page_title: Xenomania
section_title: Work ethic
hierarchical_section_title: Xenomania / Work ethic
caption_attribution_description: Westerham, Kent, with the statue of General Wolfe in the foreground. Digital photo by me, Ross Burgess, 6 May 2005.
context_page_description: Xenomania is an English songwriting and production team founded by Brian Higgins and based in Kent, England. Formed by Higgins with his Creative Director Miranda Cooper and Business Director Sarah Stennett of First Access Entertainment, Xenomania has written and produced for renowned artists such as Cher, Kylie Minogue, Dannii Minogue, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Pet Shop Boys, The Saturdays and Sugababes. In particular, all but one of Girls Aloud's studio albums have been entirely written and produced by Xenomania. Sugababes' "Round Round" and Girls Aloud's "Sound of the Underground" have been credited with reshaping British pop music for the 2000s. Gabriella Cilmi's "Sweet About Me" and Girls Aloud's "The Promise" were named Best Single at the ARIA Music Awards of 2008 and the 2009 BRIT Awards, respectively.
  The team has been referred to as "a Phil Spector" and "a Motown of the 21st-century". Higgins himself has said that Xenomania aspires to be a modern-day version of RAK Records. Of Higgins and Xenomania, Girls Aloud's former manager Louis Walsh says, "He just makes great songs for radio. They just jump out at you and stay in your brain."
context_section_description: Higgins told The Telegraph in August 2009, "Pop is where the cutting edge of music is but it needs to be done with total sincerity and an incredible amount of skill, otherwise it doesn't warrant its own existence. There is a science to it, but there's magic too. You have to find the space where art and commerce truly meet in the middle, with genuine feeling and sentiment." He has also said, "pop music is maths."
  Xenomania are notable for their abnormal writing process. According to an article in Q magazine's October 2009 issue, "they each work on backing tracks, chords or beats, Higgins choosing the best bits and building up songs like jigsaws." The various pieces of music are discussed at daily meetings and the best become the basis of songs. Higgins "separate[s] music, melody, lyric" and strives to preserve "high level of originality, excitement and dynamism in the writing." Higgins has "the final say on everything [and establishes] the creative direction projects will take". If a piece of music "sounds enticing before a vocal has gone anywhere near it", Higgins and Cooper will "sketch out" the melody and lyrics. Xenomania may also create multiple melodies over the same backing track and then select the best. Higgins said "we're just not interested in the way other people do things. [...] I've trained not just me but myself, Miranda, Tim, we've trained our minds to think that way".
  Higgins also insists that artists are involved to an extent. Referring to Girls Aloud in a 2004 interview with The Observer, Higgins said, "We don't let them out of the room till they've given every ounce of melodic instinct that they've got in them, [...] at the end, you find they've contributed really well." Neil Tennant noted that Higgins "works you very hard. He's very headmaster-ly." Tennant's partner, Chris Lowe, said Higgins "puts stars by your work, and comments. It's ruthless. It's fantastic!" Norwegian singer Annie said of Higgins, "he's making music all the time and he's really creative and has a lot of good ideas. Serious and ambitious. It gave me an extra punch to work really hard and that was exactly what I needed." Australian singer Gabriella Cilmi has remarked that working with Higgins "brings out the best in me [...] He knows how to make my silliness good". According to Cooper, the artist's vocal performance on a track is "the final piece of the puzzle", and songs with "amazing" choruses have been shelved as a result of the artist not sounding adequate on them.
  On Xenomania's relatively low output (compared to a group like Stock, Aitken & Waterman), Higgins says, "If you're a production house, you're supposed to work with anyone and everyone: that's the rule...but if we don't feel excited by the prospect of the artist, then the record's going to be shit." Higgins refuses to work "purely for the fee" for the same reasons. He says, "People are coming to me already with a quality idea in mind, because they've heard it. [...] But people need to understand that when they hear something that we've done on the radio, a process has been followed to achieve that." Xenomania have reportedly turned away Atomic Kitten and Gareth Gates.
  Peter Robinson, writing for The Guardian, credited the effectiveness of Xenomania's output with the number of people working with Higgins: "it's not really just five girls [Girls Aloud] and Brian Higgins—a whole team were at work with an acute understanding of how to manufacture an excellent pop phenomenon". Songwriters and producers who have worked for Xenomania include Annie, Fred Falke, Tove Lo, Edele Lynch (of Irish girl group B*Witched), MNEK, Deedee Ray, and Olivia Redmond (formerly of SoundGirl). Cooper says that high levels of quality control result from "a group of all sorts of artists, all songwriters, writing hooks on the same track [...] Brian had no worries choosing melodies from wherever they came from. He didn't mind if it was the person making tea in the office—if they came up with something, which they often did, that would be used". Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys said that Xenomania "remi
caption: Xenomania are based in Westerham, Kent (pictured).
exif: {"Image Make": "PENTAX Corporation", "Image Model": "PENTAX *ist D", "Image Software": "*ist D      Ver 1.00", "Image DateTime": "2005:05:06 16:35:09", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "426", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 50, 53, 48, 0, 0, 0, 20, 0, 1, 0, 22, ... ]", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/2000", "EXIF FNumber": "19/2", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "1600", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2005:05:06 16:35:09", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2005:05:06 16:35:09", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "18", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2400", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1600", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "27", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "3"}