S.H.E was recently in town for their SHERO concert, when i realised from my fellow MediaCorp interns how wildly supported this girl group can be. quite a handful of them are crazy over the trio, whom i cannot understand.
ive also other friends who really like their songs, but ive always found them pop-ish and popular, and would never call them talented. many highlight their harmonising skills, but ive heard groups with way better such abilities. moreover, S.H.E has been around for ages. if they cant harmonise for shit, they dont have a place in music.
but anyway talking about that, you cant get past anyone if you say they sounded good in their first and second albums. cmon, they were overly ordinary. and if you try to argue the three girls were handpicked from a singing contest, again, it was actually more like a 美少女 contest.
then i think i mentioned something about their genre/classification, which led to a question posed: which other Chinese girl group has survived or made it big?
we were scratching our heads and unable to solve a poser that sounded so simple. eventually this is the list ive come up with.
4 In Love
the closest entity to S.H.E in terms of market. this group was actually founded before the trio, and generally did the same things. they sang pop and were not-bad-looking teenage girls. one wonders why they failed so badly, considering S.H.E weren't much different, and the girl group industry surely could sustain four more girls. better known as the platform that shot Rainie Yang to stardom, and to a much less degree, making the ugliest Sunnie Huang a resident variety guest. 4 In Love disbanded in 2002.
閃亮三姐妹
like they like it, this group is made up of three sisters. not your usual definition of "pretty", they don't look too bad also. unfortunately, they are extremely niche. they are known better for their Hokkien dialect than Mandarin, for their street dance tunes popular in working-class Taiwan, and as their name suggests, shiny and garish outfits. they're still around, but they can never go regional. oh, and they're all hovering around the big forty mark.
黑涩会美眉
another Taiwanese group, but this time a newer, younger version. to be honest, this group is modeled more after Korea's Super Juniors and Japan's Johnny's, than to challenge S.H.E. open auditions, its own variety show, and an unusually large group. 黑涩会美眉 had nine girls originally, but continues to shuffle due to its shifting nature. the girls are characterised and marketed as multi-talented, diverse individuals, hence they do more than sing, which also kind of means they're not really good at. biggest strength? they continually have youth and beauty on their side. in numbers.
By2
an even newer group, formed just in 2008, this duo appeals through being twins. although most people didnt think the too-young, too-normal-looking girls would make it, the Singaporean pair is now on the rise after hitting 18, singing better, and looking older. no one knows what their future will hold, but my take is they're too distant from S.H.E to mount a challenge.
女子十二乐坊
this twelve-piece is formed in the same year as S.H.E; that's about as far the similarities go. they have four times the manpower S.H.E has, they're a wicked lot with their traditional musical instruments, and they're from China. Chinese artistes seldom go regional because they do not need the market and their music is often too folk-ish. 女子十二乐坊 is also known for talent over pop appeal, something S.H.E is opposite for.
Twins
i'll have to end off with a group from the last of the Chinese regions, Hong Kong. last but not least, definitely. this duo, who ironically aren't twins or sisters, went from mere singers to actresses and enjoyed success on all fronts. they're also an outlier in the tough Hong Kong industry considering their primary talent isn't very talented. but boy, do they look good. for years they have been fantasies of young men, since Hong Kong is better known for their older female stars. unfortunately, first the Edison Chen sex photos scandal, then the Ronald Cheng marriage-divorce saga, Twins almost means nothing now.
no contest. so there you go. S.H.E wins and the girl group industry sucks.
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