There are many years when the runner-up of The X Factor has done better than the winner. This is not one of those years.

‘Wings’, the first official single to come from Little Mix, is basically one of the best girlband singles for YEARS.

I love The Saturdays, but there’s a strong sense of identity and “POW THIS IS WHAT WE’RE ABOUT”-ness of this song that’s been missing from most of Frankie, Una, Vanessa, Mollie and Rochelle’s work, especially recently.

Basically, despite fears that it would waste the potential of a really exciting X Factor-winning group, this song is a fucking tune.

Also it contains the word ‘boy’d’.

Those who didn’t want Little Mix to win last year’s X Factor have been keen to point out that they weren’t the strongest singers in the competition.

Well, for a start, they clearly haven’t been buying “better singer” Marcus Collins’ album.

And, secondly, the girls may not be a quartet of Adeles but you can probably count the number of pop groups who can do this a cappella and be this good on one hand. It’s not quite up there with Stooshe’s ‘Lego House’ but it’s mighty close.

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When Little Mix said they were previewing a 30-second snippet of their new single ‘Wings’ on Alan Carr: Chatty Man tonight, I don’t think I was alone in expecting something like a video preview or a focussed ‘segment’ of sorts.

Alas, it was just the music the girls walked down the steps to when they made their entrance.

Not a lot could be gathered from it, what with all the talking and audience applause (damn their popularity!), but the good news is that, after all the inside whispers that it’s an amazing proper debut, it does indeed sound like an amazing proper debut.

Irresistibly catchy and packed with lyrics that gleefully tread the line between inspirational and cliché, its full-length premiere can’t come soon enough.

It’s out on July 22, so don’t expect to be kept waiting too much longer. But the good news is that we could actually have an X Factor-winning act with longevity on our hands.

Watch the show on 4OD to hear it for yourself (skip to the 4-minute mark).

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Well, they’ll have a hard job topping ‘Cannonball’, but Little Mix have announced the title of their first post-X Factor single.

The girls will release ‘Wings’ as the trailer for their debut album later this summer, and apparently they’ve co-written it as well.

Early industry whispers are that the track is one of the best ‘proper’ first singles to ever come from a champion of the talent search, joining Leona Lewis’ ‘Bleeding Love’, Alexandra Burke’s ‘Bad Boys’ (no, seriously) and Joe McElderry’s ‘Ambitions’ (no, seriously) on the list of outstanding openers.

The accuracy of these claims can be put to the test as early as tomorrow (June 1), when the girls appear on Alan Carr: Chatty Man and bring with them a 30-second snippet of the song. The interview was filmed yesterday.

With Marcus Collins all but dropped (‘Mercy’ is out on Sunday and has not registered at all on the iTunes chart yet), there’s a real chance that, for once, the winner might actually do better than the runner-up this time.

That is of course unless these unconfirmed Xenomania songs from Amelia Lily are fantastic.

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Journalism is all about these moments of edge-of-year-seat breaking news, ladies and gents.

The word from the Little Mix camp is that Jesy Nelson will wear a red shoe on the front cover of the girlband’s debut album. By the looks of things her other shoe will be similarly red.

WHAT A WONDERFUL TIME TO BE ALIVE.

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