Iva’s personal site - Squirrelism.net

On the night between 12th and 13th October, I was talking to my German friend Kerstin and somehow we came up with the subject of trends…girlbands and boybands. She told me that a friend of hers has to promote a girl band called Soccx and I said that I have not seen them yet, despite the fact that my prehistoric analog satellite system is mostly showing German TV channels. Either way, both Kerstin and I pulled an all-nighter; then, when my mom woke up, I logged off and went to watch TV, as dad went fishing and when he’s here, nobody can watch TV since he’s always in front of it.

Guess what was the first thing I saw? You guessed it right, Soccx, and their music video for From Dusk To Dawn. They were robbing a bank, they were examined by police, seducing police officers and bla bla blaaaaaa. The song was OK, I basically like happy pop songs, but everything else was something I’ve seen 1000 times: licking lips, making those dumb pseudo-sexy faces, pulling wonderbra straps from under small tops, exposed stomach, low-cut skinny jeansand miniskirts. Then I changed the channel to see if Spongebob was on yet and when I switched back to Viva Plus, there was Diddy talking to the band. I was confused because I had no idea what he’d be doing with a German pop band…

…and it really took me until the end of the video to realise that the Soccx video ended and that this was another band, Danity Kane and that they were, obviously, from USA. I swear that I could not spot the difference on the first watch/listen! They were indentical to Soccx in terms of haircuts, clothing, just more RnB and less pop. Then I Googled a little and found the whole story on Making The Band, the series which I don’t think German MTV and MTV Adria have stopped showing after the obvious fact that nobody really like O-Town, hehe.

Either way, girl bands became a bit too cheap nowadays. With Spice Girls, it was OK at the beginning, they did have some “headlights” showing in the Wannabe video, some of those skirts and dresses were really too short to sit down in and Geri Halliwell’s stunts and Victoria Beckham’s (actually, she was Adams back then) private life were such annoying things to fill the newspapers with…however, they were amusing. You can say everyone loved them. Then some idiot launched All Saints and eeeh…yuck. They covered a song they probably didn’t even understand, one of them got pregnant almost immediatelly and had to hide her huge stomach in the Bootie Call video clip and, well, you get the idea, they didn’t last long. Not to forget that there were the early Atomic Kitten, B*Witched, Solid HarmoniE, Funky Diamonds…and, to my knowledge, the most of those bands were formed after auditions.

When the whole thing got boring, the auditions became public, turned into big votings and reality shows. Anyone remembers popstars? No Angels won in Germany in 2000, the USA band was Eden’s Crush. No Angels were, well, pretty good and actually talented. And all five members actually could sing, two of them, Lucy and especially Nadja have stunning voices. I don’t know much about those popstar bands from other countries, though, so I’ll have to skip that bit…

Anyway, at that very point the audience didn’t want anything cute and girly anymore. The most of the bands would get, how I’m saying, sluttified after the first video or two…a complete image change, the “we’re not little girls anymore, we’re women” story, relationships with other celebrities, eccentric and ambitious “body modifications”. A couple of photo sessions in wonderbras or with hands covering breasts or erotic dancing sequences with men in videos were now obligatory. However, I think All Saints did that first with their performance at the MTV European Music Awards 1998, so all the girl bands of past and present must be hailing them as pioneers in that.

So, today, you have girl bands which are sluttified since the very beginning, no more pretending they’re cute harmless teenage girls. If they’re too young, you simply have to wonder who’s behind them? Marketing machinery, ambitious parents or pedophyle managers and choreographers? And, what’s worse, teen magazines are landfull of those girls, their sex and beauty tips and they’re praised on front pages for being “as sexy as one should be”. What does that result with? So many girls adopt the girlband babe image even for their everyday styling, they change boyfriends like socks (or soccx, perhaps?) and think they will always have priority over others just because they’re supposedly beautiful. Not good. Really, really not good. Also, the age limit for this or that is going down constantly. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a video with a 10-year-old singing while a small bikini top with wire inside is holding her barely existing breasts up and the camera is filming her bellydancing moves. I always remember what Anastacia Newkirk said a couple of years ago, that she was nowhere near her usual clothing style and image when she was a teenager. I repeat: nowhere near that. One thing is to listen to that music, it’s enjoyable (at least until it turns to p0rn); but you don’t have to copy those girls, for god’s sake, their image is artificial, anyway.

There will be a sequel to this entry sometime soon, as I have some things to say about boybands as well, as they’re even more stuck in a cliché. Ooooh yes I do.