ATTTEEEEEENNNNNSHHUNNNN!
Listen up: The ladies of Little Mix are looking for recruits. (Also, sorry for that very hyperbolic, Upworthy-like title, but like…it’s actually true.)
Little Mix’s Salute is one of the most thoroughly enjoyable UK girl group records released in a long time. And if you weren’t already cruising aboard the Mix Mobile, then the album’s title/intro track, “Salute,” is the perfect way to formally introduce yourselves to Perrie, Jade, Leigh-Anne and my Jamaican Speaking Queen, Jesy.
“Salute” is sort of like a 2014 version of the Spice Girls‘ rallying cry of “GIRL POWER!” about twenty years later (dear God, we’re all so old) — a feisty punch of female empowerment pop that looks and feels undeniably fresh.
To supply their anthem with an appropriately militant visual, the girls journeyed somewhere between Ciara‘s “Work” construction zone, Beyoncé‘s “Run The World” desert and Ameriie‘s grungy “Heard ‘Em All” hideaway (STILL SO UNDERRATED) to begin their almighty revolution — and they brought it.
But wait…
Yes.
Is there substantial bodily movement — and by that, I mean hairflips?
YES — but even more importantly, these young women are ACTUALLY DANCING. Remember that? Remember when people danced in pop music videos? Now we just twerk. But like, there was once a time when the world’s best pop stars went to dance studios and rehearsed intricate routines for hours to dazzle us with incredible choreography that we’d awkwardly attempt to emulate at middle school dances. It happened, once — and that is what Little Mix is bringing to the table. Very high energy, very cool and urban…there’s even a salute-style move! (DO YOU SEE WHAT THEY DID THERE?)
(Weirdly, the dancers are all male, tho. I mean…well, whatever.)
Is it Illuminati?
Yes.
Okay, then I’m definitely in! I’m ready to be recruited now, Little Mix!
Without the almighty Girls Aloud around, life has grown awfully cold, but the “Salute” video provides a glimmer of hope in what is otherwise a very lackluster state of girl group affairs. And if you weren’t before, you ought to be fully stanning for the group now.
However, that video is still not as good as this.
‘Salute’ was released on February 4 in the US. (iTunes)