Is it too early to look back upon The Pussycat Dolls?

Just a couple of weeks ago, Nicole Scherzinger officially called it quits with the girl group that she’d fronted, though in reality, she was the very last Doll standing. The four other members, whose names you probably never knew — Kimberly Wyatt, Melody Thornton, Jessica Sutta, and Ashley Roberts — had quit ahead of her. “We had our time,” Scherzinger told Britain’s News of the World. “Some of the girls left the group. That was out of my hands. I wouldn’t want to be a in a group with other girls, we were like a tight family.”

I guess we’ll have to wait for some tell-all book to find what her “sisters” have to say, but I doubt any such story will ever be written unless Scherzinger gets some traction with her solo career. For much of 2010, she’s been doing everything but sharing her own music. She won the 10th season of Dancing With The Stars, played Robin Sparkles’ best friend Jessica Glitter on How I Met Your Mother, and is currently back behind the judges’ table with Ben Folds and Shawn Stockman for the second season of the acapella-singing competition, The Sing-Off (finale on Monday). Scherzinger is rumored to be pulling that same duty for Simon Cowell’s upcoming U.S. edition of The X Factor, after successfully guesting on the UK version, but Cowell hasn’t confirmed it.

So Scherzinger has had lots of face time on the tube, but what about the music? Well, she does have a new single, “Poison,” produced by RedOne (Lady Gaga), but it’s a UK-only release at the moment. The Pussycat Dolls might have experienced diminishing returns on this side of the Atlantic, but Nicole & Co.’s singles enjoyed consistent success in Europe. And Scherzinger’s new tune has done quite well. Thanks to a ton of promotion, “Poison” enjoyed a #3 chart high.

The music video, directed by Joseph Kahn (Britney Spears, Kelly Clarkson), is already approaching 2 million views on YouTube, so Scherzinger has an audience if she can find a way to really capitalize on it. And considering the song’s pedigree and polish, I assume Scherzinger’s “Poison” will cross over here in the New Year.

Returning to the question posed at the start of this post, no, it isn’t. The Pussycat Dolls’ brief career output consists of two albums (both in multiple versions) and about 12 or so singles (seven of them top 20 hits). Reviewing what the group released in their Scherzinger-headed incarnation, the head-and-shoulders-above-all-others tune remains “I Hate This Part,” released around this time in 2008. The song eventually topped out at #11 on the Billboard Hot 100, the Dolls’ last U.S. single to get close to breaking the top ten.

As I said back then, “‘I Hate This Part’ has my heart. Right here.” And the song still does, as does the kitchen-sink video (also directed by Joseph Kahn) in which any sort of “coherent narrative is completely beside the point”:

Purchase the Pussycat Dolls’ “I Hate This Part” via iTunes, Amazon MP3.