The Mysterious Allure of the All-Girl Band
Deep within every one of us, there's a taxonomist yearning to breathe free. We love to divide things into groups and subgroups, to give the world a sense of order. Music is no exception. For the casual listener, we may lump large numbers of musicians into exceedingly broad categories, like "rock" or "classical," but these are merely broad brush strokes that obscure the obsessive work of fans, scholars and purists who separate musicians into highly specialized categories. Punk isn't just punk, for example. It's a complex family tree with enough branches to bewilder the uninitiated: grindcore, skate punk, straight edge, post-punk, funkcore. And that's just for starters.
Yet no matter how many times you can parse rock 'n roll into subdivisions - that was a Rush song, wasn't it? - there's at least one category that transcends simple classification: the all-girl band. From the Runaways and the Go-Gos of the 70s and 80s to the Pussycat Dolls today, the archetype of women-only groups still resonates with many fans as a class of music unto itself. But why is that the case?
Over at the Washington Post, Pulitzer prize-winning fashion critic Robin Givhan recently examined the phoenix-like return of the Spice Girls, trying to understand their place in a world where the more overt sexuality of groups like the Pussycat Dolls is dominant. Givhan makes an attempt at tracing the origins of groups like the Spice Girls and the Dolls to two of the great musical foremothers of 1980s pop: Cyndi Lauper and Madonna.
The Spice Girls soared to fame on the Lauper model, giving girls a cool, slightly naughty band they could dream of being a part of rather than merely one to swoon over. "Girl power" wasn't a parent-approved movement. If so, then surely there would have been a "Smart Spice." But the Spice Girls were more palatable than the women who followed the Madonna philosophy, which advocated the power in a half-naked tush....
"Girl power," with its flimsy pseudo-empowerment babble that sounds so persuasive to a 10-year-old, doesn't stand a chance in the more grown-up world of a 16-year-old. But if any bit of it is worth salvaging, it's the fashion element. It was no coincidence that the Spice Girls all had nicknames that related to their appearance. The fashion was certainly more interesting than the music. The group had a space for every archetype, from Melanie "Sporty Spice" Chisholm and her tomboy attire to Bunton, who had the girliest style of all.
Traditionally, girl groups and, for that matter, boy bands have a cohesive look. They are sexy or urban, bohemian or country. But they are one thing. (Unless, of course, they are the Village People.) The Spice Girls were not. They used fashion as a shorthand for identity. The power wasn't in a girl taking her clothes off, but in being brave enough to wear the clothes that expressed her personality.
It's an interesting assessment - one in which the show will delve deeper today with Givhan takes questions from Neal and the rest of you. As for me, if I had to embrace my inner Linnaeus and subdivide the origins of today's all-women bands, I'd take a different tack.
From the way I see it, the Spice Girls and the Pussycat Dolls are cut from the same cloth, no matter what clothes they choose to wear. In both cases, they're classic examples of pre-fabricated, market-tested music designed primarily for mass appeal. The Spice Girls didn't assemble in someone's garage after one of them put an ad in the local music zine asking for a bassist and drummer to jam with them after hours. They're carefully constructed by businesspeople to fill a market need - music that can be consumed en masse by young girls in the guise of spreading messages of gender empowerment.
In contrast, you've got the countless number of all-woman groups born out of the riot grrrl movement that began in the 90s - anti-corporate, political, fiercely devoted to do-it-yourself music. From L7 to Sleater-Kinney, these bands were made up of independently-minded women musicians who wanted to rock - and get across that message of independence to the world at large. These notions of individual empowerment eventually got co-opted by the Spice Girls and the subsequent "girl power" movement, to which the Pussycat Dolls are their direct descendants.
Then again, we can't forget all the other groups that could easily fall into the classification of "girl bands" over the years simply because they were made up of women - Luscious Jackson, Shonen Knife, even the Dixie Chicks and Salt-n-Pepa. Maybe the whole idea of lumping together all-women bands as having something in common is just as ridiculous as lumping together groups like 'N Sync, Metallica and Radiohead just because they're all "guy bands."
But if that's the case, why does the notion of girl bands still resonate with so many people? What's the allure? Can any of you get your heads around this?
NPR Internet strategist Andy Carvin would normally be restrained from accessing the blogging software but he's helping out while Barrie and Sarah take some time from work this week.
1:16 PM ET | 07-11-2007 | permalink
