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

“In my opinion, the best pop groups are girl bands,” says Andy McCluskey, OMD frontman and brains behind Atomic Kitten.

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

It may not be the most sensitive observation, but McCluskey, speaking to BBC News in 2010, was right.

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

Their female counterparts, from The Ronettes in the ’60s to TLC in the ’90s to Katseye in 2025, are more experimental, with more conceptual versatility and, frankly, better songs.

Just look at the anarchic energy of the Spice Girls’ Wannabe, or the seven-part pop Frankenstein that was Girls Aloud’s Biology and ask, “Could Westlife have pulled it off?” (Hint: not a possibility).

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

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

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

This Saturday’s final episode focuses on the ever-changing lineup of the Sugababes; which illustrates how insensitive the industry could be.

“It didn’t bother me too much 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 head of the group’s record label, Island.

Looking at the group’s formation in 2009, which did not feature any of the original members, he makes a scathing observation: “I don’t even think they were any good. [enough] be a tribute band.”

Throughout the documentary the same story is repeated, that of young singers with high hopes, thrown into a relentless industry.

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

“At one point, all three of us were getting drips. We had no control and no voice.”

In an unpublished interview from 2023, Girls Aloud told me a similar story of being left adrift without an anchor.

Reunited on the ITV reality show Pop Stars: The Rivals, they were left to fend for themselves, without a formal day-to-day manager for over a year.

“It was chaos,” Nadine Coyle said. “We were children and no one took care of us.

“The marketing team wanted us to do one thing, the live agent wanted us to do another, the TV team wanted us to appear at breakfast. And there was no one who looked at the big picture and thought, ‘These girls work 22 hours a day, seven days a week.'”

Cheryl said the band had no idea they were calling the head of their record label to tell him their washing machine had broken down.

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

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

Other groups were less fortunate. Siobhan Donaghy was just 16 when the Sugababes’ first single, the bright, carefree Overload, hit the Top 10. At the time, she had no idea how to speak for herself.

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

“Now, if something doesn’t work, we understand that it’s our business and we get everyone on the same page.”

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

“We were never afraid to speak our minds and I think that feisty attitude guided us in the right direction,” he laughs. “People knew they couldn’t stand it.”

Inspired by American vocal harmony groups like En Vogue and SWV, Mis-Teeq skillfully incorporated garage and hip-hop into their sound, with Alesha Dixon’s rat-a-tat MC setting them apart from their pop rivals.

But despite achieving transatlantic success with songs like Why and Scandalous, the trio faced a constant battle against racism.

A record executive told Dixon that “black girls won’t sell records in the UK”, and the band found it harder than their white counterparts to get press coverage.

“It wasn’t said outright that they didn’t believe three black girls would sell magazines, but that was the attitude of the people in power,” says Nash, speaking from her home in Australia.

“Instead of feeling down about it, we just thought, ‘Let’s work harder to earn their respect and eventually they’ll come back begging to be on the cover.'”

Unlike Mis-Teeq, bands like Girls Aloud and Atomic Kitten became unwitting cover stars, in an era when tabloids didn’t think twice about publishing images of drunk and distraught pop stars on their covers.

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

“When I had my first baby, Molly, they printed [my photo with] a circle of shame around my stretch marks,” she recalls

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

“If I didn’t have my kids, I guarantee you, I wouldn’t be sitting here today.”

Harassment and a series of revelations about her private life eventually led her to leave the band.

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

The dream also came to a premature end for Su-Elise Nash. Mis-Teeq were recording their third album when their label, Telstar, went bankrupt.

“It was a difficult position,” he says. “They went into administration and owed us a lot of money.”

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

“That same week, my grandmother was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and given months to live,” Nash says. “So I was able to spend those last six months with her, without having to return to the United States, and do all those things that were in the diary,

“I don’t regret anything, because that’s a moment I would never have come back from.”

The industry has matured since the girl band explosion of the early 2000s. Today, there is greater awareness about mental health and more efforts to mitigate the pressures young stars face.

When Little Mix launched a TV talent show in September 2020, they insisted the BBC provide aftercare for the contestants.

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

“It was just let’s go, let’s go, let’s go,” Jesy Nelson agreed. “Personally, I don’t feel like there was anyone who cared.”

That being said, girl groups still maintain impactful schedules. K-pop idols Le Sserafim recently told me that they rehearse for six hours every day, before fulfilling their other obligations of recording sessions, TV shows and creating content for social media.

It is therefore not surprising that there is a bond between the people who have survived the process.

“After the first episode of the documentary came out, I woke up to lovely messages from [Atomic Kitten’s] Natasha Hamilton and Keisha from Sugababes,” says Su-Elise Nash.

“There are a lot of good feelings between the girls. It’s not a malicious or malicious rivalry.”

“And since I made the documentary, it really struck me how much work we put in and how many attitudes we changed, how many barriers we broke down.

“So when I look back, I feel proud. I feel really proud.”