SHAMPOO A time to celebrate their wonderfulness!

Shampoo were the best girlband of the 1990s. Fact! Forget the All Saints and Spice Girls. Melody Maker, the kids who could afford Smash Hits and FastForward and those lost pinkteenpunks growing up on estates all adored them. As did certain caculative pop managers wishing to use some of that some of that poppunk energy pumping so innocently from Shampoo. But more on that later....

Who can forget such classics as I Love Pussy, Bouffant Headbutt and Viva La Megababes?! Their second album entitled Girlpower hit you so hard you felt like filling in a Invalidity benefit form by track 2. Sadly, while Shampoo were the first to scream about GirlPower it was the Spice Girls who would go down history for successfully copying and mainstreaming the slogan. Under the guise of Shampoo the 'girlpower' attitude appeared to be 'too thugtastic' for middle england while the Spice Girls/and their record company managed to make the same lines seem as wild and threatening as stamp collecting. Indeed the lyrics of Shampoos Girlpower included the wonderful line "I wanna smash your face up just for fun...we might look sweet but we wanna be sour".

Shampoo predicted happyslapping, Vicky Pollard, Tony Blair, Chavs, the uncertain future of Top of the Pops+British music industry, and of course ASBOS. They were amazing.

Without them Girls Aloud, Spice Girls, 411 and nearly every "cool" pop act just wouldnt exist. That also includes Busted and McFly.




Girls Round Here: Includes the lyrics "they say were strange and they say were queer!". Also a polemic on teenage pregnancy and council housing benefits. Imagine if Busted got better and didnt always talk about such silly things such as school teachers. Shampoo never went to school. They bunked. They couldnt fancy a teacher. If they did they woulda spiked his tea and nosh him(or her) just before recess.



House Of Love: A cover of the East 17 classic! To date, I think its only been Shampoo who have recognised the brilliance of Tony Mortimers timeless lyrics and amazing melodies. If anyone has watched Steve Spielbergs new movie Munich you kinda wish he'd used Shampoos cover of House Of Love to finish the movie as it panned over the Twin Towers. Good movie btw.



GirlPower!: Anyone who has the wonderful third album by Girls Aloud will know of the amazing track Models. Compare these two tracks and you could raise your eyebrow. Or maybe not! Anyway, GirlPower is a wicked track and you half imagine Shirley Mason and Courtney Love dancing round their handbags to this.