Girl group
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.
With the advent of the music industry and radio broadcasting, a number of girl groups emerged, such as the Andrews Sisters.
[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.
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.
[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.
[13] The Andrews Sisters had musical hits across multiple genres, which contributed to the prevalence and popularity of the girl group form.
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.
[22] 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.
[19] 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.
"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] Other songwriters and producers in the US and UK quickly recognized the potential of this new approach and recruited existing acts (or, in some cases, created new ones) to record their songs in a girl group style.
Phil Spector recruited the Crystals, the Blossoms, and the Ronettes,[29] while Goffin and King penned two hit songs for the Cookies.
In early fall 1963 one-hit wonder the Jaynetts' "Sally Go 'Round the Roses" achieved a mysterious sound[33] quite unlike that of any other girl group.
[34] Over 750 girl groups were able to chart a song between 1960 and 1966[4] in the US and UK, although the genre's reach was not as strongly felt in the music industries of other regions.
As the youth culture of western Continental Europe was deeply immersed in Yé-yé, recording artists of East Asia mostly varied from traditional singers, government-sponsored chorus,[35][36] or multi-cultural soloists and bands,[37][38] while bossa nova was trendy in Latin America.
[43] Labelle were the first girl group to eschew matching outfits and identical choreography, instead wearing extravagant spacesuits and feathered headdresses.
[44] During the disco craze and beyond, female acts included First Choice, Silver Convention, Hot, the Emotions, High Inergy, Odyssey, Sister Sledge, Mary Jane Girls, Belle Epoque, Frantique, Luv', and Baccara.
In Latin America, there were a number of dance-oriented popular girl groups during the era, including the Flans, Pandora and Fandango.
[46] With their 1990 eponymous debut album, the trio Wilson Phillips sold over 5 million copies worldwide and reached five major US hit singles, four of which cracked the Top 10, with three peaking at number one on the Billboard Hot 100.
[47] After the rise of new jack swing, contemporary R&B and hip hop, American girl groups such as En Vogue, Exposé and Sweet Sensation all had singles which hit number one on the charts.
[48] TLC remains the best-selling American girl group with 65 million records sold, and their second studio album, CrazySexyCool (1994), remains the best-selling album by a girl group in the United States (Diamond certification), while selling over 14 million copies worldwide.
Popular South Korean girl groups include Blackpink, Twice, Aespa, NewJeans, IVE and Red Velvet amongst others.
Adolescence was also important (especially starting in the 1950s) from the other end: the consumers were "teenagers [with] disposable income, ready access to automobiles, and consolidated high schools that exposed them to large numbers of other teens.
This more recent wave of girl groups is more sexually provocative as well, which makes sense within pop music within this time frame as well.
