Over here, Girls Aloud have been a national treasure for so long that you’d be forgiven for thinking they’d gone global some time ago. South of Dover, however, their Xenomania-penned oeuvre is as trees falling in a deserted forest. Amazingly, all of America — even the gay bits — proceeds in resounding ignorance of high pop watermarks such as Biology, The Promise and Love Machine.

“More fool them,” we Brits might say, and leave it at that. However, for the newly solo Cheryl Cole, this is no time for sentimental attachments. We’ll never know the exact contents of the mission statement scrawled in the glow of overhead projectors at planning meetings for 3 Words. But the list of personnel here affords a good guess. With Xenomania “rested”, it’s Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am who establishes the sonic template. And on the title track, the trade-off seems a good one. Alas, its euphoric electroglide sets a standard that is not maintained.

Those of us who have met Cole, seen her on The X Factor even, can attest that she has a personality. Sadly, it’s one absent from mid-paced fillers such as Don’t Talk About This Love and the mystifyingly drab single Fight for This Love. Unbelievably, five people wrote Rain on Me, and yet its knackered lyrical conceit — she wants it to rain so people can’t see her tears — bounds along with all the grace of a one-wheeled rickshaw.

Stick at it long enough and there’s relief in the hands-aloft dancepop of Stand Up and, better still, the Soulshock and Karlin-penned Happy Hour, the only song that emulates the off-beam earworms of Xenomania. But even when 3 Words gives you something to admire, the emotional temperature rarely nudges above frosty. Emblematic of the loveless ambience is Heartbreaker — a 2007 will.i.am single seemingly featured here because Cole sings backing vocals on it. If this is really the best that her “team” can do, then another 3 Words spring to mind. Sack them all.

(Polydor; out on Mon)

Editor's choice

• The super cool Vampire Weekend
• Streep and Baldwin get complicated
• Guy Ritchie on Sherlock Holmes