A girl group is a popular music act featuring several young female singers who generally harmonise together.

Girl groups emerged in the late 1950s as groups of young singers teamed up with behind-the-scenes songwriters and music producers to create hit singles, often featuring glossy production values and backing by top studio musicians. In later eras the girl group template would be applied to disco, contemporary R&B, and country-based formats as well as pop.

A distinction is made here with girl bands, in which females also play instruments, though this terminology is not universally followed.

History

During the Music Hall/Vaudeville era, all-girl singing groups were mainly novelty acts singing nonsense songs in silly voices. One of the first major exceptions was the Boswell Sisters, who became one of the most popular singing groups from 1930 to 1936, with over twenty hits. The Boswells were noted for their artistry, and often played their own instruments and performed their own arrangements. The Andrews Sisters started (1937) as a Boswell tribute band, filling the vacuum left after that group's demise. The Andrews Sisters remained hugely popular through the 1940s and 1950s as recording and performing stars, until the rise of early rock and roll made their tight-harmony, big band-derived style obsolete.