Little Mix: 'Cannonball' - Single review

"It's still a little hard to say what's going on," Jade Thirwall sang with bewilderment during Little Mix's winning performance on the X Factor final. Under normal circumstances we'd fully expect the winning act to sport the obligatory surprise face, but given they were put together just three months ago and managed to break the show's eight-year girlband curse, their shock seemed all the more heart-warming.

Truth be told, we feared the worst for them when it was announced this year's winner's single would be a cover of Damien Rice's 'Cannonball'. Naturally the production has been given the deluxe valet, swapping the raw acoustics of the original for a Casio keyboard piano riff, fist-clenching strings and the inevitable key change. But credit where it's due, they've played around (or as Gary put it, "Little Mixed") with it enough to distance themselves from the original. The next step? To break the girlband curse in the charts.

Listen to 'Cannonball' below: