90s girl bands - premier league

though the pop decade would be dominated by boy bands such as nkotb, take that and the backstreet boys until girl power hit, on the r&b scene, girl bands were always big business in the 90s.



after the spice girls, many tried to emulate their cartoony characteristics to achieve crossover success, but the truly talented chose credibility over advertising deals.



the integration of hip hop beats into r&b tracks was first heard on en vogue's hold on in 1990 and the influence of the grittier hip hop scene saw some bands adopt a more casual or comedy image, notably tlc and jade, mostly via their clothing, to identify themselves with the more credible hip hop scene.


by 1995, it became more acceptable for girls to be girls and a more glamorous side emerged, eventually becoming the perfect complement to bad boy's patented late 90s bling scene. despite this, many of the girls were tied to bad record deals and failed to recoup much of the reward for their success.



these girls were on top of their game in the 90s - download here









en vogue - lies
in 1990, en vogue sounded like nothing else. slickly manufactured 80s soul had given way to new jack swing but some were finding the music over-produced. enter four girls, looking like the supremes, but singing over the kind of beats associated with bands like nwa and public enemy. in a rare faux pas, smash hits labelled en vogue one hit wonders in their round up 1990 - quote "...their second single currently 'lies' (arf) in the discount bin at woolies..." I think the only reason I remember this is that it was actually quite funny. but wrong.









tlc - ain't too proud to beg
colourful, cute and individual, tlc burst onto the scene in 1992. condoms flying. their first album 'oooh on the tlc tip' was slightly overshadowed by their loud image, but by the time 'crazysexycool' was released in late 1994, the girls were all grown up. if it were possible to wear out a cd i would now be on my 25th copy. though chilli and t-boz tried to carry on without left eye, it was visibly painful and they're now working on solo projects.










destiny's child - show me the way
hands up who preferred destiny's child back in the day? beyonce's voice is natural and the four girls harmonise perfectly. this track is from their debut, at age 15, and letoya is rumoured to be singing on the first verse. it does sound like her. maybe one day all six members will reunite, dreamgirls style....or not.









swv - i'm so into you
inspiration of many of today's current female r&b singers and the crown queens of new jill swing. swv were young, but looked older due to some hard times growing up. famously sampled wacko on 'right here' and went on to release five singles from their successful first album. band member lelee has recently alleged that they left their contract penniless in 1998, mirroring tlc's experience with laface.









jade - i want cha baby
game attempts to look sexy in lumberjack shirts five sizes too big paid off for jade, whose worldwide hit 'don't walk away' put them up there with swv for a time. for years, the intro to that song featured on many an answerphone. after a second successful album, like swv and tlc, jade suffered from mismanagement and split in 1994 with little financial return.









702 - steelo
in the mid 90s, 702 tried to fill the gap left by financially ruined girl groups before them. against the odds, and with scant vocal ability, they have survived well into the 00s, partly due to the clout of longtime compadre missy elliott. still, they are responsible for some nice tracks.










eternal - stay
when they arrived, eternal were revered in the uk as a band the american record buying public would lap up. their success, whilst sizable, remained slightly more local so it was rumoured that single white member louise was offloaded to improve their chances in the us r&b market. unlikely, but in any case it turned out in her favour and she's the only member still getting work. unless you count kelle bryan's appearance on celebrity love island. which is precisely the opposite of being in demand.








xscape - understanding
underrated girl group who favoured mid and slow tempo jams that allowed their vocals to shine. another young group, the then mid-teens sang at jermaine dupri's birthday party in 1991 and got a contract for their efforts. split in 1998 but now regrouped.









total - no one else
total were a bad boy project, originally singing choruses on hip hop joints for artists such as biggie smalls and ll cool j. had they stuck with this strategy, they could have disguised the fact that neither kima keisha or pam can actually sing. their debut album was painful listening and i dread to think what the untouched demo sounded like. the beats of course, were bad boy's, and wasted on them.








brownstone - if you love me
this group managed to negotiate the obvious pitfalls of being signed to wacko's label and became reasonably successful with this track in 1995. after replacing a member who left due to bronchitis (read: girlfght) they failed to recover.

90s r&b ingenues - some cautionary tales

in today's r&b scene there are several artists that you feel like you've grown up with. and there is a good reason for that - you have.

the rise of teenage r&b singers in the early and mid 90s probably wouldn't unfold in quite the same way today. it wasn't entirely a new phenomenon - there have always been child stars but they usually made age appropriate music, or acted younger than their age. but representing real teenagers is a bit more difficult. we know they do the same things as adults, but it's illegal so we don't talk about it too much.


before the spice girls changed the rulebook, image and identity were just an added facet of celebrity rather than something you planned in great detail, either to complement talent or disguise a lack of it. it was possible to make music and be a bit vague about who you were and more importantly, how old you were.


the fact that these singers were the same age or even younger than they audience they were targeting, wasn't immediately apparent. their songs dealt with adult issues, they collaborated with adults and existed within adult spaces. in some cases, this did impact on their personal lives by accelerating their development. we'll never really know the truth about aaliyah and r.kelly's alleged underage marriage, unless it surfaces in the fallout from his court case.

ten 90s jailbait anthems - download here






brandy - baby
born 1979, debut 1994 at age 14
poor old brandy. until recently, one of the most successful of the 90s ingenues, having completed 4 successful albums, a tv show, movie and a panel spot on 'america's got talent'. after the birth of her first child, her marriage was exposed as fake and she is currently awaiting trial for manslaughter after a crash that killed another driver. we won't even go into her errant brother ray j, those tapes and the whitney thing...









tevin campbell - can we talk
born 1976, debut 1990 at age 13
tevin's first taste was as a guest performer on prince's 1990 album 'graffiti bridge'. a year later, his first album hit and he became an overnight star. he famously dated tatyana ali, both on and off-screen, after a cameo role playing himself in the fresh prince of bel air. there has been considerable speculation about his sexuality and he has been arrested for a george michael-style incident with an undercover cop.

aaliyah - the thing i like

born 1979, debut 1994 age 15
since her tragic death in 2001, aaliyah's popularity has spiralled. before, she was a popular yet often overlooked singer on the verge of superstardom as an actress. she blossomed as she broke away from r.kelly and hooked up with visionaries missy elliott and timbaland. aaliyah's smooth, caramel-like voice sounds even more soothing against many of the melismatic, shrill and shouty copycat acts she's inspired since.

usher - think of you

born 1978, debut 1993 age 14

in 1991, 13 year old usher's appearance on star search led to a contract with laface. precocious beyond his years thanks to an ill-advised internship at bad boy, usher was well known on the circuit by 1992 and in 1993 his first track appeared on the soundtrack to poetic justice. in 1994 he released his eponymous debut, but didn't hit paydirt until worldwide smash 'you make me wanna' in 1998.

monica - angel
born 1980, debut 1995 at age 14

in 1991, 11 year old monica started work on what would become her 1995 debut 'miss thang'. an astonishingly mature effort given that fact, it remains her best album to date and stood confidently alongside offerings from more mature artists. like many of her peers, monica has suffered significant personal trauma with the suicide of her boyfriend, and has been criticised recently for dressing her three year old son as a thug. these critics best not visit croydon. despite being only 26 now, she looks much older thanks to a dodgy bleach job.

smooth - mind blowin'

born "1979", debut 1990 age 11...
ok, something here doesn't quite add up. if her alleged birth year is correct, mc smooth debuted at age 11 in 1990. we'll suspend disbelief...in 1993 she recorded a sophomore effort, now as smooth, 'you been played', but it was her third album at age 16 in 1995, that broke her. now recording under an alias, 'needa s'. her real name is juanita stokes if anyone can be bothered to uncover the truth...

mona lisa - can't be wasting my time
born 1979, debut 1995 age 16
had no idea she was so young at the time. if she was - she named her debut album '11-20-79', her birthdate, so more likely than the aforementioned ms stokes. if that picture's anything to go by, mona tried a bit too hard to labour the point about her youth by wearing bunches. at the age of 16. her second album was shelved but a comeback is imminent and several tracks have leaked.








destiny's child - no no no
born 1981/2 - debut 1997 ages 15
so, despite ongoing allegations that beyonce was born as early as 1974, and not 1981 as drilled home during recent bday promotion, it doesn't seem as odd looking at the rest of this list. after several members and incarnations, which would later prove to be just the tip of the iceberg, their arrival in 1997 heralded the new era of jittery tracks overlaid with rhythmic rather than melodic vocals.





immature - feel the funk
born 1981, debut 1992 age 11
after a childish debut, immature, including future actor and r&b star marques houston, had to wait for their third album and er, puberty, before gaining success in 1995. several years later they realised that their name was perhaps not doing them any favours and they became IMx.







kris kross - i missed the bus
born 1978/79, debut 1992 ages 13/14
research has failed to uncover an earlier example of clothes being worn backwards. therefore, millions of fashion crimes can be traced back to a pair of early teens, both called chris, in 1992. just to clarify, an entire culture took style cues from a 13 and 14 year old. never in 2007. i have resisted the temptation to put 'jump' on here. it's usually played in clubs right after 'jump around' if you seriously can't remember it...

the woman behind the 'superwoman'

sometimes, you discover artists that no one else seems to know about. one day, in my german class at school, we had to name our favourite artist. it was 1990 so the most popular answers, and most acceptable if you wanted to escape the scorn of your peers, were 'soul ii soul' or 'de la soul'. and so it went, all around the room. it must have been riveting for the teacher, although he used to play a banjo, so its likely every response was alien to him.

several brave souls ventured 'new kids on the block' (shouldn't admit to that one) and 'madonna' (so passe by 1990) and a couple of geeks, keen to display 'underground' music knowledge, smugly named some obscure 60s bands and impressed no one. then someone said 'karyn white' and the room fell silent. i didn't have the inclination to let the rest of the class know that i also knew and liked karyn white, i just listened to the person's explanation with interest. 'you know, she did that song 'superwoman' but the rest of her stuff is nothing like that. oh, i don't know...she's kind of like janet jackson'. fair enough.

karyn, was a young vocalist in the powerhouse tradition who worked with la and babyface and also jam and lewis over the course of her career, and married terry lewis in 1992. she was a session singer discovered by jazz fusion artist jeff lorber in 1986. he asked her to sing lead on two tracks for his new project 'private passion' that was to feature soul vocalists singing over his jazz-funk compositions. 'facts of love' and 'true confessions' proved the perfect showcase for karyn's talent and paved the way for a solo deal.

my classmate was right. karyn's eponymous debut in 1988 in a way, did fill the gap between janet's 'control' and 'rhythm nation 1814' albums. most people remember it for enduring ballad, 'superwoman', a staple of easy listening radio playlists to this day. but the truth is that the album was far less pop and more classic r&b than that song would suggest, or that janet would have attempted herself.

the singles released from 'karyn white' were far more ubiquitous in the US, who were switched on to r&b far earlier than the UK where it remained a specialist genre, or subgenre of dance, until the late 90s. nevertheless, they did ok over here and I can remember her second album and lead single 'romantic' being greeted enthusiastically on tv-am. both a blessing and a curse.

'ritual of love' was handily split into a 'dance me' side and 'romance me' side, if you bought the cassette. which a lot of people still did in those days. this concept has been nicked by many other artists, especially for their greatest hits albums. with her third album 'make him do right', karyn continued to have moderate success but never really broke through.

over the years, sharing flats and cd collections, precious few people have ever heard of karyn white. but they all remember 'superwoman'. aaargh! don't get me wrong, i love the song but it was an obvious hit and a calculated move, not what she should be remembered for.

ten karyn white songs that I prefer to 'superwoman' - download here

facts of love
music by jeff lorber, vocals by karyn white. this track introduced the world to her talents, at the age of 20.

the way you love me
listen about halfway through - did karyn pioneer the speed-singing style destiny's child and wyclef claimed to invent on 'no no no'? beyonce....you never learn do you?

secret rendezvous
should have been much bigger than it was, this was late 80s syncopated r&b at its best. one for the bedroom and the dancefloor.

don't mess with me
out-sassing control-era janet was always going to be tricky, but karyn has the vocals and attitude to pull it off.

family man
karyn finds out her man has a wife and kids at home. she won't be the last...and this is the way to deal with it.

not thru being with you
in between her first two albums, karyn hooked up with michael jeffries for this uptempo club smash.

romantic
remix of one of her biggest hits, the first single from second album 'ritual of love'. less percussion, more bass.

the way i feel about you
remix of the other big hit from 'ritual of love'. should have been the start of bigger things.

how i want you
one of many great slow jams from 'ritual of love'. worthy of a place on any 90s 'do me baby' playlist.

one heart

sweet ballad that stays just the right side of saccharine. probably written with terry lewis in mind...shame it didn't work out.

boys don't cry - new edition go solo

if there was ever a gender stereotype that was true, its that girls can't get along. so when female band mates part ways, the media holds their breath for the name calling, backbiting and never has to wait for too long. a lot of women would rather eat nothing but salad for the rest of their lives than see a former female friend do their thing.

witness beyonce and kelly's unceremonious dumping of destiny's child cohorts letoya, latavia and farrah at the first sign they wouldn't toe the line. and now, not content with daddy hampering kelly and michelle's solo ambitions since the dc3 finale, beyonce is now rumoured to be sabotaging newly famous solo star letoya's efforts. recently she allegedly demanded letoya be removed from a soundtrack project before she would participate and made herself look like a petulant child when she flew into london for last year's mobo awards only to boycott it when the organisers refused to strike letoya from the lineup.

boy bands just never seem to have all these problems. seemingly, they're happy just to be there having a laugh with their friends. and if one leaves, they wish them well and even make guest appearances on their new solo material. which may well be the clue to why every member of new edition found solo fame - karma.

ten reasons i can't decide if i prefer new edition together, or apart - download here

bobby brown - every little step, don't be cruel, roni, rock witcha
bobby wasn't always the village idiot. before reality tv uncovered the madness that led him to yell at plastic fruit, bobby was the most successful of all the former new edition boys. although the erratic behaviour that led to his eviction from the group would resurface in later years, he pretty much held it together from 1988 to 1994. in 1988, at the age of 19 he hit pay dirt with 'my perogative' and never looked back.

bell biv devoe - poison, do me, in the crib
hot on the heels of new edition's 'heart break' tour, ronnie devoe, michael bivins and ricky bell formed bell biv devoe and has instant success with new jack swing classics 'poison' and 'do me'. in 2002 they returned with a new album, and 'in my crib'. all are still active as part of new edition and ronnie devoe is married to shamari fears of blaque, who is probably not old enough to remember the boys in their early days...

johnny gill - rub you the right way, there you go
unlike the others, johnny had been successful prior to joining the group, with three albums already under his belt. after, he had one of the biggest hits of the new jack era, 'rub you the right way' and went on to record five more albums and joined forces with gerald levert and keith sweat to form lsg in the late 90s. 'there you go' was one of the highlights of the popular 1992 soundtrack to the eddie murphy film 'boomerang'.

ralph tresvant - sensitivity
wacko soundalike ralph was slightly more cautious about striking out on his own. 'sensitivity' is his biggest hit although his collab with bobby brown on 'stone cold gentleman' comes close. like johnny, he is still part of new edition but has had consistent solo success and is still recording today.

miss jackson if you're nasty

ok, let's get this out of the way first. janet jackson is not the best singer in the industry. but the standard appears to have now been set by artists who employ rampant melisma and the technically brilliant yet incredibly unappealing christina aguilera.

janet's breakthrough was in 1986 with the 'control' album produced by jimmy jam and terry lewis, previously members of prince's group, flyte time. no vocal gymnastics necessary, this album was anchored by janet's confident delivery and the precedent set by electro funk/soul such as shannon's 'let the music play' and cherrelle's 'i didn't mean to turn you on'.

the album was short - 8 tracks - but it was a crash course in being a young woman in 1986 and beyond. female assertion at a time when destiny's child were trying to colour inside the lines at elementary school (subject to age verification, cough). janet instructed young girls to take control, cut family ties, kick your boyfriend into touch and make him wait for it.

these were ideas that resonated with my pre-teen group, and even more so with the teenage community, who appreciated further reinforcement of the guidance from girls' magazines like just seventeen and mizz on dealing with sex. in 1986, the media didn't dare portray 12 year old girls getting pregnant and carrying on happily with their lives in the way coronation street and eastenders would have us believe is possible in recent years. they put out messages about safe sex and waiting until you were older, because society had a spiralling aids epidemic to combat before it even dealt with teenage mums. janet, in her own way, made it cool to say no.

hmm. twenty years ago, no one went online to find that 21 year old janet was in the process of divorcing first husband james debarge, whom she had married at 18. i've listened to the 'control' album differently since the 2005 claims that they in fact had a baby during their short marriage. back then, you got your info from magazines like smash hits and the one-off interview with parky or terry wogan, and so precious few people even realised she had been married.

of course, its entirely possible that some of the bitterness and icy resolve that made 'control' such a great album was a reflection of the fact that janet's first two albums, released in 1982 and 1984, flopped. actually they contained some great tracks but failed to inspire, the first merely reflecting the waning disco sound and the second lyrically damper but equally funky as 'control', let down by an ill-advised duet with cliff richard. yes, that's cliff richard.

by the time janet followed up her successs with 'rhythm nation 1814' in 1989, social consciousness was the order of the day and this album's title track remains the only credible plea for unity to date. almost making up for several self-indulgent cheesefests unleashed by her brother.

in the 90s she trod the safer, summery r&b route, to great effect, then lost her way slightly in the 00s by failing to live up to the standards she set for herself. however, in today's gossip and scandal obsessed culture, surfacing rumours of an 80s baby with then teenage husband james debarge and that wardrobe malfunction have ensured her profile remains high regardless.

and you know you want to look that good when you hit 40. so here is some lesser known janet, enjoy!

top 10 lesser known janet tracks - download here

making love in the rain
the first collaboration with jazz artist herb alpert released in 1987 , this is a sultry chillout track in a similar vein to 'funny how time flies'.

diamonds
the second, and better known herb alpert track, following a similar path to the upbeat 'control' numbers.

he doesn't know i'm alive
quintessentially 80s and often overlooked 'control' track. ok yes, i used to sing this into a hairbrush.

one more chance
1993 b side to 'if' from the 'janet' era. probably left off due to the proliferation of slow jams making the album.

pretty boy
cool electro funk from the 1984 'dream street' album. production-wise, a preview to things to come.

don't mess up this good thing
janet was too young, and jumped on too late to be a disco pioneer. but this standout track from her self titled debut in 1982 was a taste of what might have been.

where are you now
mid-tempo remix of a melancholy 'janet' track, made sunnier for the 'janet:remixed' album by nellee hooper.

70s love groove
'janet:remixed' track originally on the 'you want this' single. similar to 'any time, any place'.

you need me
included on the re-released cassette version of 'rhythm nation 1814'. a 'miss you much' clone (never a bad thing).

accept me
mid-tempo grower released as a b side to 'every time' from 'the velvet rope'.