Sarah Harding – Songs from the St Trinian’s 2 Soundtrack

Thinking too much about context seems a bit silly and pointless now that we’ve thought about it for quite a while. These songs have been written for the St Trinian’s 2 soundtrack, two by Xenomania, one by David Bowie who (we’re sure there’s some hilarious reference to some lyric or song title that can fit in here but we’re not going to struggle to think of one just to please those of you who are twenty years older than us and can think of one at the drop of a hat) got the call thirty years ago and while some demo with his voice on it did surface around that time we now have the proper finished version, sung by Sarah Harding off of Girls Aloud. Sarah is also acting in the film. That’s nice for her.

So, Too Bad fades in with lots of Xenomania noises and fits in with Girls Aloud’s Tangled Up era. It’s about general not stopping til you get enough and “This superstar in the making tonight is yours for the taking” is a very good line, a round of applause for Xenomania here. There is a “GO!” before the chorus and the middle eight has a sort of rap and at one point it sounds like it’s going to burst in to the Casualty theme tune. It restrains itself but the song is quite good in a pleasing ‘snack to fill the hole until the Girls Aloud meal’ comes along, hopefully some time next year.

Make It Easy sounds like something from a spy film, starting quiet, whispery and sparse, creeping up. Then there’s  the bridge which sounds like a chorus so when it bursts in with a proper big chorus it makes the song very good. Again the middle eight in this is amazing. It sounds like Here We Go taken up to the Tangled Up era.

Despite Boys Keep Swinging being the ropiest sounding and pointless feeling of the three songs it seems to suit her voice more. It isn’t that different from the original. The garage punk fuzzy guitars are gorgeous and this would sound amazing sung by a group and we don’t mean Girls Aloud but Sarah x 4. This group would be amazing. As it is it doesn’t sound that great but we imagine the film makers wanted something with an old British feel with a modern ‘rock chick’ twist. We vomited thrice while writing that sentence, and once again now at the word ‘thrice’. Horrible word.

The soundtrack looks pretty impressive and these songs are some of the stand outs. It’s great to hear some Girls Aloud-sounding songs but if anyone’s going to go solo with them it seems like Sarah might not be the one to do it, or not these ones. The Boys Keep Swinging cover has some similarities in tone to On My Way To Satisfaction which is the sort of stuff we’d like to hear from Sarah because she does sound really good on them where she veers towards screechy on Too Bad and Make It Easy. For songs for a soundtrack these are very good and we’d be excited to see if she comes up with any more solo stuff in the future.

Too Bad: