Written for Kurrent Music
Published July 20th 2017
Bananarama blog
Sometimes, you’ll hear something and feel like you really stepped back in time. Before we had girl groups like Little Mix, Atomic Kitten, and The Spice Girls, there were other all girl pop groups that paved the way for them. I think UK girl group Bananarama was one of those predecessors. For me, growing up in the 80s, they defined a new and modern standard for the all girl groups to come. Before them, you had The Supremes, but to me they really felt like something from a different era and groups like that seemed extinct. Bananarama breathed new life into this concept by being fashionable (for those days), fun and easy to listen to.
At their start, they worked with Fun Boy Three and had two hits with them, “It Ain’t What You Do It’s The Way That You Do It” and “Really Saying Something”. The girls had a bit of a punk look and released a very successful debut album.
Pretty quickly after, they started working with Stock, Aitken & Waterman and helped define a sound that would dominate the 80s, not just with Bananarama, but with every SAW produced artist that followed.