That's all very well, but what about the new Girls Aloud single?

As previously announced, the third single from Girls Aloud's Out Of Control shall be "Untouchable". Because the album version clocks in at over six and a half minutes, it would be completely illogical to hope that radio and TV would use the full-length track as a proper single.

So, as to be expected, they've gone and banged out a radio edit. It's surprisingly not half bad.

Positives: A dash of new production touches (an extra synth blip here or there never hurt anyone), a bit more of a "stomp" in the backbeat, some vocoders to Sarah's vocals (they should consider doing that for all future Sarah appearances...). Also the fact that the single mix ends with Nadine's "beautiful robots dancing alone" bit is a wonderful idea, indeed.

Negatives: Why was it necessary to only do half of Nicola's opening verse? It is a poignant moment and really does set the tone for the rest of the track. I don't think an extra two lines would have caused an international crisis by adding maybe ten more seconds to a single mix that is under four minutes. Chopping off the "we're swimming with the sharks" portion is also rather disappointing.

Now they've performed it on Dancing On Ice, and though we could have done without the ice skaters in front of them like this was the 1994 Winter Olympics, vocally the Girls actually did quite well (see the debut television performances of "The Promise" or "The Loving Kind" for proof that this indeed is an improvement).