Girl group
A girl group is a music act featuring several female singers who generally harmonize together. The term "girl group" is also used in a narrower sense in the United States to denote the wave of American female pop music singing groups, many of whom were influenced by doo-wop and which flourished in the late 1950s and early 1960s between the decline of early rock and roll and start of the British Invasion.[1][2] All-female bands, in which members also play instruments, are usually considered a separate phenomenon. These groups are sometimes called "girl bands" to differentiate,[3] although this terminology is not universally followed.
With the advent of the music industry and radio broadcasting, a number of girl groups emerged, such as the Andrews Sisters. The late 1950s saw the emergence of all-female singing groups as a major force, with 750 distinct girl groups releasing songs that reached US and UK music charts from 1960 to 1966.[4] The Supremes alone held 12 number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100 during the height of the wave and throughout most of the British Invasion rivaled the Beatles in popularity.[5][6]
In later eras, the girl group template would be applied to disco, contemporary R&B, and country-based formats, as well as pop. A more globalized music industry gave rise to the popularity of dance-oriented pop music[7] led by major record labels. This emergence, led by the US, UK, South Korea and Japan, produced popular acts, with eight groups debuting after 1990 having sold more than 15 million physical copies of their albums. With the Spice Girls, the 1990s also saw the target market for girl groups shift from a male audience to an increasingly female one.[8][9] In the 2010s, the K-pop phenomenon led to the rise of successful girl groups including Girls' Generation, Blackpink, and Twice.[10]
History[edit]
Vaudeville and close harmonies[edit]
One of the first major all-female groups was the Hamilton Sisters and Fordyce, an American trio who successfully toured England and parts of Europe in 1927, recorded and appeared on BBC radio – they toured the US variety and big-time theaters extensively, and later changed their stage name to the Three X Sisters. The band was together from 1923 until the early 1940s, and known for their close harmonies, as well as barbershop style or novelty tunes, and utilized their 1930s radio success.[11] The Three X Sisters were also especially a notable addition to the music scene, and predicted later girl group success by maintaining their popularity throughout the Great Depression.[12] The Boswell Sisters, who became one of the most popular singing groups from 1930 to 1936, had over twenty hits. The Andrews Sisters started in 1937 as a Boswell tribute band and continued recording and performing through the 1940s into the late-1960s, achieving more record sales, more Billboard hits, more million-sellers, and more movie appearances than any other girl group to date.[13] The Andrews Sisters had musical hits across multiple genres, which contributed to the prevalence and popularity of the girl group form.[14]
1955–1970: The golden age of girl groups[edit]
As the rock era began, close harmony acts like the Chordettes, the Fontane Sisters, the McGuire Sisters and the DeCastro Sisters remained popular, with the first three acts topping the pop charts and the last reaching number two, at the end of 1954 to the beginning of 1955.[15] Also, the Lennon Sisters were a mainstay on the Lawrence Welk Show from 1955 on. In early 1956, doo-wop one-hit wonder acts like the Bonnie Sisters with "Cry Baby" and the Teen Queens with "Eddie My Love" showed early promise for a departure from traditional pop harmonies. With "Mr. Lee", the Bobbettes lasted for 5+1⁄2 months on the charts in 1957, building momentum and gaining further acceptance of all-female, all-black vocal groups.[16]
However, it was the Chantels' 1958 song "Maybe" that became "arguably, the first true glimmering of the girl group sound".[17][18] The "mixture of black doo-wop, rock and roll, and white pop"[19] was appealing to a teenage audience and grew from scandals involving payola and the perceived social effects of rock music.[20] However, early groups such as the Chantels started developing their groups' musical capacities traditionally, through mediums like Latin and choir music.[21] The success of the Chantels and others was followed by an enormous rise in girl groups with varying skills and experience, with the music industry's typical racially segregated genre labels of R&B and pop slowly breaking apart.[18] This rise also allowed a semblance of class mobility to groups of people who often could not otherwise gain such success, and "forming vocal groups together and cutting records gave them access to other opportunities toward professional advancement and personal growth, expanding the idea of girlhood as an identity across race and class lines."[22] The group often considered to have achieved the first sustained success in girl group genre is the Shirelles,[23][24] who first reached the Top 40 with "Tonight's the Night", and in 1961, became the first girl group to reach number one on the Hot 100 with "Will You Love Me Tomorrow",[25] written by songwriters Gerry Goffin and Carole King at 1650 Broadway.[26] The Shirelles solidified their success with five more top 10 hits, most particularly 1962's number one hit "Soldier Boy", over the next two and a half years. "Please Mr. Postman" by the Marvelettes became a major indication of the racial integration of popular music, as it was the first number one song in the US for African-American owned label, Motown Records.[27] Motown would mastermind several major girl groups, including Martha and the Vandellas, the Velvelettes, and the Supremes.[26]