Big News: Nicola Roberts unveils "sticks + stones"

Firework. Raise Your Glass. Born This Way. Who Says. All of those songs above were released by Katy Perry (ridiculously successful pop artist with a gorgeous face and a lovely pair of tits); P!nk (an outspoken pop rebel that's scored with the masses); Lady Gaga (2009's breakout pop artist that have people believing she's a God); Selena Gomez (produced by the Disney machine and selling by the millions to little girls across the world). Then you have Nicola Roberts. Now, while Nicola's music and voice combined beats all those pop tarts I just mentioned, she hasn't exactly found success as a solo act, away from Girls Aloud.

But just yesterday, Nicola premiered a ballad called sticks + stones off her upcoming debut solo album Cinderella's Eyes. First single Beat of My Drum didn't go down well with British audiences, stalling at #27, and as for her upcoming second single Lucky Day, no one really knows how it's going to do.

But this is different. See, while Katy may be screeching BAABBYY YOU'RE A FIIIIIIIRRRREEEWOOOOOOOOORK off the top of a castle in Europe, Selena Gomez running around the streets telling her little fans "Who says you're not perfect?" etc., Nicola's telling the tale as the one getting taunted. And it's not that difficult to see why, since Nicola's always got a bit of a reputation as the "ugly one", "quiet one", "angsty one" in Girls Aloud, and has experienced this massive criticism in the public eye.

But through this album cut, Nicola tells the tale through her eyes. The simple piano-backed ballad has lyrics directly referencing to those comments such as:

Couldn't you tell lies to me? / Couldn't you say I'm pretty?
Sticks and stones hurt just a little
With all the mean words they're ugly / Starting to see I'm lucky
How funny that I was too young for so many things / Yet you thought I'd cope with being told I'm ugly / Over and over I'd read it, believe it
I am pretty in my mirror, easy to pretend

Then there's the line that directly reference to joining Girls Aloud and winning Popstars: The Rivals when she was 17 with:

17 and I thought I'd won the jackpot / Seems I didn't read between the lines of this one

I'm still gobsmacked by this brutal honesty, tbh