Ladies, let's go! Soldiers, let's go! Dolls... With a purr and a meow, The Pussycat Dolls achieved their first UK Number 1 single this week 17 (!) years ago with Don't Cha, featuring Busta Rhymes.
In what was bad news for female equality but great news for Nicole Scherzinger's dreams of musical superstardom, Don't Cha's lyrics probably wouldn't make it past the sensors today ("Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me...") but were very effective in branding the Pussycat Dolls as very different girlgroup from their main competition at the time; Girls Aloud and Sugababes.
It also helped, of course, that the Dolls were US exports, and their hip-hop adjacent sonics certainly helped them diversify from their peers - although we will still remember Cheryl Cole's verbal lashing of Nicole and co.
until the day we die. Sorry, girls. Remember when pop star feuds were fun? Anyway. This week in 2005, Don't Cha leapt up from the lower echelons of the Top 100 (Number 44) to the top of the chart, shifting more than 85,000 copies.
Read more on officialcharts.com