“IF YOU WANNA BE MY LOVER, YOU GOTTA GET WITH MY FRIENDS”: THE POWER OF COMMUNITY HELD BY WOMEN IN POP
From now until September, The British Music Experience is home to ‘Girl Power! Spice Girls at 30’. To celebrate the temporary exhibition charting the history of the most important girl band in British history, Ella Fradgley explores the wider significance of women in pop music.
The validity of pop music is always in question. Despite the wide reaching success of the genre, when it comes to defining ‘real music’, pop is often the first to be singled out. Perhaps this dismissal is a response to pop music’s target demographic, the teenage girl.
From Beatlemania fangirls that catapulted the Beatles into genre-defining stardom, to the centuries of teenage girls from 1417 to the present day responsible for 90% of linguistic change, popular culture has been forged and progressed by young women. Despite this, the association with teenage girls is perpetually disregarded by the beloved media.
This was the case for the Spice Girls, who skyrocketed into success in the mid-1990s with anthems of girl power, glittery outfits and an adoring fan base of primarily young women. Despite mastering their genre and finding huge commercial success, critical reviews accused a lack of integrity, substance and talent
Roger Ebert famously claimed, “The Beatles were talented, while, let’s face it, the Spice Girls could be duplicated by any 5 women under the age of 30 standing in line at Dunkin Donuts”. This dismissive comparison between gendered artists remains today, evidenced by Jo Koy’s set at the 2024 Golden Globes where Oppenheimer, a film “based on a 721-page Pulitzer Prize-winning book” was compared to Barbie, a film about “a plastic doll with big boobies”, proving that breaking box office records is not enough to be worthy of acclaim if your target audience is young women.
Roger Ebert’s words fall particularly flat, given the Spice Girls’ emphasis on individuality. “When we first started… we were pretty bland. We felt like we had to fit into a mould. And then we realised that we were quite different personalities, different to each other and to all the female groups in the past. We also realised there was a lot of strength in that.” stated Mel C. By allowing each other to shine, the Spice Girls represented friendship between women in a way unseen before in popular music. The community of friendship was embedded throughout their styling, lyrics and five-way split melodies across their discography. Each Spice Girl represented a different experience of girlhood, embracing and emboldening their unique personalities rather than conforming to one image of pop stardom.
An artist today who continues this legacy of reimagining personality through persona is Liverpool-based Lazygirl. Utilising the pseudonym to reclaim negative-self talk, Lazygirl embraces the joyful arena of pop music as a safe place to navigate lived experience. When you attend a Lazygirl gig you enter a community where you can dance, sing and laugh, as well as process difficult topics including politics, mental health and violence against women. Lazygirl’s music is the kind that can be life saving, and proof that pop music can be fun, glittery and hold serious conversations with integrity.
Liverpool-based musician Giorgia Bortoli uses pop music as an entryway to self-love and body positivity. Giorgia’s lyrics double as affirmations, her catchy choruses intended to keep kind words floating around in your head for hours after listening. Accompanying dance routines, co-created with a community of local dancers of all abilities, invite fans to reconnect with their bodies.
Giorgia believes pop music is not given the recognition it deserves in grassroots scenes. Many artists working within the genre are not taken seriously, so are limited in their opportunities. This is something she is actively working to change with the founding of events organisation POP in the Pool, creating much needed spaces to showcase musicians within the pop genre. In fact, across Liverpool and the wider North-West, there is an abundance of up-and-coming musicians creating pop music that is innovative, breaks genre boundaries and reimagines what it means to be a pop musician today.
Many teenage girls lose the joyful innocence of youth to misogyny, with 83% of 17-18 year olds and 59% of 13 to 16 year olds having experienced sexual assault. This is even more significant for girls of colour and those who identify as LGBTQIA*, facing greater threats to their safety and prejudiced perceptions of being “less innocent”. This is why spaces that celebrate joy, emphasise friendship first and romance later, create safe communal environments to dance and reconnect with your body, are not only valid, but vital. From the Spice Girls of the 1990s to the Lazygirl of today, women in pop hold the power of community.
For more on ‘Girl Power! Spice Girls at 30’, head here. Discover Liverpool’s up-and-coming pop musicians here.
Written by Ella Fradgley [Director of Where are the Girlbands]
