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Which of The Pussycat Dolls can actually sing? A serious investigation

Melody was robbed, imo

4 years ago

Stop the fucking presses lads – The Pussycat Dolls are back together. I know, I know – calm down. While you do, watch them performing on X Factor: Celebrity in their pants to the tune of undeniable bangers "Don't Cha", "Buttons," and 400 Ofcom complaints. They'll be off on tour next year. 2019 is well and truly in the bin – bring on 2005.

The performance is business as usual for The Dolls. Wonder-woman Nicole Scherzinger is front and centre, and the other four (Melody passed) are on background-dancing and backing-vocals-miming duty.

It's no secret the group were a burlesque act long before Nicole was parachuted in to turn them into a globe-straddling brand, and Nicole herself has admitted the others were only allowed to even hear their debut album after she had recorded all the lead and background vocals. It really does beg the question: How many of these women can actually sing?

After a long trawl through YouTube compilations made by loyal (and a little misguided) stans, I've come to the conclusion the answer is about 1.5, but let's look at each Doll individually:

Nicole Scherzinger

Let's not beat around the bush here: Nicole Scherzinger is really good, like obscenely good. She can sing opera so well Andrew Lloyd Webber rates her, she can perform the shit out of a pop banger without miming, and she's such a good dancer she won the American version of Strictly.

It really does make you wonder why they even bothered building The Pussycat Dolls around Nicole in the first place, given how much of the spotlight she takes in the group.

Within the Dolls, Nicole's is the only voice you'll hear 99 per cent of the time: She's the sexy swagger behind Don't Cha, the pain in I Hate this Part which made you think you'd had your heart broken even though you were only 13, and she's so good in that version of Jai Ho the full song title is "A.R. Rahman, The Pussycat Dolls – Jai Ho (You Are My Destiny) ft. Nicole Scherzinger." Incredible.

Can she sing? Tl;dr, Nicole can absolutely sing and if you back any of the other Dolls over her you are probably on some very powerful drugs.

Kimberly Wyatt

You might remember Kimberley Wyatt because she once did a song with Aggro Santos for reasons beyond human thinking. It was, and I cannot stress this enough, the worst.

You can't tell a whole lot about what Kimberly actually sounds like from Candy, sure, and her performance on Got to Dance (on which she's a judge) was definitely more Cheryl Hole than Cheryl Cole, but if you wanna measure Kimberly's real voice look below.

Here you'll see Kimberly subbing in for Kylie Minogue (bad idea) during a live performance with Taio Cruz (terrible idea) and sounding like she really really needs a Lemsip. They're actually playing Kylie's vocals over her to mask it. Yikes.

Can she sing? We're gonna go with a firm nah on that, chief.

Melody Thornton

You know Melody! They let Melody sing the ad libs. You know at the end of Buttons she's all like "wohhhoohhhh" (skip to 3:32) and at the end of Whatcha Think About That she's giving it the "TELL ME" sass (skip to 2:44). Love Melody.

My investigation found the spotlight intensity Melody enjoys (measured in lux [lx]) is inversely proportional to the shine Nicole gets. Basically Melody gets to sing lead on the album tracks and a few covers, while Nicole was always on top tier banger duty.

Melody blew off the reunion to instead focus on solo stuff, and definitely not because she fucking hated the over-centralisation of Nicole, not at all. I'll be real with you, the solo stuff isn't great.

Can she sing? I mean sure, but at the same time… eh?

Ashley Roberts

You've got to pay Ashley Roberts her respects. She was really nice on I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, and the fact she went out with Dec for a bit afterwards is a sheer madness, but can she sing though?

Well judging by her solo efforts, it would be really mean spirited to say Woman Up is as shit as some of the stuff her Pussycat Doll alumni put out but at the same time it's not good either.

Can she sing? I'm afraid we're gonna have to go with a nope.

Carmit Bachar

Look I don't know who spun the wheel of obsessive niches and ended up with Carmit Bachar but I'm glad they made a compilation of all her vocals on PCD and it makes my job a lot easier.

As you can see, when your vocals on a 45-minute length album can be condensed into less than four minutes it's not a great sign. More tragic still is just how much stripping back someone has had to do to even locate Carmit's isolated vocals in the sea of Nicole Scherzinger.

Carmit actually binned the group off after that first album, so we'll never know if she'd have gotten more clout on the seminal Doll Domination. She's back now – don't worry. In the meantime she put out this outright dreadful solo single. Please, please don't listen to it.

Can she sing? Your honour, I don't believe she has ever sung.

Jessica Sutta

Jessica spend her post Doll years doing kind of what you'd expect a former Pussycat Doll to be doing: Singing Don't Cha at RuPaul's Drag Con about as well as you'd perform it yourself at karaoke.

Jess's solo single, and yes they really did all give it a go on their own at one point or another, is fucking dire, but this remix of it bizarrely has about 20 million views on YouTube so fair play I guess.

Can she sing? You know what? She can sing one note really well. Unsure about the other notes.