Girls Aloud: Chemistry

Herald rating: ****

You can argue about artistic merit all you like. Just because Girls Aloud were cobbled together on a reality TV show, don't write their own songs, have a stylist who dresses them in matching outfits, get snapped falling out of nightclubs in the wee hours and have romantic connections with a famous football team, doesn't mean they're not cool.

They may just be this year's saviours of superficial pop. Since when did Madonna write her own songs anyway?

Chemistry, the group's third album, is a sensation built on hooks, hooks and more hooks.

That's thanks to their hit-makers, Xenomania, who've mined just about every genre of pop to nightclub effect. Biology, a song strung together on multiple choruses, skewers a raunchy Animals guitar riff with the sparkliest Europop this side of the gay club. Watch Me Go turns a bucking ska groove into hens' night material. And Wild Horses has a bassline that would make the Pet Shop Boys proud.

Best of all, the girls are actually having fun as they twist their stilettos into men's backs.

All that teasing could have gone pear-shaped in a Holly Vallance kind of way if it wasn't for their sense of humour.

Sure, they rap about their great butts - and sound like an hormonal Neneh Cherry doing it - but they're not trying to fool anyone. These are council-estate girls living it up in a world of bling where even hotties have to earn their respect.

"Don't ask how we do it so cool," they coo on the album's opening track, before poking fun at guys who will only sleep with beautiful women (Models), and celebrating "cocktails with price tags [that] make you choke on your sushi".

If they'd scrapped the ballad quotient - Cee-Lo Green's See the Day, and the Pretenders' I'll Stand By You - this would have been a five-star review. Now, where's the pink champagne?

Label: Polydor