Its been one of the strangest weekends I'd had for quite a while. A weekend of drinking and debauchery, a weekend of loving and laughing, a weekend when I'd surprised myself with the sizes of clothes I could buy in the shops, but also a weekend when I'd fallen off the wagon quite spectacularly. And yet it had also been filled with a tinge of sadness that for the life of me I really didn't need right now.

So it was no surprise that, for the first time in the three times that I'd seen her this year, I was quite taken by the other side of her performance - the songs of sadness, anger, lust and of longing. It's quite apparent that this girl lives life as it's meant to be lived. She writes it as she feels it. And does she feel it. I listened to the words a bit more this time around. And although they're never going to win any prizes for poetry, like the music, the honesty and simplicity of them says much more to me about her than any clever words could.

"Drive away my heart" is such an incredibly personal song for her, written seemingly when she was at her lowest ebb, feeling lonely and unloved. She writes about someone she falls in love with at the time who stole her heart. In "Queen of the World" she sings that she's "free this month, lonely this year, lonely for ever". It's a fantastically worked song, quite reminiscent of some of the Smiths best moments with Marr-esque guitar playing. It plays that brilliant trick of being simulataneously hopeless but hopeful. If you don't believe me, then listen for yourself

The real joy of her music is that its almost a documentary of her life. You see her happy. You see her sexy. And you see her sad. I was glad I'd come with my friend who "discovered" Ida before me. She'd not been to see her before. Not for want of trying though. We'd talked about which of the three we should go to together. It wasn't this one, and I certainly didn't think I'd see all three. But it's a funny old world. Some things are just meant to be.

As we began to make our way out, I asked my friend what she thought. After some thought, she glanced back at the stage before delivering her verdict.

"Fuck Girls Aloud", she said, "She's a real role model for women".

Quite.