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They call it manufactured pop, as if that were something to be ashamed of - but we are a manufacturing country. Down our conveyor belts come cars, and shoes, and biscuits, and guns, and pop bands. Useful things and beautiful things. Things that make us go faster, and things that make us feel like we are going faster. Things that we love passionately for a day, and then throw away, and things that we love passionately for a day, and then keep forever.

Being able to plan for and make our necessary things - instead of relying on accidents, or nature, to supply them - is one of the first signs that a society has achieved civilization. And what could be more necessary than pop? What else should we aim to pump out in such greedy, thrilling, giddying amounts?

The factory is a democratic place. Sometimes, the people working on the floor come cruising in on a Monday morning, still wearing Saturday night’s make-up and Sunday morning’s smile, and say, “Sod this.” They pull off their hair-nets, and jump on the conveyor belt themselves. They announce that they are pop stars, now. They make a band.

That’s allowed, in the factory, because we are a manufacturing country, and that means we are also allowed to manufacture ourselves. We are allowed to change our futures. We are Girls Aloud.

And in the band we manufacture, we don’t have to smile, if we don’t want to. We won’t have dance routines that ruin our hair. We don’t sing songs where we pretend that we’re scared, or that we can’t run in our heels, or that we don’t know exactly what we want. We don’t need no beauty sleep. We think you’re off your head. We text as we eat. We flirt while we work. We flick our finger at the world below. If we’d know, or if we’d cared, we would have stood around in the kitchen in our underwear.

When Jack Kerouac wrote On The Road in 1957, he said the people he loved the most were the Fabulous Yellow Roman Candles, who were mad to live, mad to talk, . We saw it on a t-shirt once. But anyone who was mad to live wouldn’t want to be a Roman Candle. Roman Candles are the rubbish ones. They’re over in thirty seconds. They don’t even spin, or fly. If we were a firework, we’d be a limousine full of dynamite. And we’d put the fire out with vodka. If we could be bothered.

If you know someone who sounds like us, we’ll give you a tenner. If you like someone better than us, frankly, we don’t care. We’re Girls Aloud. We’re Made In Britain.