The running joke was that a successful UK girl group would never again emerge from a reality TV show. In a world where Girls Aloud were a one-in-a-million success story, each successive year of The X Factor saw band after band voted off, leaving viewers to shake their heads and lament voting habits and a public apparently unwilling to buy into the idea of a bunch of girls all getting on together.
Salute is an undeniably solid album, and has a lot more going for it than similar efforts from many of Little Mix's pop peers this year. Now operating on a global level (their debut album went Top 5 in the US, the highest ever for a debut album from a British girl group, besting even the Spice Girls) ? the group feel like they're more aware of their identity now, more honed in on the kind of pop identity they want to push to the world. There's room for improvement ? a marrying of the sonic consistency of this album with the punch of the last one, and more of an onus on obvious out-of-the-box singles, for instance, would elevate it ? but for the time being, Little Mix have more than proven they deserve their place in pop's premier league. Review by Laurence Green.