In accordance with the promotional cycle favoured in recent years by Syco, Sony and the other companies responsible for X Factor artists, where for example popular but defeated contestants One Direction and Cher Lloyd waited about eight or nine months before any releases, the first new original music (Little Mix’s version of Damien Rice’s ‘Cannonball’ being the obligatory immediate-release winners’ single) by the standout artists from the 2011 edition of the series has recently been uploaded to Youtube.

As is becoming industry standard these days, the official releases of two of these singles (with the third, Misha B’s, having been released already) will come in about four to five weeks time. Those two singles will of course be cued up separately, so as not to dilute their possible market share.

Little Mix’s ‘Wings’ is the most invigorating example out of what is an impressive collection of pop music. Suggesting the ramshackle energy of Girls Aloud by way of East 17 gang vocals, with a healthy dose of Beyonce’s ‘Countdown’, the song, written by Little Mix with production team TMS (who have had success with artists such as Professor Green and Tinchy Stryder), will hopefully drive the likable group to a measure of success that will satisfy both them and their corporate overlords.

Misha B’s spiky and fun ‘Home Run’ does not quite emerge in its own right from Rihanna’s shadow, nor does it avoid the kind of overreaching melodic runs familiar from her X Factor performances, but it is strong enough to suggest that Misha B’s mercurial talent might yet yeild something substantial.

Amelia Lily’s ‘You Bring Me Joy’, from perhaps the most interesting UK production team of recent years, Xenomania, has lyrics that fall a little gauchely, but the song secures a winningly darkening tone reminiscent of Abba at their most melancholy through its imprisonment in a somewhat tonally ambiguous chord sequence, an imprisonment that is underlined through contrast with the offsetting of the pregnant return to the minor by the lyric’s title phrase at the beginning of each chorus.