I was planning to do a top five, but no-one else comes close to my excitement about the following two so it seemed wrong to include more.
Martin Rolinski
I was very underwhelmed by Alexander Bard’s latest project Gravitonas, so I’m hoping Martin Rolinski will cheer me up by continuing BWO’s tradition of brilliance with his solo career. Someone’s got to carry that torch and as strongest candidate (well, he did write the songs) Alexander has let us down, frontman Martin needs to step in and make things right. His solo material is expected around Autumn this year, which does seem quite far off, but hopefully it’ll be your typical Swedish album release where you hear that it’s happening one day and the single, album and video all seem to be out the next. There’s no time for hanging about in the Swedish pop world! In the meantime I’ll be looking out for any news on who Martin is working with and keep you updated as we are gradually able to work out how likely it is to be amazing or terrible.
Nicola Roberts
There are very few details announced so far about Nicola’s solo career, but it definitely seems to be happening and I’m extremely excited to see what she will come out with as Nicola was always my favourite member of Girls Aloud. It sounds like it’s going to be indie-pop with a hint of electro, as rumours say she has been working with Dragonette. There doesn’t seem to be that much optimism among pop fans that Nicola’s solo releases will be a success, but as she’s always been unfairly labelled ‘the other one’ in GA, that makes her the underdog. By my calculations that gives her the best chance of catching up with Cheryl or at the very least carving out a career for herself that lasts beyond one flop single. Even if she gets to release two flop singles she’ll have outdone the rest of her non-Cheryl bandmates!