Whether it be âSurvivorâ by Destinyâs Child or âTouchâ by KATSEYE that has made it to your playlist, girl groups have always had an undeniable impact on pop culture for decades now.Â
Right now, it feels like there has been almost an exponential surge in all-girl groups, sort of replicating the dominant models of training and presentation borrowed from the K-pop industry. Flawless hairography, high-end routines, dance breaks, and coordinated outfits that somehow are meant to be cohesive while also highlighting every memberâs individuality. The entire market just feels so commercialized, with a new group popping up every other month, with a similar sound sonically echoing all across. However, it wasnât always like this. As someone who has avidly followed how girl-groups have continued to inspire pop music, I will be the first to tell you about the insane dip in the market around the time of 2018-2021. Fifth Harmony had freshly gone on a hiatus (which was mostly code for broken up), and labels were dropping groups left, right, and center.
During that particular period, it almost felt like girl groups were not making a comeback anytime soon, at least in the US/UK market. An entire generation of listeners was in a severe pop drought. A lot of people, naturally, latched on to the K-pop groups still thriving like BLACKPINK, TWICE, or the then (G)I-DLE. My hunch is that this particular wave of K-pop girl groups, which had taken the world by storm, made bigger conglomerates and labels in the West think about the missing opportunities in the landscape.
So it beganâ come 2022, and we were already starting to see a rise in newer groups like FLO, Boys World, Say Now (formerly needanamebro) popping up, and opening for major shows. The punchy colors, unique aesthetics, and the quintessentially nostalgic sound were back. You best believe this wasnât going to stop just then. And it surely didnât.Â
Who we now know as KATSEYE started out as six girls from different parts of the world put together through rigorous rounds of Training & Development and a survival show! There may have been naysayers when their first single from Beautiful Chaos, ‘Gnarly,’ dropped. But soon enough, the shock value and the catchiness of the hook snowballed into getting them some of the most prestigious opportunities, such as a Monster High collaboration, their first VMA, Grammy nominations at such a young age, and of course, the recently iconic GAP Ad to Kelisâ Milkshake.Â
Since KATSEYE has come onto the scene, a lot of labels and other groups have tried curating and recreating a similar aesthetic, but have risked falling into the same type of shoehorned stylistic choices and sounds. It does make me wonder sometimes, how long it will take till this wave also reaches its steadiness and ebbs away, when the audiences break away from this trance of the 2016 nostalgia. On platforms such as WeVerse and X (formerly Twitter), we see how some stans just establish such concerning parasocial relationships with these celebrities to the point that racism, misogyny, and bodyshaming become second nature in any discourse or âstan war.âÂ
Girl-groups come, girl-groups go. With members going solo to put out music or write memoirs of detailed explanations of how they were exploited when they were barely 17. What I wish to ask is- how much longer till we realize that behind the mask of diversity and the fun, carefree aesthetic of these curated groups, lies a larger polity that begs to come to the forefront? There is definitely a gendered nuance to the very identity and conceptualisation of what a group is supposed to look, sound, and perform like. So the next time there is a rise and fall of any girl-group, I hope that before the insane stretch of being up for public scrutiny, sexualization, and overwhelm creeps up on them, we, as consumers, shall be the active voice in advocating for a better, safer, and protected work culture that honors the individuals involved.Â