Why I Like Girlbands

Lately, calls home have taken on a somber tone. My parents and I take turns discussing what a mess the world has become. Then they tell me that no matter how terrible the world continues to get, it’s important to keep the faith and I tell them that my adulthood is premised on a lack of faith inspired mostly by the poor choices made by the people who were supposed to be in charge of the world in the first place. Despite this cynicism, I still get out of bed every morning, chuck on my headphones, and find a spring in my step. I think that ability to keep the faith is inspired by the least likeliest of muses: Girlbands.

Pre-fab, shlocky, safe, catchy. The best girlband anthems time immemorial have existed in a vacuum, couched in as little cultural context as possible. A few things are for certain: There are several women, they each assume a part of a song, and every other line they sing may rhyme with the line before or the line before that one. And while we all have our favorite parts of a song, we love these songs best when they all come together.



It’s why whenever one these bands dissolves into solo projects, the output is never as fulfilling; it takes all the members in a girlband to effectively persuade us that while the world around us is crumbling and burning down, for those three-and-a-half minutes we are listening to their tunes, everything has a rhyme or reason that is not contingent on the physics of the real world.



The best girlband anthems circle around a fixed number of topics: Falling in love, breaking up, finding your boo cheating on you, loving life, wanting to fall back in love after breaking up, and occasionally, an Emersonian nod to self-reliance.



We don’t listen to these songs because we want to unlock the mysteries of the universe or want our minds to be blown. We listen to these songs because these girlbands, as standalone entities, have managed to construct entire worlds that appear to work. Our current world? Awash in toxic assets and overgrown weeds. These girlbands have built worlds where powder-keg conceits like politics don’t exist. Nobody is more powerful than the next person; nobody is making tons of money by denying a someone else basic rights. These concerns simply don’t exist in girlband land. It’s all about uplifting messages—for the most part.



Sometimes those uplifting messages can be narrowed down into two fundamental things: Dancing and doing it. Curiously, this is what most people in the real world are also concerned with by the time the weekend rolls around.



And whether it’s a song about doing it or dancing or simply enjoying life, it’s a pastiche we all need to hear. Basically, girlband anthems are like entire weekends rolled into three-and-a-halfish minute confections.

But what’s more is that even in girlband land, when there’s heartbreak, it’s not the opus of agony as it might be in the real world.



There is a lot of yelling, a lot of yearning, even a sick middle-8, but at the end, there’s a reliable fade-out. Or conversely, there is a level of restraint, a build-up, and again, a reliable fade-out. Power ballads churned out by girlbands inspire a modicum of sadness or longing, but are palatable enough where you won’t be a crying mess on the kitchen floor; girlbands will never make you sit through Boys For Pele.



But whether power ballads or upbeat corkers, you know there’s a beginning, middle, and an end. These crafted-and-executed by committee gems are reassuring because they reinforce a sense of order in an increasingly order-less world. There isn’t much you can count on these days, but with girlbands, you can always count on the fundamentals: Multi-part harmonies, loads of make-up, kitschy couture, and of course, total escapism.

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