Late in 2010, news surfaced that Nicola Roberts was the latest Girls Aloud member to start her solo music career. Nicola said “I’ve been in the studio non-stop doing all of my own song writing.” In December, she signed her solo record deal with Universal / A&M Records.
In May 2011, she announced her first single would be called ‘Beat of my Drum’ and along came her Official Website and Official Twitter pages. In this time, you was able to exclusively pre-order her single and album CD’s, signed, from her official website.
Thursday June 2nd, Nicola premiere Beat of My Drum on Radio One. As Universal have a new policy (On Air, On Sale), her single was avaliable to buy on iTunes right away, even though her release date wasnt until the end of July. The actual release date was bought forward to 11th July. Due to the On Air On Sale policy this meant Beat of my Drum got to #27 in the Official Charts in the first week, but dramatically dropped due to no promotion. When the single was officially released with a lot of promotion, it only got to #50 in the charts.
The video for Beat of my Drum was premiered on the 5th June.
Nicola’s solo album is called Cinderella’s Eyes and the release date is set to be 3rd October 2011. She spent a year writing the album, along with Dimitri Tikovoi, Diplo, Maya Von Doll, Joseph Mount of Metronomy and Dragonette.
A second single will precede the album, on 10th July, she confirmed ‘Lucky Day’ as the title.
Nicola spent a few days in New York to film the video for the second single. At the end of July, an unedited version was leaked online by the director on vimeo before being taken down.
