Beyond the hustle and bustle of endless status updates and tweets, beyond the din of every individual artist's new single, and even beyond the aggressive grind of the solo singer trying to "get on," there is a glorious, glorious sound. Do you hear it?
It's harmony.
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That's right. Harmony (No Bone Thugs). And the only real way to achieve harmony is to -- wait for it -- work with other people. What a novel concept, right? After listening to SWV's "Right Here" this morning on my way to work, I couldn't help but be nostalgic for the days when women banded together to rule the airwaves and the music charts.
Before there was a thing called a Nicki Minaj, Salt-N-Pepa (and Spindarella) represented for the sistas on the rap front. And before Tiny had a reality show, she and her Xscape group members were encouraging us to kick off our shoes and relax our feet. It's also easy to forget that Beyoncé didn't start off as a king, but rather as the princess of Destiny's Child. Despite the foibles and fallouts that come with being in a singing group, history has proven that arrangements of female vocalists usually have amazing musical outcomes.
Why not then assemble an Aphrodite All-Star Team of lady warblers? But instead of recruiting established artists, who are marinated, nay, drenched in their ways, why not use some fresh-voiced talent? Before putting together this supergroup, though, some general rules should be considered when choosing chanteuses:
1) Two or more of the group members shall be able to sing
You want the group to be able to perform live without embarrassing themselves. This is also helpful in the event that someone in the group has less than savory vocals, in which case they could play it off by tacking themselves onto easy notes and/or dancing.
2) All group members shall take some dancing lessons
This is mainly because you don't want your group to struggle with movement the way Aunt Mary J. does. And if the non-singer can dance, she will distract the audience from the fact that she can't sing.
3) The group shoud have at least one quirky member
You want the group to appeal to a wide variety of people. For some reason I always identified with the awkward group member, mainly because their guilelessness made them real people instead of glossy divas. TLC had Lisa "Left-Eye" Lopez, although Chilli and her baby hair technically count as "eclectic."
4) There can be no more than five members
It's hard enough to keep couples together, much less groups of three, four, or even five women. The only groups that I can remember that had more than four singers were The Spice Girls and the Pussycat Dolls, and, let's be real, they weren't that good.
Fortunately for us, I think R&B girl groups may be on the verge of a comeback. KING, the songbirds whose harmonic arrangements have been lauded by everyone from Erykah Badu to Prince (to SoulBounce), sound so sweet because they know how to blend their differences to create something beautiful. But they are just one group making a wave in a vast ocean of music. Where is the next En Vogue, Brownstone, or Zhane to join them?
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