En Vogue
The Oakland quartet that brought four-part girl-group harmony into '90s R&B: "Hold On," "My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It)," "Free Your Mind," and three #2 pop hits. A 2010 Billboard ranking put them third among female R&B groups of the previous 25 years, behind only TLC and Destiny's Child.
En Vogue was a producers' idea before it was a group. In the late 1980s, the Oakland songwriting and production duo Denzil Foster and Thomas McElroy set out to build a modern version of the girl groups of the late '50s and early '60s, one where every member was strong enough to sing lead on any song. About 3,000 women came to their 1988 auditions. Dawn Robinson, Cindy Herron and Maxine Jones made the cut for what was planned as a trio. Then Terry Ellis auditioned, after her flight from Houston ran late, and the producers made it a quartet. They went from 4-U to Vogue to En Vogue after learning the name Vogue was taken.
Their debut, Born to Sing, came out in April 1990, and its first single, "Hold On," reached #2 on the Hot 100 and #1 on the R&B chart. That year they also signed to appear in a Diet Coke commercial directed by Spike Lee. The second album, Funky Divas (1992), went triple platinum. Its lead single, "My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It)," looped the guitar riff from James Brown's "The Payback," had an a cappella breakdown in the middle, and reached #2 again. Its Matthew Rolston video, inspired by the "Big Spender" number from Sweet Charity, won the 1992 VMA for Best Choreography. "Free Your Mind," a song about prejudice, opened with a line adapted from David Alan Grier's Calhoun Tubbs character on In Living Color: "Prejudice, wrote a song about it. Like to hear it? Here it go!" Its video won three VMAs in 1993. By then they were everywhere: on Salt-N-Pepa's "Whatta Man," singing the theme songs to Roc and Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, and making a cameo in Batman Forever.
Their biggest hit came in 1996. "Don't Let Go (Love)," from the Set It Off soundtrack, became their third single to peak at #2 and sold more than 1.8 million copies worldwide. In March 1997, as the third album was nearly finished, Robinson left after contract talks stalled, and the remaining three re-recorded some of her leads for EV3. That was the end of the classic lineup and of the peak. Billboard ranked En Vogue the 19th most successful act of the '90s, and they have sold some 20 million records.
Similar items
TLC
The best-selling American girl group since the Supremes. T-Boz, Left Eye, and Chilli fused hip-hop, R&B, and a playful safe-sex message into era-defining hits — "Waterfalls," "No Scrubs," "Creep" — in baggy streetwear that a generation copied.
Destiny's Child
One of the best-selling girl groups of all time and the defining R&B girl group of the late 1990s and early 2000s, famous for the powerhouse lineup of Beyoncé Knowles, Kelly Rowland, and Michelle Williams. With hits like 'Say My Name,' 'Bills, Bills, Bills,' 'Independent Women,' 'Survivor,' and 'Bootylicious,' they defined an era of confident, sexually liberated pop music while launching Beyoncé toward her eventual superstardom.
Let's Talk About Sex
Three women put frank, funny, sex-positive talk on pop radio at the height of the AIDS crisis, daring stations to blink and winning with a wink. Salt-N-Pepa turned consent and pleasure into a chart singalong—and later spun the same beat into an act of public health, rewriting the verse to preach AIDS prevention.
In Living Color
Keenen Ivory Wayans brought irreverent Black sketch comedy to primetime and stacked the cast with unknowns named Jim Carrey, Jamie Foxx, and David Alan Grier — while the Fly Girls' dance breaks included a young Jennifer Lopez. It won an Emmy in its first season, and its live Super Bowl halftime stunt rewrote how the NFL books the big game.