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Parade

First, let us dispense with a bit of the old girl-band cliché. Three quick-fire questions for the five boisterous, fierce, compelling, addictive and frankly gorgeous young women that make up Britain’s next favourite five-piece feminine musical endeavour, Parade.
***
Somewhere in South-West London, on the banks of the river Thames, in a perfectly lovely Victorian terraced house, pop alchemy is at work. It is to this address that the five members of Parade were dispatched at the beginning of 2010 to get to work, quick-smart, on cultivating a unique pop act that might become the nation’s favourite. A mere 11 months later, Lauren, Emily, Jessica, Sian and Bianca debuted a six strong set, their first as Parade at a charity function at the O2 Indigo and brought the house down. Between their original blue-chip pop hits in the waiting – gleaming with the snappy luxury of trans-Atlantic r&b pop at its best – they rendered a straight, zero auto-tune rendition of Cee-Lo’s ‘Forget You’ as a note perfect, five piece acapella, huddled round a piano to perform their genius ballad ‘Rock Star’, a song they insist is not about Pete Doherty and Kate Moss and then climaxed with the full-on techno dazzle of ‘Rollercoaster’. No-one left the room unmoved. Clearly, five stars had been born.  
Shakira certainly thought so. A month later, to round off their brilliant 2010, Parade were booked to support the South American pop goddess on her UK Arena tour, including the 02 itself. ‘The night we met her,’ says Jess, ‘I just sort of accidentally put my hand on her bum. And then I was so embarrassed I left it there hoping she hadn’t noticed. I think it’s because we’ve become so close, the five of us. But I’ve got to remember not to do it in future.’
‘I couldn’t speak for two hours before the show,’ says Jess now, of the first Shakira date in Manchester, in her immaculate Eastenders accent. ‘We all had to calm her down,’ adds Bianca, a trace of native Nottingham noticeable in her voice. ‘She wasn’t the only one,’ says Sian, ‘I had to channel my inner Peter Kay to get through it.’ That’s her broad Bolton speaking voice, not her tremulous singing one, FYI. ‘Afterwards, we all looked at each other,’ says chipper Scouser Lauren, ‘and thought, did we really just do that?’ ‘And,’ says lovely Emily (think Rachel Stevens with added personality), ‘we all looked at each other and you could just see us all thinking “Yeah, we did it!”’
The first Parade gig called to mind the moment the Spice Girls wandered into the Smash Hits offices in the mid-90s and started dancing on tables. Be warned, you don’t get a word in edgeways with this lot. The Parade energy is similarly inexhaustible. The 21st century has new demands on the premium pop performer, mind. So, married to that injection of huge pop bounce was the kind of slick professionalism that similarly recalls the first time you saw the Pussycat Dolls ‘Don’t Cha’ video or Gwen Stefani and her Harajuku Girls at their Arena-beating best.
Parade: it’s slick with a touch of street style, it’s more colourful than the Blackpool illuminations, it’s pop and it’s just the antidote to any start-of-the-year blues lingering in the air that a teen relative might need some fluorescent relief from. (Ps, this is the first girlband since Girls Aloud emerged that dad will sing along to, too, for mostly the right reasons and some of the wrong). There’s even a catchphrase to go with them. ‘We are literally prepared to wander the streets telling people to “Join the Parade”’ says Sian, confirming the group’s unflinching belief that they can become pop’s sexiest new Pied Pipers.  
‘When we first moved in here, we put together a massive collage on this table of everything that we wanted to be,’ says Emily. ‘Obviously the Spice Girls sneaked in,’ says Jessica, ‘somewhere above something totally random like a pumpkin and below loads of silver balloons.’ It was at this meeting the girls alighted upon their name. ‘There was a spread in Vogue,’ says Lauren, ‘with the word Parade at the top. We loved the way the word looked, we loved the fact that it meant something communal and shared. We loved that it didn’t sound like a regular girl-band’s name. And then we looked at the article and it was about the old porn magazine.’ 70s erotica meets 2000’s Vogue? That sounded just about right to them. ‘It was PERFECT!’ says Bianca. It is also the name of possibly Prince’s best album. ‘EVEN BETTER!!’ they chorus, as one.
If the five component parts of Parade are giddy with the glow of expectancy that automatically accompanies five sista’s ready, willing and able to stamp their mark on the pop world, they are determined to do things their own way. ‘It’s quite weird with us,’ continues Bianca, ‘in that the record company and management have let us have our say, so we feel comfortable about everything we’re doing.’ Very 2011. ‘You say that, but you start speaking to other bands and you realise they don’t have that privilege.’
None of the obvious and tired producer-for-hire were drafted in, no calls made to trusty old choreographer-to-everyone Brian Friedman. Instead the best about-to-blow talent from both sides of the atlantic were selected including Shamrock, who’s ‘Man Down’ for Rihanna looks set to be an enormous hit. ‘We made much of our album with three blokes in a shed in Slough,’ says Emily, of in-house producers The Fairground (Jay Sean, Alesha Dixon), ‘it doesn’t sound very glamorous but it was the best fun ever. We tried out some songs they had already and they just weren’t working. So they sat down with all of us individually for a few days and overnight came up with ‘Louder’. They wrote it specifically for our personalities. As soon as we went in the booth to record it, it felt AMAZING.’
Aah, ‘Louder’. Parade’s opening shot at pop glory was the song that they all knew, instantly, was the one. A one-listen-and-you’re-in pop belter, it has all the musical shimmy of Blackout-era Britney with none of the, ahem, personal problems. By the time they had fashioned its close cousin and potential second single, the creamy confection of ‘Perfume’, they had alighted on a sound that was slick, groovy, multi-layered, great fun and totally modern. 
Yet there is something more to Parade than just their sizeable potential hit factor. It is in the presentation of their supersonic music where things really burst into flames. ‘Again,’ says Jess, a streetdance veteran at only 22, ‘we wanted to work with newcomers. We wanted it to have that edge over other girl-bands. So we introduced the streetdance element. Two of the brilliant guys from Status, a proper streetdance crew who had just taken the UK Streetdance Championship crown from Flawless and Diversity, came along to help and the whole thing changed overnight. We weren’t doing that boring girly choreography you see everyone doing. It was a bit...’ Fiercer? ‘Exactly.’
If the idea of using newcomers for sound and visuals sounds potentially dangerous, well then all the better as far as they’re concerned. ‘We’re all in this Parade together,’ says Bianca, ‘we’ve got great new producers, great new choreographers and we’re new too. It makes sense to do it all together.’
The shared experience is a component part of the Parade ethos. ‘I think we’d all go a bit deranged if we were doing this alone,’ says Lauren, ‘the best thing about it is that there’s always someone to turn to if you’ve had a stressful day. If you think of putting five girls together that have never known each other before, the potential is for disaster. But we haven’t spent a day out of each other’s company since we moved in here.’ ‘We actually love each other,’ says Emily, to a wistful, dewy-eyed round of ‘aaah’s from the rest of her pop alumni.
So get ready for Parade. Join it. They might just inject into the girlband what JLS did the boyband in 2008. Make it modern, fresh and vital.  It’s hard to think of anything that could possibly rain on their parade.
***
Parade: The girls, a brief pen portrait.
Jessica, 22:
Grew up in Bow, East London. Joined a drama club on the Kingsmead Estate at 14. Signed to Ministry of Sound at 17 and Xenomania at 18. Supported Chipmunk and Tinchy Stryder. In band St Trinians 2
Emily, 20
Grew up in Torquay. Mentored by Simon Cowell as part of X Factor hopefuls Hope (‘talk about a school of hard knocks!’). Supported Boyzone and Westlife. Best hair in pop.
Lauren, 22
Grew up in Liverpool. Loves Liverpool. Attended dance school before joining Parade. Loves motorbikes, the blues and Jimi Hendrix.
Sian, 22
Grew up in Bolton. Loves Peter Kay. Graduated from Uni in Leeds whilst part of independently signed girl group City Girls. Loves ‘the nitty gritty of performing. It’s in my blood.’
Bianca, 20

Grew up in Nottingham. Baby of the group. Grade 8 cello. Turned up for first Parade dance audition in Ugg boots (‘I know!’). Best fringe in pop.

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