If You Come to Me is a ‘nice’ track… And not a great deal else. Now buried deep in AK’s otherwise solid back catalogue, it didn’t help that the lead single from Ladies Night had a pretty much identical sound and video to previous single Love Doesn’t Have to Hurt, which was released just months before. Though in fairness, compared to the album’s title track featuring Kool and the Gang – which has aged about as well as a bag of salad – this still holds up pretty well.

9. The Saturdays – Notorious (2011)

We’ve defended The Saturdays’ contribution to popular music in the past and we’ll continue to do so: But like much of their career, the girls’ attitude to lead single selection has been a total mess. If This is Love before Up? Forever is Over before Ego? Missing You before Higher?! NOTORIOUS BEFORE ALL FIRED UP?!?! This is why you didn’t get Number Ones, laydeez. Anyway, given that 2010’s Headlines! was technically an EP (again, total mess), The Sats launched their third album campaign proper with sassy wail-fest Notorious, thus forfeiting the top 3 placing that All Fired Up would have given them on this list (and the Number One on the charts). Sorry, it just still stings.

8. Little Mix – Black Magic (2015)

Who’d have though back in week one of X Factor 2011 that live show fodder ‘Rhythmix’ would one day be releasing a third studio album? Black Magic might not have the forward-thinking, cowbell-tapping edge of 2013’s Move, but the ’80s-inspired track is an un-ignorable slice of summery bubblegum pop from a group that are surely still on the ascendency.

7. Spice Girls – Holler (2000)

Before you start sharpening your pitchforks, now is a good time to point out that we’ve sung the praises of the Spice Girls third studio album Forever in the past. And it is a great album. Equally, Holler is a great song. But after what came from Baby, Posh, Sporty and Scary before, it just doesn’t hit the same spot, does it? With the girls’ solo projects all well underway and a lukewarm reception to their new R&B-infused reinvention almost two years after the release of Goodbye, the 90’s icons became the first major casualty of Y2K and failed to make much of an impression in the new millennium.

6. All Saints – Rock Steady (2006)

Look, any music video which features Shaznay Lewis cracking a leather whip on a marble floor while holding several members of the public hostage is always going to sit well with us. All Saints proved in 2006 that despite a five-year absence they still sounded as fresh as ever with comeback track Rock Steady. While the criminally underrated album, Studio 1, might have bombed and sent them packing once again, they were back just long enough to get into some delightful beef with one Miss Cheryl Tweedy, who claimed the Saints were ripping off Girls Aloud’s sound. Mel Blatt’s reply? “That is so true. Jump (for My Love) is so where I wanna be…” Shaznay’s? “They are stupid little girls and we don’t really give a f**k”. Roll on the upcoming second reunion…

5. Sugababes – Hole in the Head (2003)

Right, we love MKS as much as the next Generation Y homo, but the fact is the ‘babes were at their most exciting in their second guise with Heidi. This is a fact. Following the same dark, moody recipe that had sent Freak Like Me to the top of the charts a year earlier, the lead single from Three quickly followed suit in late 2003, featuring a video in which the lemon-sucking trio manage to physically assault a series of evil males despite surely being rendered blind by several kilos of eye-shadow. See also, Keisha’s incredible ‘s’-bomb-dropping middle-8-cum-verse.

4. Destiny’s Child – Survivor (2001)

Coming off the back of one of the biggest-selling albums of the ’90s and with most of the group’s original members AWOL or in the process of creating miniature Bey and K-Row voodoo dolls, you’d have forgiven Destiny’s Child for coming out with a bit of a misstep back in 2001. Instead, they returned with the ultimate kiss-off anthem that arguably defined the band’s time together. “Thought I wouldn’t sell without you / sold five million.” FEEL THE BURN, LeToya, LaTavia and that other one.

3. Girls Aloud – Biology (2005)

Ok, we have to be honest here. Technically, technically, the audio-visual travesty that was Long Hot Summer was the first track on Girl’s Aloud’s third studio album Chemistry to be released to the public. BUT! That song was originally released in August 2005 as a ‘buzz’ track that had been considered for inclusion on the Herbie: Fully Loaded soundtrack, and the album’s proper campaign started with the release of Biology that November. Look, we know we’re clutching at straws here but Biology is amazing and everyone thinks of it as the lead single anyway. The song was pretty much a career turning point for the band, who before 2005 had spent their time racking up the chart hits while the Sugababes racked up all the critical acclaim. Not so after this.

2. En Vogue – Don’t Let Go (Love) (1996)

Four years after En Vogue’s second album Funky Divas cemented Terry, Dawn, Cindy and Maxine as the sound of early ’90s R&B, 1996’s Don’t Let Go (Love) became their biggest global hit yet. Originally recorded for the soundtrack of Jada Pinkett movie Set It Off, the veritable sex jam’s success spurred on the creation of third album EV3, which became bogged down in controversy after Dawn quit the band mid-way through recording. It was all downhill from there in terms of success, but after a song as iconic as this, that was always inevitable right?

1. TLC – No Scrubs (1999)

Bursting back onto the scene after the era-defining CrazySexyCool album perversely left the group bankrupt, TLC returned firing an incredible series of middle fingers at blokes who struggle financially and/or still live at home with their mothers. And we loved them for it. Even now, who can honestly say those opening riffs don’t still hit them like an intravenous drip of man-hating sass. “‘Cause I’m lookin’ like class and he’s lookin’ like trash /Can’t get with a dead-beat ass / So NO” is pretty much the lyrical equivalent of two thousand nail-painting emojis. On the back of the single’s success third album FanMail went on to sell bloody millions, cementing the band’s legacy in what would be the last LP they released as a trio before the untimely death of Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes in 2002.

Agree with our choices? *runs for cover* Let us know your thoughts in the comments.