Fifth Harmony, the group’s third studio album, opens with “Down,” a song that sports practically the same perfect hook from their 2016 hit “Work From Home.” Only this time, there is absolutely nothing supporting the song other than the same pseudo-tropical keyboard line that has been plaguing Spotify Daily Mix for the past five years. “Down” is briefly salvaged in the middle eight by a strangely complementary Gucci Mane, whose bare-bones verse is underlaid with crunchy, distorted bass. Fifth Harmony acrimoniously lost a popular member, Camila Cabello, last year, and the group has a lot to prove with this album—beginning with an ersatz facsimile of your last hit single truly does not bode well.
Let’s zoom out: During a recent stint on “Celebrity Big Brother,” former Girls Aloud member Sarah Harding drew serious ire for dismissing Fifth Harmony, probably the world’s most prevalent girl group, as “slutty,” criticizing them for their sexualized stage outfits and video choreography. In response, Fifth Harmony’s Dinah Jane threw out a swift Mariah-Carey-“I-Don’t-Know-Her,” and ex-Girls Aloud member Nicola Roberts took to Instagram to call out Harding’s poor judgement. It was petty tabloid drama, and Harding’s comments were completely reprehensible, but the whole debacle illustrated an interesting point in the history of girl groups in general. Both Girls Aloud and Fifth Harmony were born from reality TV competitions (the former on “Popstars: The Rivals” in 2002 and the latter on “The X Factor” in 2012), and during that decade, what the public looks for from a pop group has changed dramatically.
At the turn of the 21st-century, access to pop stars was limited to things like fan clubs and TV appearances, with the traditional music industry serving as a stringent gatekeeper to that content. Now, there really isn’t a way to reach tweens—forever the pop star's bread and butter—without social media and massive online appeal. It’s in this realm that Fifth Harmony have flourished internationally in a way that old-school, second-tier groups like Girls Aloud never could. Between the four of them, the members of Fifth Harmony have almost 15 million Instagram followers, and even their two most famous songs, 2015’s “Worth It” and last year’s absolutely ubiquitous “Work From Home” have taken on a life of their own online, in the form of ridiculous, brilliant memes.
The downside to a social-media-driven public profile is that your music can’t help but seem secondary when it is so crucial to actively promote the music’s image and brand. And listen, image and brand have always has been a hugely important aspect of pop music, and some of the most iconic moments in pop history have come from fashion and style. But in the early ’00s, the girl group (and boy band) market was fiercely competitive—coming off the glory years of TLC, Destiny’s Child, *NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, and countless others, there was just no room for boring tunes. Today, the only other girl group to match Fifth Harmony’s popularity is Britain’s Little Mix, and even they have cornered the market on middle-school sleepover pop while FH strive for something more adult. But ultimately, on their third, self-titled album, Fifth Harmony have fallen short of just about every conceivable metric other than Billboard streaming chart positions and YouTube views.
Even with “Down,” they even fail to reach their own standards for what makes a pop hit. That song is as good as it gets on Fifth Harmony, with the exception of little moments here and there that hint at something as immediately likable as their past successes. “He Like That” uses a sleepy, slowed-down surf guitar to sweep the group into a sensual groove, but lyrics like “Pumps and a bump/Pumps and a bump/He likes the girls with the pumps and a bump,” convey playground fumbles rather than the raw sexuality they were clearly going for. “Angel,” a mid-tempo R&B jam that uses trap-like percussion to its advantage, repeatedly asks the question: “Who said I was an angel?” Well, no one did, most notably yourselves, who frankly haven’t said much of anything this entire time.
Fifth Harmony isn’t offensively bad, in fact, it sits quite comfortably with many other acts dominating the charts at the moment. But it’s too safe, too by-the-numbers, too beige to stand up to even Fifth Harmony’s previous work, which carried more lyrical and musical heft. At just 33 minutes, so much feels like filler greater ideas of the past and future. The real shame here is that, in the midst of a worldwide girl group slump (except for Asia, where J-pop and K-pop groups still reign supreme), Fifth Harmony could actually build something worth celebrating, even if it’s just for the teens who make up their core fanbase. Say what you will about One Direction, but they went from “X Factor” also-rans to some of the most successful pop acts around, at a time when the mere concept of a boy band was laughable. From the 1960s onwards, girl groups have tackled themes of love, heartache, betrayal, and independence just as potently as the most obscure and ardent singer-songwriter or rock god, and it’s a shame that Fifth Harmony represents such a lackluster marker in that history.
