Girl Group



Girl groups are the Distaff Counterpart of boy bands. These ladies will generally be attractive and may sing in suitably Stripperiffic outfits. These means that they appeal to both girls and boys. Girls want to be them, boys want to sleep with them. Unlike boy bands, girl groups have stayed relatively popular over the years.

Compare Idol Singer.

Real examples (in rough chronological order):

 * Older Than They Think: The Andrews Sisters, back in The Forties
 * The Chantelles, the most famous female doo-wop group ("Maybe").
 * Many vocal groups produced by Phil Spector, including the Ronettes and the Crystals.
 * The Supremes. They were the breakthrough R&B act, and helped put Motown Records on the map in The Sixties. Their most famous singer, Diana Ross, went on to have a lengthy and successful solo career.
 * The Marvelettes, who scored Motown's first number one hit.
 * Martha Reeves & the Vandellas, another great Motown group.
 * The Angels, who are best known for their 1963 hit "My Boyfriend's Back".
 * The Shangri-Las.
 * Bananarama
 * Toto Coelho, of "I Eat Cannibals" fame.
 * Wild Orchid, best known for being the former band of Stacy Ferguson before she joined the Black Eyed Peas.
 * TLC, the biggest-selling girl group in America (over forty million albums -- keeping in mind that they released only six albums, including two greatest hits collections). Their second album, 1994's CrazySexyCool, was the first album by a girl group to go diamond (ten million sold -- the album ultimately reached 11 million). They released their last album of original material in 2002 after one of their members, Lisa "Left-Eye" Lopes, died in a car crash in Honduras.
 * The Spice Girls. Today, they are best known for having given the world Victoria Beckham, Spice World and the Ear Worm "Wannabe".
 * B*Witched, an Irish group of four (consisting of twins Edele and Keavy Lynch, Sinead O'Carrol, and half Greek Lindsay Armau), famous for setting a world record of 4 #1 singles in a row by an Irish group (a record later broken by Westlife), and the fact that the twins were sisters of Boyzone's Shane Lynch. Some time after the group broke up, the twins launched a new career as MsLynch.
 * Salt-n-Pepa, a Grammy-award winning group that gave the world "Push It" and the controversial pop song "Let's Talk about Sex".
 * Destiny's Child, best known for being Beyonce's old band.
 * Cleopatra (Comin' Atcha!)
 * Sugababes.
 * Atomic Kitten.
 * t.A.T.u., a Russian girl duo that were sold as being lesbian lovers (they weren't).
 * Girls Aloud, created by a British Talent Show. They're arguably the only reality show success story involving a band.
 * The Pussycat Dolls, a former burlesque troupe that takes Stripperiffic to the next level.
 * Also their reality-TV-born offshoot, Girlicious.
 * Pussycat Dolls' lead singer, Nicole Sherzinger was originally part of another girl group, a pop group created for the show Popstars called Eden's Crush.
 * The Cheetah Girls, the Disney Channel's girl group.
 * Which got two of its members from the original group 3LW.
 * Cherish, a group consisting of four sisters (two of which are twins).
 * Danity Kane, formed by the MTV show Making the Band 3.
 * The Veronicas, twin sisters from Australia who took their name from the Archie character.
 * The Millionaires.
 * The Saturdays.
 * Korea has several popular ones now: SNSD (Girls' Generation), T-Ara, KARA, Wonder Girls. Oh, and Boy Bands are alive and well too, but that's a different story.
 * Little Mix, winners of the 8th series of The X Factor (not to mention the only group to ever win the show).

Fictional ones:

 * Josie and the Pussy Cats, who were later Defictionalized.
 * Jem (is truly, truly outrageous) and rival band the Misfits (their songs are better)
 * The girls from the video game Rockin' Pretty.
 * The Cheetah Girls, who were also defictionalized.
 * In probably the strangest example, Mike and the Bots play a girl group for the song "Where Oh Werewolf".
 * K-On!
 * Donna and the Dynamos, Donna Sheridan's old girl group from Mamma Mia.
 * Phineas and Ferb has The Bettys, a Shout-Out of sorts to the Veronicas.
 * The Greek Chorus of Little Shop of Horrors is one of these. They are modeled after those from the sixties, such as The Crystals, The Ronettes, The Supremes, The Shangri-Las, etc.
 * Lilpri from Hime Chen! Otogi Chikku Idol Lilpri. It helps that they're voiced by three of the four members of real Girl Group S/mileage.
 * G3 Princess from Engine Sentai Go-onger.
 * Girls Dead Monster (GirlDeMo for short) from Angel Beats.

The term "girl group" has also been used to describe rock bands that are composed entirely or mostly of women. Most of these "girl groups" resent this name, due to its connections with pop music and the inherent Double Standard involved (are rock bands composed of men called boy bands?).


 * The Runaways. While there were female rock singers before them (Grace Slick, Janis Joplin, Suzi Quatro), they are one of the most well known all-female rock bands.
 * Girlschool
 * The Go-Gos. Originally a punk band, they switched to a Power Pop sound once they put together their main lineup. In 1981, they became the first all-female rock band to top the Billboard album charts.
 * The Bangles
 * Vixen
 * The Riot Grrrl movement in The Nineties was an offshoot of Punk Rock that was defined by its staunch feminist messages and lyrics. Bands included Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, Heavens to Betsy, Huggy Bear and Bratmobile. Only Sleater-Kinney survived the scene, and they did so by drastically changing their sound around the 1997 release of Dig Me Out and arguably got better because of it.
 * Many '90s rock bands were mistakenly associated with riot grrrl just because they had female lead singers: Hole, L7, Babes in Toyland, Sonic Youth, etc.
 * Babes in Toyland plays with the girl group characterization in the music video for "Sweet '69"
 * The Donnas
 * The Like
 * The Stunners
 * The Finnish band Indica
 * Jack Off Jill
 * Vivian Girls, indie noise-pop, not unlike The Ramones if you take away the Y chromosome.