Can a British girl band sneak back into the charts without going through the K-pop filter? It’s too early to tell, but XO are running as strong candidates. First they will have to approach the impact – more critical than commercial – of FLO and, later, demonstrate that they can fill the gap left by Little Mix, which is not exactly small.
Formed by Polydor in 2024, XO had already left good feelings with ‘Fashionably Late’, an EP that included ‘Real Friends’, a great song co-written by Charli xcx with a Sugababes touch. Before they had debuted with ‘Lovesick’, with echoes of Britney Spears, and they had also approached the pop of Nelly Furtado in ‘Rush Hour’. In October they released the mini-album ‘Need to Know’.
Their new single, ‘Clique’, is the most immediate of all. It starts with almost martial percussion and a very Timbaland hip-hop beat, but it soon opens to a choral chorus that is impossible to get out of your head. “That’s my girls, that’s my clique,” they sing over and over again, between “na-na-nas,” while claiming female friendship with typical audacity.
If ‘Hotline’ was already a potential hit thanks to its eighties freestyle base and a chorus that encouraged you to block your useless boyfriend’s number (“If he don’t keep you satisfied, block his number…”), ‘Clique’ goes one step further. It has more personality, an even more obvious hook and sounds exactly like the type of single that could take XO off the promise circuit and finally put them in front of the general public.
