Call The Shots

Album: Tangled Up (2007)
Charted: 3
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Songfacts®:

  • This song is about girls taking control of relationships, and of their own image. The co-writer of this song - Miranda Cooper of the UK-based Xenomania writing and production team - was inspired by an article she read on something called (coincidentally) the Miranda Complex, named after the ambitious lawyer in the TV series Sex And The City, about how women are earning more than men and pushing ahead.
  • Xenomania was founded by Brian Higgins, whose breakthrough was working on Cher's smash hit "Believe." They became one of the UK's leading production houses working for Kylie Minogue and Sugababes, but they have achieved their greatest success with Girls Aloud, including writing and producing their chart topper "Sound of the Underground" and most of their other recordings.
  • The album title, Tangled Up, is taken from the second song on the album, "Close to Love."
  • In an interview for the Fascination Records website, band member Cheryl Cole said the album was "heading in a more mature direction. We're not necessarily singing about things that we would have when we were 16. Now we're singing about things that you talk about in your early 20s. There aren't very many ballads. At the moment there's only one! The rest are mid-tempo and then there's obviously the typical Girls Aloud bangers. There's even a garage sounding track on there."
  • The single peaked at #3 in the UK, but failed to chart internationally. It was named the most underrated song by a girl group in a Top 20 list compiled by Billboard magazine in March 2015. They described it as "a highly underrated song from the most underrated girl group ever (in the United States, at least)".

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