Don't Go Blue and Pass Out

Nicole Scherzinger is back with a new single. Cast your mind back three years when that news heralded the arrival of the distinctly underwhelming Baby Love (feat. Will.I.Am) and it probably wouldn't even register on your "important pop news radar". Following as it does on the heels of the little-bit-brilliant Poison, however, and it becomes something to get at least mildly excited about.

Don't Hold Your Breath started out as a track recorded by Keri Hilson (her of the The Way I Are) fame, but the track didn't make it on to her No Boys Allowed album. If you're interested, though, this is what her version sounded like. The raw materials are certainly there, but frankly there's far too much Timbaland and auto-tune and not enough proper pop-ballad warbling. So far, so run of the mill.

Enter Nicole and RedOne to rescue the whole thing from cutting-floor obscurity. In lieu of an official video (seriously, please can someone get on with that) here's an audio rip from youtube which you can expect to be pulled as soon as the song gets popular enough. Such is life.



Let's set aside for a moment that Nicole brings a pop/RnB vocal which is on the right side of "on the money", would you just LISTEN TO THAT PRODUCTION? The "swoosh" heading into the chorus and the catchiest hook since the DNA of the common cold virus, turns what in Hilson/Timbaland hands was a bit of a pedestrian album track into an excellent follow-up single.

All in all, we can't help but being reminded not only of Nicole's disaster of a first attempt at a solo career, but also the trend towards the end of the Pussycat Dolls to bill them as "featuring Nicole Scherzinger". At the time, it was difficult to understand exactly what the "powers that be" were trying to achieve. On the one hand you had a wildly successful and fairly edgy girl band with a lead singer who had a pleasant voice and could, to say the least, dance a bit. On the other, it was difficult to see what there was that was particularly marketable about Nicole as a solo artist. Sure, cameos on tracks like Scream were pleasant enough, but her vocals aren't that strong, and what she makes up for in looks, she does lack a bit in charisma.

Yet creative decisions like Poison and now, Don't Hold Your Breath just go to show what you can do with the right production team and a decent A&R team. So much so that we've gone from being completely apathetic about the prospect of a Nicole Scherzinger solo album, to actually desperately wanting to get our hands on a copy.

Which, at the end of the day, is Music marketing 101 really.