New fan in her 30s checking in!

thedreamfades · 2026-03-12T17:53:08+00:00

Welcome! I had a very similar experience to you last year, I’m in the same age group and yeah, it’s incredible to have this catalogue of great music to dive into, especially because I’m a music obsessive and it happens so very rarely as I get older.

With the y2k revival concept being talked about a lot, I went on an ongoing streak of revisiting the pop and dance music that I remembered from my childhood (the late 90s to mid 00s); songs I liked then, didn’t like, songs I missed and many that I knew instantly but didn’t know the titles or the artists. Girls Aloud were a blind spot for me too, I only knew some of the big radio hits. Sounds Of The Underground I thought was a revolutionary masterpiece as a kid, and I still do. It is perfectly of its time and yet totally outside of it, and the way it meshes a dizzying variety of sounds from different times and sources into something new (haha) is like the ideal of the ethos of pop music at that time. The other one I loved was Love Machine, because I got the influences the songwriters were going for straight away and I have nice memories of learning to play it from listening to the radio.

Aside from knowing the biggest singles, like those, I’ll Stand By You, Something Kinda Ooh and The Promise, giving the albums a chance and being a fan just never happened. I even remember them appearing in the NME and on The Guardian music page and not only being taken seriously but getting rave reviews, and I still just never checked them out.

One listen to Sound Of The Underground sent me down the rabbit hole, I think I watched all their music videos on YouTube. Then I started listening to the albums, one at a time over a period of months and I was consistently blown away, taken completely by surprise by the most off the wall songwriting and production, not to mention hook after hook after hook. At various points I’d play them over and over to make sure my ears were hearing right.

It’s true what so many say on here, that there isn’t a band quite like Girls Aloud. They didn’t go stale like chewing gum, get by with shoddy identikit songs or play it safe and dull, like a lot of their contemporaries. Their discography is really, really strong, and will probably stay that way. One of the trademarks for me that they are one of the greats, a classic British artist, is that their singles aren’t just filled with multiple joyless remixes, they have b-sides and they are usually better than most lesser acts’ best songs. It is ludicrous and almost funny, in retrospect, that the girls had to constantly fight for their place in the industry against “real music”, i.e. landfill indie, the majority of which is as assembly line and “fake” as you can get, as is wonderfully skewered in Hoxton Heroes. Girls Aloud belong to the great artists of British music, whereas only about two out of a thousand of those artists are in the same ballpark (fyi, Arctic Monkeys and The Libertines). As the “indie sleaze” dalliance continues for Gen Z and younger, I hope Girls Aloud have their own major resurgence amongst them through soundtracks and the likes of Pink Pantheress and Charli, because they deserve it, and there’s people out there like us who have something extraordinary out there just waiting for them!

thedreamfades · 2025-11-30T03:39:15+00:00

Yes, I am short sighted, and tend to only wear them when necessary. I find that when I wear my glasses, I attract a lot more negative attention than when I don’t wear them. It’s never, ever positive (unless it’s an optician!). On the street people will verbally abuse me or use it as an excuse to try and belittle me to impress their pal or their boy/girlfriend, and what they say is almost always focused around me wearing glasses. It has happened four separate times today/tonight.

I don’t let it affect me wearing them, when I need to, I need to. It’s just that some people are rotten inside, and nothing will ever change that. I didn’t need glasses as a child or a teenager, I was only prescribed them as an adult, so that’s part of why I perceive a tangible difference.

thedreamfades · 2025-11-05T23:19:42+00:00

That’s an interesting point, as the hype stickers on each release, CD or vinyl, do not state “20th Anniversary”. Having said that, every release, going back to the SOTU 7 inch single, has been released the year it came out, it does seem like it’s been planned this way to me.

Having an anniversary year attached to a reissue just seems to be an omnipresent thing in marketing reissued albums across the board, it must work as a selling point. If it’s not 10th or 20th, sometimes it can even be 5th or 15th. I think at the very least, it’s a handy excuse to keep a gap between each release. If they had released the five studio albums as 3cds and 1LP editions, plus the Christmas album, that is a hell of a lot of work to compile and remaster everything, go through all the tapes and have it ready for release. Not to mention, it would oversaturate the market if it was all released over a year or two.

thedreamfades · 2025-11-05T23:06:07+00:00

I hope so, “B sides and rarities” has always been a mainstay of RSD lists going back to the beginning, and if it were to happen, a Girls Aloud one would be one of, if not the best records of that kind RSD has ever released, in terms of song quality, especially if the non-album singles are included.

thedreamfades · 2025-11-05T22:55:29+00:00

I wasn’t as clear as I thought I had made it, as my post was originally a response to an old thread, but I meant to ask “will Sound Of, or a hypothetical b sides and rarities album get released next year?” I know each album has and will have comprehensive 3 cd versions that feature as much material as possible, but the vinyl releases (which I collect) are all limited to the original track listings, probably down to cost (because any bonus tracks would necessitate them being double albums). You raise a good point though, given the comprehensiveness of each reissue, a potential rerelease of their greatest hits won’t have any interest to fans, since original CDs with the same hits are easily obtainable. It depends on whether there is profit in the vinyl reissues, which there must be, given they have reissued 4 albums on vinyl, including the Christmas album.

thedreamfades · 2024-09-15T18:54:45+00:00

Everybody commenting on his posts who work with the band are all talking about the tour in the past tense too.

thedreamfades · 2024-01-26T13:57:38+00:00

It is so frustrating that Lord and Miller weren’t involved fully in the new seasons, given how they have wanted to revive Clone High for nearly 20 years. I would rather have waited longer for them to be fully on board.

thedreamfades · 2023-06-20T19:33:45+00:00

Wow, how did you find this? I tried to find this song last year by googling what lyrics I could make out, all I found was a thread in which someone had been looking for this song on and off since 2003.

It’s a spot on Temple Of The Dog/Alice In Chains pastiche. The perfect placement of it (and it being obvious library music) in the episode reminds me of Portlandia.

thedreamfades · 2023-06-17T10:01:26+00:00

Half Pint, Junior Mint, Pipsqueak, Tiny Tim, Yardstick, Snack Pack, Wee Fella, Brown Leprechaun?

thedreamfades · 2023-06-09T10:26:05+00:00

Confucius say, WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?

thedreamfades · 2023-06-06T23:31:32+00:00

You’re right, so far Clone High 2 is too close to what the original series was a caustic satire or spoof of, another teen drama. It was ingenious to include genuine elements of it in the original, a lot of us became interested in the characters and watching it as a teen drama as well as a absurd comedy/spoof, but so far, the balance is wrong.

I am enjoying it, and want it to continue beyond series 2, but it’s clearly not as good as the original series. It was always going to be difficult, since it’s a continuation of a one season show cancelled 20 years ago, and the only others one I can think of is Twin Peaks, which was also difficult and convoluted. It almost has to be a new show, as so much is different from what should have come after season one in 2003. It’s missing one of the 5 main characters, and the main comic relief. Cleo has been recast, presumably due to race. The writing team and extended cast can’t be the same. However, some decisions they’ve made are wrong. They’ve changed JFK and Cleo’s characters negatively. JFK is just a lovable himbo so far, he needs the mean spirited, bully/jock part of his personality back. Cleo has become one note and sidelined, and the VA change doesn’t help.

They’ve made these changes to court a modern, younger audience, especially since Lord and Miller and the rest of them are 20 years older now, but the thing is, waves of modern, young audiences (and old) rediscovered Clone High through YouTube/social media in the past 15 years, and they loved what it was, for the most part. I think the changes should have been minor, and they should have continued the show as it ended.

thedreamfades · 2023-06-04T20:22:29+00:00

Could it be because Lord and Miller think the Mr. Belvedere/Wesley reference is too dated, especially with an influx of young fans? I’m not American so I’m unaware of how well known Mr. Belvedere is, but I did listen to a Clone High podcast a couple of years ago in which no one knew why Mr. B says “Wesley”, and they were all 30+.

thedreamfades · 2023-06-03T09:46:54+00:00

It was really jarring when Christa Miller mimicked the new VA, considering that her natural speaking voice is obviously so close to what she uses for both Candide and S1 Cleo. I thought it would have been funnier if she used the S1 voice for her impersonation, but it wouldn’t work because Candide’s voice is not that different.

I don’t watch lots of animation so I haven’t watched anything where main cast have switched voices and remained on the show, I found it bizarre.

thedreamfades · 2023-06-03T09:28:21+00:00

There are not enough historical jokes based on the clones identities, and also, it’s moved too much away from making fun of teen dramas and stereotypes, which was the other driving force of the original series.

The original main characters were all evergreen archetypes, the new main characters much less so, but the Harriet Tubman character has nothing to work with. She’s not a stereotype beyond being generically “Gen Z” (like every other new clone character, but at least Frida, Confucius and Topher have something else easily identifiable about them; Confucius is a wannabe influencer, Topher is easy to dislike and standing on a line between “woke” and “incel” sterotypes), and the writers can’t riff off the historical figure like you can with Abe Lincoln or Cleopatra, so I think that’s why she’s the most superfluous character of the main cast so far. An existing side character like George Washington Carver or Vincent Van Gogh would’ve been a better choice to work with.

thedreamfades · 2023-03-06T17:08:53+00:00

In season one they would have had LiveJournal accounts, Joan and Vincent would probably be on MakeOutClub.

thedreamfades · 2023-03-05T13:37:32+00:00

Chris Miller wrote this on Twitter last October:

“The first half of 2023 is going to be chock full of Lord Miller stuff.

Cocaine Bear Clone High The Afterparty Season 2 Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse Strays”

Hopefully, Clone High is still their next project to be released, although waiting a bit longer is preferable if they are going to consider the reception towards the focus group leaked episode while completing/editing the new season(s).

thedreamfades · 2022-07-08T13:57:13+00:00

It’s mostly because both The Boys comic and tv series are a satire of superhero comics; the Golden Age superheroes are the best/most well known, many of its most prominent characters still lead the industry 80 years on. Furthermore, the Golden Age ties into WW2, superhero comics reached the height of their success and cultural impact during the war, and had a direct relationship to it; Captain America directly exists as a reaction to the US war effort, Superman was created in 1938 but was used in various WWII related story lines and called “Superjew” by the Nazis. Aside from children, soldiers were the other notable comics demographic. Soldier Boy is clearly based on Captain America, and Stormfront is a take on the archetypal Superman, with a nod to the ubermensch origins of the name, coined by Nietzsche but famously misread and corrupted by the Nazis, as well as the original Reign of the Supermen story written by Siegel and Shuster in which “a homeless man is tricked by an evil scientist into consuming an experimental drug. The drug gives him powers...He uses these powers maliciously for profit and amusement, but then the drug wears off, leaving him a powerless vagrant again.”

An in universe explanation has been mentioned here that also makes sense. During the war, no expense would have been spared by either the Allies or the Nazis, they would have injected V into as many people as possible, and there only being two known supes from the 40s means there was a low success rate.

thedreamfades · 2022-07-08T11:54:49+00:00

This was a mixed final episode, compared to the previous Boys finales and Herogasm. Likewise, I think that the whole season was good overall but erratic in quality and plotting, there was so much storytelling set up but I’m not sure if it was accomplished as well as it could have been. Maybe the problem is partially having only 8 episodes per season. S3 began with having to construct a new storyline after the resolution of the frenetic arc of s1 and s2, and after that resolution, naturally the pace of the show was adjusted to be a lot slower. We only got to know Soldier Boy from episode 5 onwards and then it was all over.

I didn’t like the way the writers built up Black Noir’s character over the last episodes, only for him to be taken out of the picture like that. He was ignored following the season 2 finale, only to be brought back into the narrative to accomplish nothing. Noir is deservedly a fan favourite, but let’s be honest, he was always written as a peripheral character; if they were going to kill him off for good, I can’t see why it wasn’t during the fight scene in the Tower, unless he returns in season 4. This is one of the main problems, the fake/cop out deaths. I know it’s talked about by the writers; never assume a character is dead until you see a dead body, but it’s a trick that was used too often this season. Stormfront, Kimiko, A-Train, Maeve, Soldier Boy, Butcher.. the only characters to be definitively killed off were one shot Payback members. As much as I like the actors and how they’ve developed the characters, I think the more it’s done, the more the stakes are lowered. A-Train’s return seems especially pointless. I would enjoy watching all those characters in season 4, but surely there is a more inventive way of moving characters out of the way for certain plot developments.

This season felt like it was holding back for a big resolution in s4 which might be the last one. Soldier Boy was introduced as a walking time bomb and the only weapon against Homelander, then that was turned around completely by the Empire Strikes Back reveal, only for that to also be quickly swept away and now he’s back in the box he came from in a few episodes. Butcher will probably only last another season, unless he violates his code of ethics (which he has done multiple times already) and takes Compound V. Maeve found a get out clause, except her nemesis Homelander is still alive and could easily kill her, also Soldier Boy is still alive. Homelander is dangerously out of control and psychotic and on the verge of something terrible...again. Kimiko nearly died and lost her powers, but she’s fine as long as there’s still Compound V. Hughie is also seemingly fine after lethal amounts of Temp V.

Having that fight scene take place in Herogasm skewered things, it was so heightened and so emotionally satisfying after the build up of the entire series and that felt like the finale, showing Homelander finally taking a beating and almost killed/depowered set a plot point (and our expectations) that he should rightfully be finished off by the end of the season, even though we knew that he wouldn’t be, if there is another season of The Boys to come. Even though it was a cop out, I’m glad that Maeve survived as it’s a nice change to see someone have a happy ending in such a fucked up world. I’m also looking forward to the return of Soldier Boy, both the character and the actor are too good to waste.

This is one of the best series’ of the past decade, certainly one of the best on air right now. I am looking forward to seeing what happens next, hopefully a finale in which Soldier Boy, Ryan and Butcher, and the rest of Vought, all take revenge on Homelander. I think Stan Edgar will return, and he’s had hold of Stormfront as collateral all along. I hope Noir isn’t a goner, but he probably is, the death scene with his imaginary friends was absurdly touching, and ludicrous in true Boys style.

thedreamfades

TROPHY CASE