Desperate for a snappy, condensable headline under which to lump pop’s female success stories, its complexities were glossed over. For one, its breed of feminism was uncomfortably second-wave: it’s not hard to notice that the women reaping the benefits of pop’s reinvigorated interest in the female perspective were overwhelmingly white, and often selectively mining from black culture while shirking its accompanying baggage. Upon closer consideration, the "girl power 2.0" narrative began to deflate. For one, it was a narrative spun by a predominantly white male media, and as such, often felt try-hard and devoid of nuance, a one-size-fits-all empowerment comprised of little more than a perfunctory "you go girl." ![]() And yet something felt off about the media’s flippant insistence that the ladiez had so neatly seized the zeitgeist, powered by the spirit of #girlpower and sips from their mugs of male tears. Last October, solo female artists held down the top five slots of the Billboard Hot 100 for seven weeks straight for the first time in the chart’s 56-year history, setting into high gear an overarching media narrative along the lines of "girls rule, boys drool." It was a compelling angle, with more than enough evidence to support it: Taylor Swift’s 1989 almost singlehandedly kept the record industry afloat "Bang Bang" presented itself as a millennial "Lady Marmalade" Beyoncé reset the standard for album rollouts Nicki Minaj, Ariana Grande, Meghan Trainor, and Iggy Azalea sat comfortably atop the charts. I ain't got a lotta of money, but I got a lotta style.Women reclaimed the pop charts in 2014, sparking a renewed interest in "girl power" as a concept, a marketing strategy, and as clickbait fodder. "It's our world so you know it's going down. If you haven't gotten your hands on their album yet, these 11 lyrics will give you a taste of what to expect. However, there are always going to be days on which you need some feminist inspiration to help you power walk through everything that life might throw at you, from badly behaving boyfriends to no coffee until noon, and that's what 5H provides in spades on their album. ![]() To be honest, it was hard to narrow my list down to just 11, especially since the deluxe version Reflections actually has 14 songs on it all together. So it comes as no surprise that practically every song off their debut album Reflection has feminist undertones to it. From hit songs like "Like Mariah," which samples "Always Be My Baby" by Mariah Carey, to adorable stunts like doing their own version of Beyoncé's "7/11" music video, these women are not only strong in their own right but also go out of their way to praise strong women as their role models. The American girl group was formed and introduced to the world thanks to The X Factor (the same show that brought us One Direction, though it wasn't the exact same version of the show) and, since then, 5H's star power has been on the rise. If you're not already listening to Fifth Harmony, then you really need to start listening to Fifth Harmony.
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