Released: 10th November 2008
Writers: Brian Higgins / Alesha Dixon / Miranda Cooper / Carla-Marie Williams / Xenomania
Peak position: #5
Chart run: 8-5-6-6-9-11-16-17-13-20-25-29-30-30-34-44-51-43-45-48-65-X-61-66-X-X-X-66
After finding her pop career at an impasse during the mid-’00s, Alesha Dixon competed in the fifth series of Strictly Come Dancing and emerged victorious. Now a household name – and with a new record deal – she promptly sashayed her way back into the charts with The Boy Does Nothing.
Despite signing a three-album deal with Polydor, Alesha Dixon’s launch as a solo artist almost immediately faltered. Her first single – Lipstick – peaked at #14, which, though not an outright disaster, certainly performed below expectations. That was followed by Knockdown, which missed the top 40 (it reached #45), leading Polydor to shelve Alesha Dixon’s debut album and drop her from the label. Though it was little consolation, they did, at least, relinquish the rights to Fired Up, which meant it received a limited release outside of the UK. Yet, one positive that emerged from Knockdown was an offer from Brian Higgins – whose Xenomania team had co-written and produced the track – to continue working with Alesha Dixon on new material, which she accepted. The plan was to create an album together (however long that may take) and then shop it to record labels when they were ready.
However, an entirely different opportunity presented itself in 2007 when Alesha Dixon joined the fifth series of Strictly Come Dancing. She and her professional partner – Matthew Cutler – eventually triumphed, with the final watched by more than 11 million viewers. The show brought Alesha Dixon a level of mainstream exposure she’d never had before, even at the height of Mis-Teeq’s popularity. Her profile meant that there was now significant interest in the prospect of relaunching Alesha Dixon as a pop star.
A bidding war ensued (ironically, including an offer from Polydor), and she signed a four-album deal with Asylum Records. In the meantime, work continued with Brian Higgins and Xenomania (although other writers and producers were also enlisted). The Boy Does Nothing is among the songs created before Strictly Come Dancing. However, it was subsequently revised to incorporate musical elements associated with the show and turned from a jazzier-sounding track into something altogether different for Alesha Dixon’s comeback.
In essence, The Boy Does Nothing is Xenomania-does-Mambo No. 5, which sounds gimmicky. And in a different context, this could have been dismissed as a derivative novelty track. However, it plays perfectly to the new audience of fans Alesha Dixon had gained through Strictly Come Dancing – many of whom would likely be unfamiliar with her earlier solo material – and uses that association to create what feels musically almost like a spin-off single from the show. Yet despite prominent mambo and swing elements, The Boy Does Nothing avoids coming across as a pastiche and still sounds like a contemporary pop song. That’s, in no small part, because Xenomania had – by this point – gained mainstream recognition and critical acclaim for the way they’d re-written the rulebook with Girls Aloud. Thus, even from the punctuated first verse: “I got a man with two left feet, and when he dances not to the beat, I really think that he should know, that his rhythms go go go” as the production pulses in the background, there’s a clear and coherent direction for The Boy Does Nothing that makes perfect sense when – for almost any other act – it would seem utterly bizarre.
Structurally, the track doesn’t stray outside the box to the same extent as some of Xenomania’s most unconventional moments. Even so, there is one notable deviation whereby the second verse runs continuously for almost 45 seconds. While The Boy Does Nothing hasn’t necessarily got a cohesive narrative, there is an engagingly whimsical sense of storytelling: “Hey, boy, how you been? I got a thousand lines, where do I begin? And I, I been here, been there travelling, I saw you at the corner, my vibe kicked in; and then two-two’s, I clocked you, wearing tight jeans, a real nice suit, you were smiling like you were just seventeen, I asked you for a dance, you said, ‘Yes, please’…”. There’s a classically quaint edge to the lyrics, which – intentionally or otherwise – helped to distance the song from Alesha Dixon’s personal life. This was still an era of her career where questions about divorcing MC Harvey in 2006 (after he cheated with Javine Hylton) were commonplace. So, making a comeback with a song titled, The Boy Does Nothing, there was – perhaps not unreasonably – a curiosity as to whether it would be a direct rebuke.
Yet, that aspect is never a factor. The infectious chorus is delightfully silly: “Does he wash up? Never wash up, does he clean up? No, he never cleans up, does he brush up? He never brushed up, he does nothing, the boy does nothing” that is earnestly delivered by Alesha Dixon yet without any vitriol or ill-feeling whatsoever. After the second chorus, the song lurches into an instrumental breakdown filled with twangy guitar riffs before the faintly distorted middle eight teases a brief reprieve: “Work it out now, work it, work it out now, do the mambo, shake it all around now, everybody on the floor, let me see you clap your hands…” that explodes with joyous exhilaration: “I wanna see you work, I wanna see you move your body and turn, I wanna see you shake your hips and learn, I wanna see you work it, work it, work it out now, hey…”. It had been almost a year since Alesha Dixon won Strictly Come Dancing, but once it hits its stride, The Boy Does Nothing is a dizzying, celebratory victory lap, which manages to evoke everything about that moment which made it so special.
Unsurprisingly, the music video gives ample time for Alesha Dixon to showcase her dancing. It’s music hall-themed, with a young girl and boy sneaking in to watch as she performs onstage with a troupe. There’s energetic choreography in abundance, and it’s shown through dynamic extended sequences that capture the quality and fluidity of Alesha Dixon’s movements. Had The Boy Does Nothing been accompanied by an easy-to-follow routine (with exaggerated sweeping and cleaning movements), then it may well have tipped into novelty territory. Instead, the video respects the complexity and technicality of Alesha Dixon’s ability as well as that of the many extras featured alongside her. The Boy Does Nothing concludes with an extended outro: “And if the man can’t dance, he gets no second chance” refrain, which becomes acapella as a group circle forms and some of the dancers perform in the middle.
Although The Boy Does Nothing received a full digital release on the 3rd of November, it was available on some platforms several days earlier and sold enough in that time to debut at #84. However, after a whole week of sales, it climbed to #8, becoming Alesha Dixon’s first top-ten single as a solo artist. A physical release saw The Boy Does Nothing climb further still to peak at #5, after which point it hung around the top 75 for an impressive 24 weeks. The song was the 48th biggest-selling single of 2008 (208,000 copies) and the 111th biggest-seller of 2009 (152,000 copies). It never felt that The Boy Does Nothing was only a hit because of Strictly Come Dancing. Still, as further evidence of that not being the case, the song picked up solid radio support – reaching #5 on the airplay chart – and also enjoyed top-ten success across Europe and Australia.
Despite Alesha Dixon’s raised profile, it was still a risk to release her second album – The Alesha Show – after one single and during the busy pre-Christmas period, no less. However, that’s the gamble Asylum took. The album got off to a relatively slow start, debuting at #26, and dipped out of the top 75 after five weeks. However, it quickly recovered when promotion started for Breathe Slow as the second single and the album achieved such longevity that The Alesha Show’s eventual peak of #11 wasn’t reached until six months into the campaign.
The Boy Does Nothing remains Alesha Dixon’s biggest hit and this era her most commercially visible as a pop star. But, despite the diminishing returns of subsequent albums, she astutely turned the deserved goodwill from Strictly Come Dancing into a high-profile career as a television personality (even returning to the show as a judge for three series’ before moving to Britain’s Got Talent, where she remains). It’s ensured that Alesha Dixon can still release music without being as vulnerable as when she was signed to Polydor. The Boy Does Nothing remains an effervescent culmination of a comeback journey, but it’s one she never needed to make again.
