Girls Aloud and Mis-Teeq on the ‘chaos’ of being in a girl group

“For my money, the best pop groups are girl groups,” says OMD frontman and Atomic Kitten mastermind Andy McCluskey.

“Boy bands absolutely suck. They only sell records because their posters of girls in love are on the bedroom wall.”

Maybe it’s not a very sensitive observation, but McCluskey had a point when he spoke to BBC News in 2010.

With a few notable exceptions (Blackstreet, Five, One Direction), boy bands move forward with good looks and syrupy ballads promising “Girl, I know you’re the one, girl.”

From The Ronettes in the 1960s to TLC in the ’90s to Katseye in 2025, their female counterparts are more experimental, have more conceptual versatility and, frankly, better songs.

Look at the anarchic energy of The Spice Girls’ Wannabe or the seven-part pop Frankenstein that is Girls Aloud’s Biology and ask yourself: “Could Westlife have pulled it off?” (Hint: I have no chance).

But for a long time, girl groups were underdogs, dismissed as bland and superficial. It took 41 years for an all-female act called Little Mix to win best group at the Brit Awards.

BBC documentary Girlbands Forever aims to set the record straight by celebrating all this melodic brilliance while also revealing the darker side of the industry.

In the first two episodesPosted last week, Kelle Bryan of ’90s band Eternal recalls a grueling training camp where the band’s diet was tightly controlled; A tearful Melanie Blatt of All Saints describes being told to have an abortion in case her pregnancy endangered the band (she refused).

this saturday last episode It focuses on the ever-changing roster of Sugababes; It shows how insensitive the industry can be.

“It didn’t really bother me that Sugababes had a revolving door, because sometimes the brand can be bigger than the individual, and Sugababes was a brand,” says Darcus Beese, former president of the band’s label, Island.

Looking back at the band’s 2009 lineup, which featured none of the original members, he makes a harsh observation: “I don’t even think they’re good. [enough] being a tribute band.”

The same story is repeated throughout the documentary, of young singers with high hopes who are dragged into an unforgiving industry.

“People only see the glamorous side but we’ve worked incredibly hard,” Atomic Kitten’s Kerry Katona told BBC News.

“At one stage all three of us were on drip therapy. We had no control and no say.”

Girls Aloud told me a similar story of being left adrift without an anchor in an unpublished interview from 2023.

The pair, who were brought together on ITV’s reality show Pop Stars: The Rivals, were left to fend for themselves without an official day-to-day manager for more than a year.

“It was chaos,” Nadine Coyle said. “We were children and no one was looking after us.

“The marketing team asked us to do one thing, the on-air rep asked us to do something else, the TV team asked us to go on breakfast TV. And there was no one looking at the big picture and thinking, ‘These girls are working 22 hours a day, seven days a week.’

Cheryl said the band were so clueless they would call the head of their record label and tell them their washing machine was broken.

“But ultimately we knew how every part of the business worked,” Kimberley Walsh said.

“It gave us a real strength of character,” Nicola Roberts said. “We weren’t afraid to say, ‘No, we don’t want to do this,’ because we didn’t have a tool to hide behind.”

Other groups were less fortunate. Siobhan Donaghy was just 16 when the Sugababes’ first single – the casually gorgeous Overload – hit the top 10. At that time, he had no idea how to express himself.

“We were too young to know we could make changes,” he told me last year. “We didn’t question anything, we just accepted it.

“Now, if something isn’t working, we understand that’s our job and we keep everyone on the same page.”

Su-Elise Nash, who was part of R&B crossover group Mis-Teeq between 1999 and 2005, says the group’s independence (they were self-managed and co-wrote all their songs) protected them from the worst of the industry.

“We have never been afraid to speak our mind, and I think that feisty attitude has led us in the right direction,” she laughs. “People knew they couldn’t take the microphone.”

Inspired by US vocal harmony groups such as En Vogue and SWV, Mis-Teeq cleverly incorporated garage and hip hop into their sound, and Alesha Dixon’s rat-tat MCing set them apart from other pop rivals.

But despite achieving transatlantic success with songs such as Why and Scandalous, the trio faced a constant struggle with racism.

A record executive told Dixon: “Black girls won’t sell records in the UK” and the band found it more difficult to gain press coverage than their white counterparts.

“It wasn’t said openly and clearly that they thought three black girls couldn’t sell a magazine, but that was the attitude of the people in power,” says Nash, speaking from her home in Australia.

“Instead of getting beat up about it, we thought, ‘Let’s work harder to earn their respect, and eventually they’ll come back and beg us to be on the front cover.'”

Unlike Mis-Teeq, bands like Girls Aloud and Atomic Kitten became reluctant cover stars at a time when tabloids didn’t think twice about splashing images of drunken and distraught pop stars across their front pages.

“There were about 40 paparazzi in front of my house every day,” Katona says, and they weren’t looking for flattering portraits.

“When I gave birth to my first baby, Molly, [my photo with] “A circle of shame formed around my stretch marks,” she recalls.

“It messes with your head. It drove me to suicide. I didn’t know how else to deal with it, so I turned to drugs.

“If it weren’t for my children, I guarantee it, I wouldn’t be sitting here today.”

Harassment and a series of revelations about his private life eventually led him to leave the group.

“I realized I didn’t want fame or riches. I wanted to be a mother and a wife. Being a foster child was all I really wanted.”

The dream ended early for Su-Elise Nash, too. Mis-Teeq were in the middle of recording their third album when their record label Telstar went bankrupt.

“It was a difficult situation to be in,” he says. “They went into administration owing us a large sum of money.”

In the middle of a grueling six-month tour, the band decided to call it a day.

“That same week, my grandmother was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and was given months to live,” says Nash. “So I was able to spend the last six months with him without having to go back to the States and do everything in my diary.

“I have no regrets because then I could never go back.”

The industry has matured since the girl group boom of the early 2000s. Nowadays there is wider awareness of mental health and more efforts are being made to alleviate the pressures young stars face.

When Little Mix launched a TV talent competition in September 2020, Insisted BBC provided contestants with aftercare.

“We didn’t actually have that on the show we came from,” said Leigh-Anne Pinnock, referring to the group’s experiences on The X Factor.

“It’s all just go, go, go,” Jesy Nelson said. “Personally, I don’t think anyone cares about that.”

However, girl groups still continue their shocking schedules. K-pop idols Le Sserafim recently told me that they rehearse for six hours every day before juggling other commitments like recording sessions, TV shows, and creating social media content.

Therefore, it is no surprise that there is a bond between people who survived this process.

“I woke up with the beautiful messages I received after the first episode of the documentary was broadcast. [Atomic Kitten’s] Sugababes Natasha Hamilton and Keisha,” says Su-Elise Nash.

“There’s a lot of good feeling between the girls. This isn’t some sneaky, bitchy rivalry.”

“Since we shot the documentary, it really resonated with me how much work we put in, how many attitudes we changed, how many barriers we broke down.

“When I look back, I’m proud. I’m really proud.”