← Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Be My Baby-Baby-Baby Edition Part 2
00:49:25
What is a girl group? In the ’60s, harmonizing ladies saved rock & roll. In the ’90s, sisters with voices gave pop some TLC.
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You're listening ad free on Amazon Music. Welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfy, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One series. On our last episode, we walked through the history of the girl group, most especially its early 60s heyday when vocal ensembles like the Sherrells, the Ronettes and the Shangri La's were commanding the charts. After Motown superstars the Supremes dominated the late 60s, the girl group era passed into history. But disco, new wave and freestyle dance music kept the girl group alive through the 70s and 80s. We're now entering the 90s when a new generation of sisters with voices who emerged after hip hop are about to infuse the hit parade with a girl group renaissance. The debut album by the quartet and En Vogue was titled Born to Sing. You might say it was truth in advertising. The four women who made up the group, Terry Ellis, Cindy Heron, Maxine Jones and Dawn Robinson, came from all over the United States and all possessed powerful voices. Each was capable of singing lead.
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Hold on to your love.
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To your love Baby, hold up this was by design. En Vogue was conceived by a pair of producers and songwriters from Oakland, California, Denzel Foster and Thomas McElroy, who'd already had success with the late 80s electro funk groups Timex, Social Club and Club Nouveau.
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Look at all these rumors. Sometimes you get away.
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Foster and McElroy wanted to recreate the spirit of the early 60s girl groups, but with current production and post Whitney Houston vocal talent. This was at a moment when New Jack Swing, the genre that hybridized R B singing and hip hop production, was taking over the charts, both from male stars like Bobby Brown.
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Everybody's talking all this stuff about me why don't they just let me live Tell me why.
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And female superstars like Janet Jackson. So Foster and McElroy auditioned, thank you, thousands of women from across the country before finding their foursome. Only one of the quartet, Maxine Jones, was even from their own city of Oakland. This producer driven approach would become the norm for girl groups in the 90s. While the 60s groups often formed organically and in a specific place, but then were managed or sadly, often manipulated in the studio by producers and other Svengalis. The girl groups of the 90s and beyond were conceived within the music industry machine, not unlike the boy bands of the New Kids on the Block and Backstreet Boys generation. Like those boy bands, however, these modern girl groups developed distinct personalities even after Their Frankenstein style creation, En Vogue launched in early 1990 with a song that broke them right away, the new Jack style love song hold on, which reached number one on the R B chart and number two on the Hot 100. But while En Vogue climbed the charts with their debut hit in the spring and early summer of 1990, by total coincidence they were competing with another song also called hold on, this one by a white girl group. And this trio had a remarkable Nepo baby pedigree.
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I know there's pain why do you lock yourself up in these chains?
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Wilson Phillips were three offspring of 60s rock royalty Carney and Wendy Wilson, daughters of Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys and China Phillips, daughter of the Mamas and the Papas, John and Michelle Phillips. Given their musical pedigree, they discovered in their teenage years they had natural harmonies when they sang together. So they formed a vocal trio, signed a record deal in 1989 and issued their self titled debut album in 1990. Wilson Phillips chart run was as amazing as it was short lived. Between 1990 and 91, the Wilson Phillips album sold 5 million copies and generated four top 10 hits, including three number ones. One Hold on, which ended the year as Billboard's top Hot 100 song of 1990, Was followed by the number ones Release Me and you'd're in Love. Their fourth top 10 hit, which we'll play right now because I like it better than any of the number ones, was their number four single. Impulsive. But after a 1992 follow up album by Wilson Phillips sold poorly and produced no major hits, the trio went on hiatus. Clearly, Wilson Phillips perky retro pop was not going to be the predominant sound of the 90s girl group. Which brings us back to the other hold on.
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Hold on until you're done.
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En Vogue's Born To Sing did not produce as many big pop hits as Wilson Phillips debut had. But En Vogue's sound was more forward looking. It was built from the same tools as rap, breakbeats, electro funk, keyboards and even samples. Indeed, the main hook of hold on was borrowed from James Brown's 1974 funk classic the Payback, one of the most sampled songs in hip hop history. When it came time for En Vogue to generate a Follow up In 1992, masterminds Denzel Foster and Thomas McElroy decided if it ain't broke, don't fix it. They sampled another riff from the exact same James Brown song and generated an even bigger hit, My Lovin' Parentheses, you're never gonna get it. A tart kiss off to a Trifling man reached number two in May 1992. My lovin spent nearly eight months on the Hot 100 and wound up Billboard's seventh biggest hit of the year. The song established a sassy Persona for En Vogue that crossed them over with a larger pop audience. And it had coattails. The group' second album, Funky Divas went triple platinum and spun off two more top 10 hits, a cover of the sensual slow jam giving him something he can Feel, written by soul legend Curtis Mayfield and originally recorded by Aretha Franklin in 1976. And Vogue's version reached number six better than Franklin's version had done on the pop side, And a gonzo rock song with lyrics against racism, sexism and prejudice of all kinds. Named after the 1970 Funkadelic Jam Free your Mind and your ass will follow, En Vogue's Free youe Mind reached number eight on the Hot 100 and was even nominated for a Grammy for rock vocal performance. In the wake of En Vogue's crossover triumph, several more R B based girl groups with post New Jack swing stylings cracked the upper reaches of the Hot 100. Chicago based trio Jade took don't walk away built from a Cool in the gang sample to number four in early 93. And SWV or Sisters with Voices scored a flurry of massive hits including the Torch Song Week which topped the Hot 100 in the summer of 93. And a follow up that remixed SWVS right here with a sample of Michael Jackson's 1983 hit Human Nature. The hybridized Right here Human Nature reached number two in the fall of 93, But the biggest girl group to break in the 90s, new jack swing wave would wind up eclipsing everyone, including En Vogue. Like En Vogue, this trio was formed by an enterprising producer and self styled mogul as well as a pop star herself who had scored hits earlier in the New Jack era. Perry Arlette Reed, better known as Pebbles, scored a flurry of R B and pop hits in the late 80s including her number two hit Mercedes Boy. Pivoting from pop stardom to artist management around the time she married songwriter and record label Chieftain La Reid, Pebbles was introduced to a pair of aspiring singer rappers living in Atlanta named Teon Watkins and Lisa Lopez. After suggesting they replace their third member with a dancer and singer named Rozonda Thomas, Pebbles named the trio TLC and helped the women pick nicknames to form the acronym. Watkins became T Boz, Lopez became Left Eye and Thomas became Chilly. TLC. Launched in early 1992, TLC blew up immediately with the sex positive banger Ain't Too Proud to Beg. You can think of it as the blunter 90s equivalent of the Shirelles will you love me tomorrow? In the music video, TLC reinforced the song's AIDS era message by wearing wrapped condoms as accessories. Left Eye even wore a condom as a monocle over her. Left eye ain't too Proud to beg hit number six on the Hot 100 and TLC's album Ooh on the TLC tip went platinum and spun off two more hits. A percolating ballad, baby baby baby reached number two. And the spicy camaraderie anthem what about your friends topped out at number seven.
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What about your friends? Will they stand their ground? Will they let you down again?
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What gave TLC an edge in the girl group sweepstakes was their even tighter relationship to hip hop. Left Eye threw down serious rap bars on most of their hits. While team TLC began working on follow up material, more R B girl groups in their spunky hip hop mode were flooding the charts. Atlanta based quartet Xscape scored a string of top 40 hits including the number two jam Just Kickin it in 1993. And LA trio Brownstone took their breakbeat ballad if you love me to number four in 1994. When TLC returned in the closing weeks of 1994 after this wave of new Jack girl groups, their sophomore album was primed to explode. Crazy sexy Cool, its title a cheeky portmanteau of adjectives describing the three TLC ladies, would eventually become the top selling girl group album of all time. Certified diamond for 10 million in sales, its singles blanketed the radio in 1994 and 95, including the slinky cheating song Creep, TLC's first number one hit, A sultry slow jam, Red Light Special, a number two hit. And what ultimately became TLC's signature song and biggest number one hit, Waterfalls, a mid tempo story song about how choice and chance can lead to tragedy, it spent seven weeks atop the Hot 100 and became 1995's song of the summer. It was around this time that the 1-90s girl group that would rival TLC in sales and influence was being formulated over in of all places, London. We'll be back momentarily. As we noted in last month's boy bands episode, the United Kingdom was experiencing a major 90s boy band wave years ahead of the teen pop boom that overtook America in the late 90s. Very early in the decade, bands like Wet Wet Wet East 17 and Take that were scoring UK number ones. That that's Why? A team of London managers held auditions in 1994 to find a girl group to compete with all the British boy bands. They were also encouraged by the budding success of the British R and B girl group Eternal, who'd cracked the UK top 10 and even scored a top 20 hit in America with Stay. Using Stay as their audition song, the management team tried out hundreds of young women and after a few group member swaps, settled on the fivesome of Victoria Adams, Melanie Brown, Emma Bunton, Melanie Chisholm and Jerry Hollowell. At first they were called Touch. Then after working on a song called Sugar and Spice, they went with Spice as a moniker. Eventually, after learning that there already was a rapper called Spice, they would settle on the Spice Girls. By 1995, the Future Spice Girls had ditched the the management team who had auditioned them out of concern that they weren't listening to the ladies ideas. The girls retained the songwriters they'd already started working with, found some producers and a manager, future Pop Idol and American Idol creator Simon Fuller. And they signed with Virgin Records, who agreed to let the girls present themselves as a group of five equal personalities, none of whom would be the lead singer. And they introduced themselves in 1996 with an ebullient first single. Wannabe took the British charts by storm, debuting at number one and turning the Spice Girls into an instant phenomenon. Not unlike TLC's ain't too proud to Beg. It branded the Spice Girls as brash and funny. But like the American trio's other hit, what about your Friends? Wannabe stressed the importance of female camaraderie over male attraction. Wannabe is sung to a man, but it's about the bond among the young women singing it it. Not long after Mel B's rap introducing the group infected every British pop listener's brain.
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So here's a story from A to Z. You want to get with me you gotta listen carefully we got M in the place who likes it in your face you got G like MC you like sit on her easy be you doesn't come for free She's a real lady and as for me how you'll sleep Slum your body down and whine it all around Calm your body down and whine it.
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The British press gave the five ladies new nicknames. Emma was now called Baby Spice, Victoria was nicknamed Posh Spice, Mel B was dubbed Scary Spice, Mel C, Sporty Spice, and the red haired Jerry became Ginger Spice. The girls came up with neither these monikers nor nor their eventual slogan, girl Power. But they heartily embrace them as essential to their brand. The Spice Girls debuted at number one in the UK with three consecutive singles in the summer, fall and Christmas season of 1996, and they topped charts across Europe and around the world, virtually every place but America. So in the winter of 1997, they dropped Wannabe in the States. And it blew up here too. Not only did wannabe hit number one on the Hot 100, Spice Girl's debut CD, Spice topped the Billboard 200 album chart and wound up the year's top selling disc, selling 5 million copies. Before Hanson, the Backstreet Boys or NSync, the Spice Girls were widely credited with reopening the US charts to teen and tween oriented pure pop again. Two more singles that had topped the British chart reached the top five in the us The R B adjacent say you'll be there reached number three on the Hot 100.
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I'm giving you everything all that joy can bring this that's where I give you everything.
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And the ballad to become one reached number four.
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I need some love like I never needed love before.
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In the Spice Girl's wake, other British and even Irish girl groups briefly broke on the US Charts. The London interracial foursome All Saints climbed to number four in early 98 with never ever.
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Ever felt so low when you gonna take me out of this black hole? Never ever have I ever felt so.
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And roughly a year later, the Irish foursome Bewitched took their single C' est la Vie to number nine. As for the Spice Girls themselves, they remained mega stars in their homeland, but had a harder time following up their first album in America. That sophomore LP Spice World opened well, but its first single, Spice up your Life, peaked below the top 10, stalling at number 18. After a hit movie also called Spice World. A couple more top 20 hits and the abrupt departure of Jerry Ginger Spice Halliwell reducing the group to a foursome, Spice Girls began to wind down on the charts by 1999. They announced a hiatus in 2000. In retrospect, the Spice Girls meteoric rise and fall was the closest analog to the millennial boy band boom of Backstreet and NSync, a cultural life cycle of roughly half a decade. But like those male groups, Spice Girls left a mark on the formative memories of millions of fans. A generation later, critics who had previously dismissed the group's frothy form of feminism acknowledged that the Spice Girls accessible girl power had nearly as profound an impact on millennial Girls as the contemporaneous Lilith Fair. Meanwhile, America's wave of hip Hop flavored R B girl groups was not abating. A couple of years after TLC scored their biggest hits, a new foursome from Houston began storming the charts. We talked about Destiny's Child in depth in our singing and rapping episode of Hit Parade. Originally a foursome of Kelly Rowland, Lativia Roberson, Latoya Luckett and of course the 16 year old Beyonce Knowles, whose father Matthew Knowles managed the group, Destinies broke in 1998 on a remix of their single no no no featuring former Fugees rapper Wyclef Jean. It reached number three. By 1999, Destiny's Child was topping the Hot 100 with the highly syncopated and relentlessly pragmatic Bills Bills Bills. What set Destiny's Child apart and pushed them ahead of their girl group competition was their tight integration of rap cadence into R B singing. A TLC hit would feature a rap break from Left Eye, whereas on Destiny's Hits, Beyonce and her groupmates were essentially singing and rapping at the same time. Not that TLC were fading out, although they came close. Despite two multi platinum albums, the trio were only netting a few thousand dollars per year a piece. So TLC declared bankruptcy in 1995 in order to renegotiate their contract with label LaFace Records and manager Pebbles. After a tumultuous three year hiatus during which both Left Eye and T Boz worked on side projects that almost became permanent, the trio were persuaded to reunite for a third album, 1999's Fan Mail, that became their fastest seller to date, debuting at number one and generating two Hot 100 number one songs, the aforementioned no Scrubs, Which like Destiny's Bills Bills Bills flew the flag in 1999 for self reliant women unimpressed with shiftless men and Unpretty, a heartfelt reassurance to women who struggle with body image issues, co written by t Boz and TLC's producer Dallas Austin in an acoustic alternative rock style.
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Fiction knows that, he says, so you can buy all the makeup the mat can make, but if you can look.
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Inside you, Unpretty would wind up being TLC's last major hit. Three years later, Lisa Left Eye Lopez died in a car crash while filming a documentary in Honduras. She was 30 years old. Critics would later call TLC quote, the blueprint for female ensembles to follow. Indeed, that influence was already being felt on the charts at the turn of the millennium. Girl groups that scored in the wake of TLC included Las Vegas Trio 702, whose Where My Girls at was a number four hit in 1999 El. And Atlanta trio Black, who reached number five in early 2000 with Bring it all to Me. Once TLC faded, Destiny's Child were left standing as the top R B girl group of their era. Reduced to a trio after a dispute led to the dismissal of two members and the recruitment of new third member Michelle Williams, Destinies kept scoring massive hits through 2000 and 2001, including Independent Women, Survivor and Bootylicious. Though Destiny's Child is mostly remembered as the girl group platform that launched Beyonce's superlative solo career a la Diana Ross and the support pr, It should be noted that Kelly Rowland scored the first post Destiny's number one hit by any solo member of the group with her 2002 duet with rapper Nelly Dilemma.
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All I think about is you Even.
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When I'm with my boo we'll be right back. At the dawn of the 21st century, as with boy bands after Backstreet Boys and NSYNC went on hiatus, girl groups seemed adrift for a while. There were a few one offs, including the LA pop quartet Dream, who took he loves you not to number two in late 2000. And Eden's Crush, a multicultural quintet formed on the short lived TV singing competition show Pop Stars, they reached number eight in 2001 with Get Over Yourself. Most of the girl group action in the Aughts was happening in the uk, where multiple number one hits were scored by the acclaimed English trio Sugabab. And Girls Aloud, a quintet formed on the British edition of Pop Stars. But neither of these English combos made a dent in the States. The American girl group dry spell wasn't finally broken until halfway through the Aughts when a troupe of burlesque dancers who called themselves the Pussycat Dolls broke big on the Billboard charts.
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Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me don't you wish your girlfriend was a freak like me don't you.
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Since the mid-90s, the dolls had been dancing at nightclubs in Los Angeles where they attracted celebrity attention. But it was only when they teamed with a former singer from Eden's Crush named Nicole Scherzinger that the Pussycat Dolls made a serious run at pop stardom. Their 2005 single Don'tcha, a frisky, deliberately catty song about stealing another woman's man, not normal girl group subject matter, climbed all the way to number two on the Hot 100.
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See, I don't care but I know she ain't gonna wrong and.
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The surprising thing about the Pussycat Dolls was Despite their seemingly novelty background, they kept coming back with multiple hits. Their debut album, pcd, was meticulously crafted by an army of producers and Scherzinger herself, who pitched in on songwriting. It ultimately went triple platinum in the US and sold millions around the world. On the Hot 100, it spun off three top 10 hits, including not only Don'tcha but also the ballad Stick with you, a number five hit.
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Forever, Nobody Gonna Take Me Higher, I.
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Must Stick with you, and the exotic Saucy Buttons, a number three hit. Even more than in the 90s, girl groups in the 21st century seemed to require an angle beyond music, a way to build a brand. Danity Kane, for example, who formed on the MTV reality show Making the band, scored two number one albums and the top 10 hits Showstopper and Damaged.
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Damage, Damage, Damage.
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And remember the creation story of One Direction, the boy band Simon Cowell and Nicole Scherzinger formed from five solo competitors on the British version of TV's the X Factor. That gambit worked so well that Cowell, on the American edition of the X Factor, tried it again with a girl group. In 2012, Simon brought together solo vocalists Normani Corday, Lauren Jauregi, Ali Brook, Dinah Jane and Camila Cabello for a joint audition that impressed the X Factor judges. After a viewer vote, the quintet was given the girl group name Fifth Harmony. Like One Direction before them, Fifth Harmony competed on the show as a quintet and came in third, failing to make the final round. But Simon Cowell signed them to a recording contract anyway. The launch of Fifth Harmony or 5H, was not as instantly explosive as 1D's had been. Their debut single, Ms. Movin on, only reached number 76 on the Hot 100 in 2013. It took them another year to crack The American top 40 with Sledgehammer, no relation to the Peter Gabriel hit of the same name. But finally, after two strong album openings, Fifth Harmony reached the top five in 2016 with the racy double entendre song Work From Home. Unfortunately, 5H's arc was even shorter than 1D's. Later that year, Cuban American singer Camila Cabello broke away from Fifth Harmony for a solo career. The remaining quartet put out only one more album before disbanding, while Cabello became a chart topping soloist with hits like Havana. In a 2018 article for the Ringer, taking stock of Cabello's solo career, which was already more successful than fifth harmonies had been, critic Lindsey Zoladz asked the provocative question, why, in the age of squad and pop feminism, has the American girl group failed to make a comeback? Was Camila Cabello's group just a launching pad or something more essential to pop music? Zolads offered various theories, including the possibility that girl group members were now all aspiring to the artistic, artistic freedom and cultural capital of former Destiny's Child member Beyonce. If there is an answer for the modern day girl group quandary, it lies in the same place as it does for 21st century boy band the Place South Korea. Back In October of 2009, nobody by the female K pop quintet Wonder Girls entered the Hot 100 at a modest number 76, making it the first song by a Korean artist to appear on the flagship US chart years before BTS or any K pop boy band. Gradually, K pop began to attract more Western fans, driven at first by girl groups like Korean chart Commander's Girls Generation. In 2013, girls generation's part English, part Korean single I Got a boy reached number three on Billboard's World Digital Songs chart and became one of America's top selling K pop songs after Psy's Gangnam Style. One year later, Korean quartet 2 Neone saw their infectious song I Am the Best featured in an American ad campaign. It helped make 2ne1 the first K pop act to crack the top 100 on the Billboard 200 album chart. A decade later, after the breakthrough by BTS, K pop girl groups frequently top the US album chart. In 2022, Blackpink's album Born Pink became the first by a Korean girl group to reach number one in America. And just last summer, an EP by the quintet New Jeans edged out the Barbie soundtrack to take number one on the album chart. A song from Newjeans album Super Shy even made the top 40 on Billboard's pop airplay chart. It's probably just a matter of time before a K pop girl group follows BTS into the top 10 or even to number one on the Hot 100. As we were preparing this hit parade episode in April 2024, a video appeared on Instagram of the five members of the Spice Girls reunited at the festival 50th birthday party of Posh Spice Victoria Beckham. In a sweet gesture, the five girls, now all middle aged women, are singing a spontaneous version of their 1997 UK number one hit Mama. The video, shared by Victoria's husband David Beckham, fueled chatter among Spice Girls fans about the possibility of an actual reunion and tour by the group. Mind you, this is just speculation. Perhaps nothing will come of it. It's been five years since the Spices toured, But the remarkable thing in 2024 is the yearning that's still out there for this group that has been mostly inactive for more than two decades. Sure, it's nostalgia, but also something more. The premise of the Spice Girls is the premise of the girl group throughout pop history. From the Shirelles to the Shangri La's TLC to Destiny's Child, women in harmony generate solidarity. Perhaps the Spices debut single had it right. Friendship never ends. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Hit Parade. Our show was written, edited and narrated by Chris Melanfi. That's me. My producer is Kevin Bendis. Kevin also produced the latest installment of our monthly Hit Parade the Bridge shows, which are available exclusively exclusively to Slate plus members. In our latest Bridge episode, I talked to New York Times pop critic Lindsay Zoladz about the past, present and future of the girl group. To sign up for Slate plus and hear not only the Bridge but all our shows the day they drop, visit slate.com hitparade + Derek John is executive producer of Narrative Podcasts and and we had help from Joel Meyer. Alicia Montgomery is VP of Audio for Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. Until then, keep on marching on the one. I'm Chris Melanfi.