I sometimes post these (personal) reflections to the site, and sometimes I don’t, but as I feel 2013 was an interesting year I’ve decided to post an abridged version. Please note this is my personal view, you might agree, or disagree with it. That’s fine, it’s not supposed to start flame wars or twitter battles, it’s just one fan’s opinion.
I think its fair to say that 2013 was a mixed year for the group, it came with great promise (and success) initially, then they split the community, then brought it back, then came the album ….
Obviously the start of the year was all about ‘What About Us’ and when it’s UK release finally happened in March 2013, the girls shifted 114,000 copies (the biggest one week sales of the time) and gave the girls their first number one. There was great excitement ahead. The girls obviously followed this up with ‘Gentleman’ which I still to this date, believe it was the RIGHT thing to attempt to do. There are many complaints that the group doesn’t connect with the public at whole, so they decided to change it and try something different. This ultimately failed, but I am probably one of the few people who was actually glad to see them try something different. The issue with Gentleman is ultimately more down to its lyrics (yes, you know the ones) and THAT video which was a little disappointing wasn’t it?
This didn’t really stop the girls, they still performed at major summer shows, on the main stage at V Festival, plus several headlining shows across the summer from Scarborough in the far North East down to the Bluewater Shopping Centre in Kent.
Disco Love was released, which saw the girls return to their more known-pop routes which was followed by the album ‘Living For The Weekend’ which despite being a pretty decent release, it’s lack of decent promotion and follow up to it’s release has seen it struggle to sell only 20,000 copies and fall off the UK Album Chart – although they aren’t alone as many pop albums released in the last few months have suffered the same fate.
What does 2014 bring? I know over Christmas there has been (unnecessary fuss) over the 2014 Tour. We all know its been coming and dates will be announced shortly. I’ve always seen it as an Autumn/Winter 2014 tour anyway – but we shall see. Rumours recently have suggested that another single from the album is showing up on release schedules. Not Giving Up is being touted to be released (right now) in March.
If people ask me what 2014 will bring, I’m on the side that a Greatest Hits (or even maybe a ‘Singles Collection’) sort of album will be released, and therefore a tour will be named the same, which will include the usual 3-4 new songs to go with it. It’s very similar to what Girls Aloud did mid-career, and it seems The Saturdays are going down a similar route. I might be way off the ball park, but people ask what I feel and this is what I feel.
I’ll end by saying thank you to all of the girls, this year we managed to get all 5 girls to follow us on twitter, and also will like to say thank you to Adam, Sarah (and Peter, although we’ve yet to meet) at Fascination Management who have been great to us this year, and hopefully we can continue together (in a way) in 2014 too!
Happy New Year to all our visitors, old and new, we celebrate our 6th Birthday in April, which is amazing!
