Cheryl's solo career has obviously been more successful than the rest of them, thanks to her X Factor gig.
Nadine's solo album was released to mixed reviews and for some reason, available only through Tesco. She's gotten more positive acclaim as Erin the Goddess in the 2014 staging of The Lord of the Dance and she did own a successful pub in Los Angeles.
Nicola's solo career gained more critical praise than both Cheryl and Nadine, but her album was only a modest seller. However, she has found much more success as The Fashionista, a songwriter for hire, and a successful makeup range tailored for pale women like herself. She also won the British version of The Masked Singer.
Kimberley released a Cover Album of showtunes to mixed reviews, but has garnered more praise for her turn as Fiona in Shrek: The Musical, Jovie in Elf: The Musical. This has subsequently lead her to a respectable career in musical theater and a fairly popular television personality.
Aside from her brief time on Coronation Street and winning the twentieth series of Celebrity Big Brother in 2017, Sarah's solo career didn't really fare well as her solo debut EP failed to chart and she sadly passed away in September 2021 after a battle with breast cancer.
Costume Backlash: All the girls hated the silver outfits they wore in the "No Good Advice" video. They were quite prone to ripping, and it was basically like dancing in tinfoil.
Creator Backlash: Ask them which music video they hate the most, and they'll answer with "No Good Advice", as it was their second video and they were basically dancing around in tinfoil around a car and phone booth with very bizarre flashing effects.
Nadine flat out states at the end of Off The Record that she never wanted to participate in it. While she grudgingly admitted that some of it was fun, she still wasn't happy with the final product and felt portrayals were inaccurate. According to Sarah's book Hear Me Out, Nadine never watched the full thing until 2021 when the girls did so on reuniting with Sarah.
Sarah described Cheryl watching Off The Record fifteen years later almost having to cover her eyes and cringing at her comments and actions. She herself admits to cringing but still loving it overall.
Kimberley loathes the video for "The Show" because she thinks it made her look far more cartoonish than the other girls.
Inverted with "Love Machine". All the girls have gone on record saying that they initially loathed the song when they first recorded it, only to be won over due to the positive reception of the song. Nicola had found the lyrics "daft" and Cheryl admitted that she didn't think it was a good single.
Nicola still hates the video because she got severe sunburns during the shoot that made it painful to do the dance moves.
While the girls themselves don't seem to have a problem with "Long Hot Summer", Xenomania hates it and considers it a lazy and disastrous effort. In fact, "Biology" was written and recorded in response to "Long Hot Summer".
Cheryl hates "See The Day" because they were stuck for ballads on Chemistry.
Nicola dislikes "The Loving Kind" as it sounded too much like "Call The Shots", but she admits that she does like her parts on the song. (The song was not performed on the Ten tour, but is included on the collection.)
Nadine hates "Beautiful 'Cause You Love Me" because she doesn't agree with its message. She says all women are beautiful anyway. She even threatened to back out of the reunion when the song was being planned as the lead single.
DVD Commentary: The Style DVD has Sarah and Cheryl comment on the styling of their videos up to "Sexy! No No No.." along with other miscellaneous trivia, such as the strange frequency of shots that focus on Sarah's hands and feet.
Nadine is a natural brunette, but typically colors her hair a dark blonde. She reverted to being a brunette after the group broke up, but occasionally returns to blonde.
Kimberley is a natural dark blonde, but dyed her hair black for the What Will The Neighbours Say? and Chemistry periods.
Cheryl had black hair for the Sound of the Underground period, but lightened it shortly after.
"Wake Me Up" was the favorite to be released as the lead single for What Will the Neighbours Say? (and it was Sarah's personal favorite off the album). Polydor however were worried that it was too harsh, and the more upbeat "The Show" was chosen instead.
The girls also wanted to release "Deadlines & Diets" as the second single from the album, but Polydor insisted on "Love Machine". Most of them hated the idea, and Nadine thought it would be "career suicide".
Nadine later revealed that the early days of the group, when she was the one chosen to get the most lead vocals, led to a lot of bitterness between the girls.
Sarah ended up losing contact with Nicola, Kimberly and Cheryl after the split - remaining only in contact with Nadine. Everyone did end up reconciling after her diagnosis and putting their rift behind them.
Keep Circulating the Tapes: Any B-side or rarity not included on the bonus disc of their second Greatest Hits AlbumTen since its release in 2012 has yet to be legally available for purchase or streaming online. This means to hear obscure fan-favorite tracks like "Singapore", "Lights, Music, Camera, Action!", and "Androgynous Girls" you either have to own the physical albums/singles they were released on, find pirated audio, or buy the long out-of-print box set Girls Aloud: The Collection, which easily goes for over $250.00 - when it's available at all (and even then, doesn't include everything the group recorded).
However, the group's first album Sound of the Underground was reissued for its 20th anniversary in June 2023 with many extra songs previously hard to find, potentially kicking off a reissue campaign for each of their albums with bonus rare tracks, leading to this trope being belatedly averted.
No Export for You: This used to be the case as they are a British act and never really bothered trying abroad, but now their music is now available in America. But, good luck trying to find their music in other regions of the world.
Inverted! "Love Machine" has a random lyric "let's go Eskimo" that means nothing. The music video connects it by having the action take place at 'The Eskimo Club'.
The "Long Hot Summer" video featuring a garage, and the girls working as mechanics, is a remnant for when it was to feature in Herbie: Fully Loaded.
The Pete Best: Nicola and Kimberley were last minute replacements for two contestants on Popstars: The Rivals; Nicola Ward refused to sign the contract, feeling the pay was too low, and Hazel Kaneswaran was deemed too old to participate.
Promoted Fanboy: Prior to being named a mentor on Rihanna's television show Styled to Rock, Nicola had admitted to being a huge fan of the singer.
She's also professed to being a huge Lady Gaga fan, so when the latter was promoting Born This Way in the UK, MTV asked Nicola to interview her.
Kimberley is a huge fan of Strictly Come Dancing and had actually wanted to compete on the show for a while before finally competing in 2012 and placing second.
Like most Brits, Sarah was a long-time fan of Coronation Street, so they asked her to guest star on the show for a four episode arc as the wife of Tracy Barlow's boyfriend.
Reality Subtext: The girls have gone on record saying that their songs occasionally do reflect real life, because Brian Higgins considers them his muse and has regular chats with them to draw inspiration from.
"Every Now and Then" has Cheryl ends up singing the line, "I even wore your ring", heavily alluding to the fact that she got divorced shortly after the band went on hiatus.
"Love is Pain" had a few lines referring to infidelity, especially since Cheryl's first husband cheated throughout the marriage.
"Live In The Country" is more of an amusing in-joke for the girls, referring to Sarah's wish of retiring from pop stardom to the quiet countryside.
It would be interesting to learn what their debut single would have been if Irish singer Samantha Mumba had accepted "Sound of the Underground" as it was originally pitched to her but she passed on it. Previously, it had been for a girl group called Orchid that disbanded before they got a record deal. This led to a minor controversy where many articles reported that the song was stolen from Orchid, even though Xenomania owned it from the beginning.
The "No Good Advice" chorus originally opened with the line "I don't like fried rice". Also, the line "shut your mouth because your shit might show" had to be edited to just "it might show". The "I don't give a damn" line was nearly censored too, but appears intact.
"Some Kind of Miracle" was intended to be their next single after "Life Got Cold", but Richard Curtis specifically picked them to cover "Jump" for Love Actually, so they went with that instead. It was going to be released much earlier, as the third single, but "Life Got Cold"'s positive fan response led to it being released third. "Jump" also didn't get featured in Love Actually in favor of the original Pointer Sisters version - due to American audiences being unfamiliar with Girls Aloud. It appears on the British version of the soundtrack.
"Long Hot Summer" would have been on the soundtrack to the film Herbie: Fully Loaded, thus raising the possibility of the Girls being introduced to America.
"Hoxton Heroes" was intended to be on Tangled Up, but Executive Meddling relegated it to the B-Side for "Can't Speak French".
"Call The Shots" was actually intended for The Sound of Girls Aloud, but they felt that the tone was too depressing for a greatest hits album, so it was saved for Tangled Up.
Executive Meddling at the record label did not want "The Promise" to be the first single off of Out of Control. They wanted "Rolling Back The Rivers In Time" instead, but the girls fought their label and won out.
"Graffiti My Soul" was almost never recorded by them as it was originally written for Britney Spears. Britney's label loved it, but her management did not, so they rejected it for "Toxic".
During pre-production of Chemistry, they were going to cover Chris Isaak's "Wicked Games", but ultimately changed their minds. The song was then referenced in "Biology"'s opening verse.
They were going to cover "What A Feeling" for their first greatest hits album, but decided to cover "I Think We're Alone Now" instead.
"Singapore" was intended for Chemistry, but was instead relegated to the deluxe edition of The Sound of Girls Aloud.
"On My Way to Satisfaction" was also intended for Chemistry as Sarah was seen recording it in Home Truths, but it was ultimately relegated to the St Trinians soundtrack.
"The Loving Kind" was actually supposed to be for Pet Shop Boys's album Yes. However, during the recording sessions with Xenomania, Chris Lowe felt it wasn't the right sound that the band was going for and with their blessing, encouraged the girls to record it instead.
"Wake Me Up" was actually going to be the first single from What Will The Neighbours Say? but Executive Meddling decided that "The Show" would be released first.
The girls didn't even want "Love Machine" to follow up "The Show", preferring "Deadlines and Diets" instead. (In this case, the meddling turned out to be for the better.)
"Graffiti My Soul" was going be the album's fifth single, but the plans were scrapped to use the time to record Chemistry instead.
"We Wanna Party" actually was recorded for What Will The Neighbors Say?. It was then saved for Out of Control.
And the biggest What Could Have Been is the band itself on Popstars. If the girls hadn't been voted into the group by the viewers, imagine who could have and the name they came up with.
Kimberley actually auditioned for the role of Maria Sutherland in Coronation Street, but Samia Ghadie won the part. She had in fact been working as an actress before she ended up in Girls Aloud.
Nadine was going to participate in The Passions of Girls Aloud, but wanted it to focus on charity work, but due to some legal wrangling, the producers couldn't clear it, so they offered her the chance to learn to conduct an orchestra instead, so she declined to participate.
It was rumored that Kimberley would release a solo album in 2011, but that amounted to featuring on Aggro Santos's "Like U Like" and she instead pursued musical theatre. The solo album finally came in 2013.
There were plans for the group to reunite to mark the 20th anniversary of their debut single with a one-off tribute concert in Sarah's memory to raise money for medical equipment for cancer patients, however they opted not to go forward with it with Kimberley feeling that it would be too painful to do so and instead they reunited for a 5K run in Hyde Park to raise awareness and money for breast cancer research along with a Primark nightwear collection.
Lene Nystrøm of Aqua co-wrote "No Good Advice", "You Freak Me Out", and "We Wanna Party".
Edele Lynch of B*Witched co-wrote "Some Kind of Miracle".
Brian McFadden of Westlife co-wrote "Girls Allowed".
Nicola herself co-wrote "Going Nowhere", "See Me Now", and "They Just Don't Know You" for Little Mix. Her solo album features production work by Metronomy, Dragonette, and Diplo.
Johnny Marr himself contributed guitar riffs to "Rolling Back The Rivers In Time" and harmonica to "Love Is The Key".
Una Foden of The Saturdays had auditioned for the Irish edition of Popstars alongside Nadine.
A Real-Person Fic written about them was allegedly discovered by either the band or their management and was so horrifying that the band was convinced it was a death threat, so the author was arrested and taken to court for obscenity and death threats.
after her diagnosis and putting their rift behind them.