Between 1960 and 1964, a new trend developed within the nascent US popular music industry: groups of girls, some as young as thirteen, singing together in a vocal harmonic style that had its roots in the black gospel churches and in the popular doo-wop style of the ghetto street corner. The girl groups’ songs were composed by a new wave of young, mostly Jewish songwriters who were influenced by rock ’n’ roll, and who brought a fresh, teenage sensibility to the stale pop formulae of the light entertainment industry The first girl group to hit the national charts was the Chantels in 1958 with “Maybe.” Arlene Smith, the lead singer, was a convent schoolgirl who had formed the group with her classmates. Smith herself had composed the song, but it was credited to her producer; the record sold well but the girls themselves made virtually no money. This pattern, in which the artists were exploited both artistically and financially was to be repeated continually throughout the girl-group era.

In 1960 the Shirelles hit number one with the single “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”. Lead singer Shirley Alston had a plaintive, sweet, almost off-key vocal style that charmed a generation, and the song, written by teenage sweethearts Carole King and Gerry Goffin, seemed to sum up the innocence and sincerity of a young woman on the brink of her first sexual experience. The single kicked off a craze for girl groups, as new groups like the Crystals, the Ronettes and the Shangri Las rushed to repeat the Shirelles’ success.

In the early 1960s, the pop songwriting industry (known as Tin Pan Alley) was centered around New York’s Brill Building, where a number of new labels, producers, songwriters and artists set up stall to service the teenage market. It was a creative time for pop music: a song could be composed, hawked around the building, recorded, pressed and distributed in a matter of days. Three songwriting teams emerged as the major players in the girl-group explosion: King and Goffin, Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, and Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry (who also wrote with producer Phil Spector). Between them, these songwriters wrote nearly all the classic songs of the period, from “Chapel of Love” to “Leader of the Pack,” from “Da Doo Ron Ron” to “Be My Baby.” Meanwhile, in Detroit, Barry Gordy’s newly established Motown label was grooming a girl group for stardom: the Supremes. However, the Supremes were slow to get a hit, while other girl groups like the Marvelettes, who scored the label’s first number one with “Please Mr Postman,” and Martha and the Vandellas found popularity. Finally, in 1964, the Supremes began their staggering run of hits, which established them as Motown’s most successful act. Remarkably the group’s success coincided with that of the male British beat groups, such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, who were widely viewed as having destroyed the US pop industry. Even more remarkably after the break up of the group Diana Ross managed to forge a brilliant solo career for herself, emerging as the first black female superstar in show business.

The girl-group phenomenon was largely ignored in the late 1960s and 1970s by rock critics who saw the music as “bubblegum” schlock, yet girl groups such as the Three Degrees, Sister Sledge, the Emotions and Labelle continued to attract a mostly female public. In the 1980s, groups like Salt ‘n Pepa, En Vogue, SWV and TLC fused elements of hip hop with the “girl-talk” aesthetic of girl groups to create a new, more sexually explicit music directed at young women. More recently the Spice Girls, a UK band with the message of “girl power,” appealed to an ever younger generation of female pop fans.