The Cheetah Girls will be prowling the recording studio sooner rather than later — and plan to take more control over the proceedings this time.
The Disney teenage trio is in the process of gathering material for its fourth album while touring to promote its new Disney Channel movie, “The Cheetah Girls 2,” and its accompanying soundtrack, which debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 in August.
The group hopes to have the new album out in the spring of 2007 on Hollywood Records, and Cheetah Girl Sabrina Bryan tells Billboard.com she and mates Adrienne Bailon and Kiely Williams have heady ambitions this time out.
“We really want to raise the bar,” Bryan says. “This last album was a huge leap for us, and we feel like we can go even further. We want to create a hybrid of the fanbase we have now and older fans. There’s no reason why we can’t put out really good tracks and songs that are cool that an older audience would like but still have the clean lyrics and clean topics to sing about.”
Bryan says the trio is doing some of its own writing while on tour. “We’re trying to get [instrumental] tracks from the record company to really start writing some stuff,” she says. “We want to have everything done by the time we get off this tour and go straight into the recording studio.”
She adds that the Cheetahs plan to work with producers and writers from its previous albums but will also explore new collaborators. Timbaland, she says, tops the wish list. “He’s just amazing at creating beats,” Bryantnotes.
The Cheetah Girls tour will keep them on the road until Jan. 14.