.png)
16 hours ago
8
Girlbands, then. Shimmering icons of empowerment or Pygmalion projects for middle-aged A&R men? Here’s a radical idea – they’re both. Two become one, baby. That’s the sense you get from Girlbands Forever (Sat, 9.20pm, BBC Two), the documentary executive produced by Louis Theroux charting the fortunes of 90s bands such as All Saints, Eternal, Atomic Kitten and Mis-Teeq through to 00s stars Little Mix. If that lineup speaks to your elder millennial soul the way it does mine, climb on board, carefully. I need some nostalgia, like I’ve never needed nostalgia before.
Of course we want the gossip, fallouts and scandals. Band members interviewed for the three-part series are happy to supply. Kelle Bryan from Eternal reveals they were sent to a facility in the countryside and put on controlled diets to manage their weight (though the head of EMI UK denies all knowledge). Kerry Katona tells how a journalist turned up at her mother’s house with a bag of cocaine to get her to sell a story. Melanie Blatt of All Saints says that when she discovered she was pregnant, she was told to abort.
Girlbands Forever could have been a cynical exercise: see who’s desperate enough to want to be in this, dredge up their worst moments while viewers make assessments about which of them has the nicest house. Instead, it has sensitivity and scope, as interested in charting the social mores these artists created, were crucified by, or changed in some way.
I’m not sure things have improved. Attractive celebrities once took pains to hide their relationships, to maintain an illusion of being sexually available. These days, we’ve exploded the notion of privacy, and realised relationships can be cannibalised on social media for cachet. Progress! Black artists once worked five times as hard for a 20th of the attention. Imagine. The show is refreshingly unequivocal that the addition of a slender, blond, white woman could transform a band’s fortune. While our pop culture lens has widened, it’s hardly pointing in a different direction.
It’s the old footage that breaks your heart. They are such vibrantly talented children. Look at Atomic Kitten meeting Westlife for the first time, all teenage flirtation. Check out the “steely, non-choreography” of the early, surly Sugababes. There is adorable footage of Mutya on a Michael Barrymore show, in which she appears to literally be a baby. I’m glad the doc gets into the Sugababes’ revolving door policy. One of the funniest things to happen in music this century, it’s also a living manifestation of the Ship of Theseus philosophical paradox. Let’s not get into that.
Spice Girls are the silverbacks in the ring, who came from nowhere and conquered the globe with their debut single. None feature here, yet it’s interesting to hear from established artists who floundered in the wake of the Jenny-come-latelies. Some profess to being underwhelmed by Wannabe, while their five-way demographic appeal is presented as a triumph of marketing. “Girl Power? That was EMI power,” scoffs producer Pete Waterman.
The music industry comes out of this badly (though Piers Morgan comes out of it worse than anyone). A repeating pattern we’re shown is that when band members get pregnant, the sentence handed down from male management is the same: you’ve destroyed the band. In this context, seeing Blatt perform at Party in the Park with her pronounced baby bump showing, sexy and defiant as ever, is a punk-rock, sea-change vision. Still the coolest person in the room, she had reservations about appearing here at all. “Hello, I’m Mel from the 90s” is how she introduces herself. Oh, she dope.
Another repeating pattern: talented but frustrated girls break ties with their Henry Higgins founders and succeed in their own way. No matter how these bands started, what they become is up to them. Without always feeling empowered, they were avatars of it for younger generations. They represented the joy of being in a gang of girls, often working-class, travelling the world and living a dream. The world needs that. Plus you can’t go wrong with a TV soundtrack of songs including Never Ever, Sounds of the Underground and Scandalous. You know what to do. Push the button.
