A girl group is a popular music act featuring several young female singers who generally harmonize together.
Girl groups emerged in the late 1950s as groups of young singers teamed up with behind-the-scenes songwriters and music producers to create hit singles, often featuring glossy production values and backing by top studio musicians. In later eras the girl group template would be applied to disco, R&B, and country- based formats as well as pop music.
A distinction is made here with girl bands , in which females also play instruments, though this terminology is not universally followed.
History
During the Music Hall/Vaudeville era, all-girl singing groups were mainly novelty acts singing nonsense songs in silly voices. One of the first major exceptions was the Boswell Sisters, who became one of the most popular singing groups from 1930 to 1936, with over twenty hits. The Boswells were noted for their artistry, and often played their own instruments and performed their own arrangements. The Andrews Sisters started (1937) as a Boswell tribute band, filling the vacuum left after that group's demise. The Andrews Sisters remained hugely popular through the 1940s and 1950s as recording and performing stars, until the rise of early rock and roll made their tight-harmony, big band-derived style obsolete.
1950s and 1960s
Among the earliest acts categorizable as a "girl group" are The Chantels, whose 1958 hit "Maybe" had many of the earmarks of what would become the classic girl-group sound: looser harmonies mixing elements of pop and rhythm and blues, an identifiable lead vocal within a harmony arrangement, and subject matter centered around young love.
As rock and roll began to quickly grow in popularity, dozens of groups tried their luck, often teaming up with established songwriters and record producers. The Shirelles, who had had some minor R&B hits, hooked up with Brill Building songwriters, notably Gerry Goffin and Carole King, who wrote "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" for them. The song became a number one pop hit in early 1961, and is widely recognized as establishing the prototypical girl-group style.
Other songwriters and producers quickly recognized the potential of this new approach, and recruited existing acts (or, in some cases, created them anew) to record their songs in a girl-group style. Phil Spector recruited The Crystals, The Blossoms, and The Ronettes, while Goffin and King handled much of the output of The Cookies. Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller would likewise foster The Dixie Cups, The Shangri-Las, and The Exciters. Other important girl group songwriters included Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Barry, Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann. The Motown label also masterminded several major girl groups, beginning with The Marvelettes and later with Martha and the Vandellas and The Supremes.
By the mid to late 1960s, in the face of the British Invasion and the increasing popularity of rock music, the popularity of girl groups began to wane. During this time, only a few all-female groups, such as The Supremes (who scored the first number one album by an all female group), and Martha and the Vandellas (both Motown), made the transition to an earthier, soulful sound and success. The influence of the girl-group sound would continue to be heard even as the rock era progressed; particularly through The Beatles, who would cover several girl-group hits including "Chains" (The Cookies), "Please Mr. Postman" (The Marvelettes), "Baby It's You", and "Boys" (both originally recorded by The Shirelles) and vice-versa as with The Supremes album, A Bit of Liverpool .
High-end production
Besides harmony singing, girl group songs of the time were characterized by high-end production and dramatic arrangements, and producers were often as important to the recordings as the artists themselves. Spector was the most famous and influential producer of the era. His Wall of Sound production featured a thick layer of instrumentation (drums, guitar, bass, a horn section and often something more exotic, such as Glockenspiel or vibraphone). Amidst the musical accompaniment, there was a lead vocal, often deliberately girlish in tone, singing deceptively simple, naïve lyrics which artfully and eloquently expressed the emotions of teenagers of the time. An example would be The Ronettes' "Be My Baby," which doubles as both a charming love song and, implicitly, a portrayal of adolescent sexual mores. Many groups, such as the Shangri-Las, used productions inspired by Spector, even if Spector himself did not work on their records. Others, including some New York City-based groups like The Chiffons, used more conventional pop music arrangements, while the Motown groups used typical driving Motown arrangements of the period.
The high-production, harmony-heavy sound of girl groups was so well-established and proved so popular that many individual singers adopted the "girl-group sound." Lesley Gore, Little Eva and Mary Wells were solo artists, but are often considered part of the girl group genre. Other groups, such as Ruby and the Romantics and The Essex, had the "girl-group sound," even though they were not composed entirely of females. The sound was also a key element of many of the "Beach Party" type movies of the same era, many starring Annette Funicello.
Fashion
Fashion became a key aspect of the girl group phenomenon, especially as the acts began to be invited to appear on variety television programs and musical revues. Despite their often-humble backgrounds, the girl groups wore the latest and most stylish dresses (often in matching sets) and set styles for hair and clothing.
Crossing ethnic and cultural boundaries
Although the most popular girl groups of the 1960s were primarily of young black women, their success and popularity crossed all ethnic and cultural boundaries, even during periods of racial tension. (A few white girl groups, including The Angels and The Paris Sisters, had hits that were basically indistinguishable in style and sound from their black counterparts.) Even when the content of the songs bordered on the risqué, the well-dressed, well-mannered young women in these groups found acceptance in suburban America, subtly changing attitudes and spearheading the crossover successes of many black musical acts to come.
1970s to mid 1980s
Patti LaBelle and The Bluebelles was a US 1960s girl group which had moderate success performing soulful pop typical of the era. In the early 70s manager Vicki Wickham helped remake their image, renaming the group Labelle and pushing them in the direction of Glam rock. Labelle were the first girl group to eschew matching outfits and identical choreography, instead wearing extravagant spacesuits and feathered headdresses. The group would finally score a major hit in 1975, with "Lady Marmalade," one of the first disco songs to top the charts.
From the mid 1970s to the mid 1980s, a profusion of successful disco/pop dance female groups were formed in continental Europe: Luv', Babe, Dolly Dots, Maywood, Doris D. & The Pins, Snoopy, Star Sisters, Mai Tai from the Netherlands, Silver Convention and Arabesque from Germany, and Baccara from Spain.
In the United States, the 1980s saw the emergence of girl groups such as The Go-Go's, The Bangles and Pointer Sisters. The latter charted several hits in the 1980s, including "Jump (for My Love)" and "I'm So Excited".
In the United Kingdom the New Wave/pop group Bananarama had an extensive number of Top 40 singles around the world in the 1980s and 1990s. Their most famous international hit, "Venus," hit #1 in the United States (a feat they didn't achieve in their homeland). In 1988, they entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the most successful all-female group in history, a title they held for over a decade.
Late 1980s and the 1990s
In the late 1980s and early 1990s in the United States, Exposé, Sweet Sensation, The Cover Girls, Jade, and Seduction all enjoyed commercial success with the growth of Freestyle, a Latin- or R&B-oriented dance sound.
Many of the girl groups of the 1990s returned to a manufactured pop style, marketed as clean-cut and aimed at young, predominantly female audiences. A prime example of this was the US vocal trio, Wilson Phillips. In Canada, West End Girls achieved minor hits on the Canadian charts.
Former Bananarama member Siobhan Fahey created an edgy alternative group, Shakespears Sister, whose single "Stay" stayed at #1 in the UK for eight weeks (the longest run by any girl group) and made the top 5 in the US.
In the UK, the R&B act Eternal scored a string of hits both within the U.K and internationally as well as having three multi-platinum selling albums. One of the most successful American R&B girl groups of the early 1990s was vocal quartet En Vogue. According to Billboard magazine, they were the eighteenth most successful act of the 1990s. Irish girl group B*Witched enjoyed chart success with four #1 singles in the UK. Cleopatra scored hits both in the UK and the US. They had their own television sitcom and were signed by Madonna. All Saints became one of the most successful British pop groups of the 1990s with five #1 hits in the UK and two multi-platinum albums. Their second single, "Never Ever", is their biggest hit, topping the charts in UK and Australia.
In the 1990s, TLC also experienced high popularity in the US. Their sophomore album, Crazy Sexy Cool is the best selling hip hop and female R&B group album of all tim
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