What is the best girl band in rock history?

[banned from Kos]

Sorry, I posted this in GD if you replied there. My mistake. (Moved)

[pipi_k]

1. My very first thought...

The Supremes


Although I'm sure there are others just as good, but I think they were the best.

[geardaddy]

2. Babes in Toyland

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/babes-in-toyland-p3600

[nomorenomore08]

28. +1

I don't know about "best ever" but they were fucking awesome.

[OriginalGeek]

3. I dunno about best but some I like are:

The Donnas
Wild Flag
The Go-Gos
The Bangles
I want to say the Runaways because I love Joan Jett but I don't know if I have ever even heard any Runaway songs and I can't really count JJ and the BH since the BHs were all guys...

[UnrepentantLiberal]

39. Now you can say you've heard The Runaways.

[OriginalGeek]

40. Oh my, that poor girl!

Didn't even have time to grab and clothes when she ran away!


But that works for me. They make it to my list.

[Throd]

4. L7

[RiffRandell]

17. Good one!

Cuz we pretend that we're dead...

[rppper]

43. whilst crowd surfing at an L7 concert.....

i was punched dead square in the jewels by a pretty tough looking lady....i saw the whole thing in slow motion...looked her right in the eye...saw the fist coming....all i could do was scream when the hit came....very sick feeling....

[bluedigger]

5. Runaways

Bangles, Go Gos, L7.

[mulsh]

6. Does any one else remember seeing Fanny back in the day?

http://fannyrocks.com/

Here they are on The Old Gray Whistle Stop in '71

[Doc Holliday]

8. Oh, hell-yes!

They opened for Chicago on their '72 tour...a nice bonus.

I remember one of their album covers that had all the girls in the band facing away from the camera, so that all you could see was....well, fanny. Nice ones, too!

[limpyhobbler]

14. No I never heard of them.

But that is a neat band.

Just think if you hadn't posted this I might never have heard of them.

[Mopar151]

41. My secret crush!

The Millington sisters....

Also props to Martha & teh Muffins, the Bangles, and all the ladies

[Arkansas Granny]

7. Would Heart qualify as a girl band? They had male band members, but Ann and Nancy were

the only two constants in the band.

[Doc Holliday]

13. Considering that

a Rolling Stone album review once labeled them "cock-rock without the cock", I think they qualify.

But then RS had a lot of things to say about Heart, most of it not very nice. Ann's vocals were described as "is it live or is it Memorex?" (a reference to Memorex's shattering glass commercial), and the video for "Never" was called "a follow-the-bouncing-boobs promo for a mediocre song."

Of course, back then the only women Rolling Stone had anything good to say about were Sade and Joni Mitchell. The rest were just life support systems for various mammary glands and backup musicians.

[banned from Kos]

9. I said Hole. I was in the minority in another discussion.

this confirms my minority status.

[kaitcat]

11. I was going to go with one from that era as well, 7 Year Bitch.

And I normally don't like punk that much. They were together for seven years, were recording their fourth album when they broke up.

But I liked Hole, too.

[Tikki]

10. The Pandoras...maybe not the very best but a damn good girl band...

They were a feature in the early LA Paisley Underground of the 80's.

Tikki
Rip...Paula Pierce

[WI_DEM]

12. Josie and the Pussycats!

[RiffRandell]

15. Blondie!

I know the only girl was Deb but she fucking rocks!

[limpyhobbler]

16. Sleater-Kinney and/or Wild Flag ?

[HopeHoops]

18. Bond

[RZM]

19. Shonen Knife

[ceile]

20. Well seeing as Kim Deal is a rock goddess, I'll go with the Breeders.

But L7 is a very close second.

[MrCoffee]

23. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!

Even though Josephine Wiggs kind of scares me a little, that Ladies Who Lunch thing she did with Kate Schellenbach was groovy in its own way.

Does Luscious Jackson deserve some consideration here?

[Bruce Wayne]

21. Hanson

much better than Nelson (Trivia: they were Ricky Nelson's daughters.)

[sharp_stick]

22. Veruca Salt pre departure of Nina Gordon

were pretty good since then it's just a shadow of it's former self. Going way back I'll also add "The Slits" as a pretty kick ass band.

[LeftOfSelf-Centered]

24. I second Veruca Salt with Gordon.

Nina Gordon's songwriting worked really well with the band's sound. Louise Post also had some good ones, although she occasionally lapsed into generic grunge. Between the two of them they made some solid music. "Loneliness Is Worse" remains one of my favorite songs.

Too bad the two broke up; I wasn't too impressed by what I heard of post-Gordon Veruca Salt, and what I heard out of Gordon was painfully bland pop music.

[Orrex]

31. Eight Arms to Hold You sounds a lot like a light version of The Breeders to me

Did then, does now.



[font color="red]Incidentally, on edit:[/font]
When I checked the wiki page for The Breeders, here where the redirect took me:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Breeders_%28group%29&redirect=no

Weird.

[frogmarch]

25. Heart

Heart was famous in the 80s, when my kids were teenagers, and I came to love their music.

http://www.heart-music.com/

[Duppers]

44. heck yes, HEART

[graywarrior]

26. The Shaggs

[Chan790]

27. Really? Nobody's mentioned Bikini Kill?

I mean they never got a lot of radio-play because of their lyrics, but Bikini Kill was/is the the loudest voice of an entire generation of feminist punk-rockers, probably the most-important band of the Riot Grrl movement, one of the first bands to address the sexism and misogyny of the early-90s west-coast hardcore/punk scene. Kathleen Hanna, Kathi Wilcox, Tobi Vail and Billy Karren brought female-empowerment and feminism to punk in a way that nobody had before or since.

[limpyhobbler]

32. And then there's Le Tigre

[rbnyc]

36. We just gave my niece Kathleen Hanna’s guitar.

Through a strange sequence of events, we ended up owning one of Kathleen Hanna's guitars full of stickers with the case - very cool. We gave it to my niece for Christmas. I think that ranks us as the coolest aunt and uncle in the tri-state area.

[jakeXT]

29. It's not Rock but Martha Reeves & Vandellas

Cee Loo's backing band Scarlet Fever looks alright

[pipi_k]

34. Oh yeah!

Rocking enough for me!

[Art_from_Ark]

30. I'm surprised no one's mentioned the Shirelles

AA girl group that might have been the first girl group to break through the color barrier in mainstream rock/pop

[pipi_k]

33. My favorite

of their songs...

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[greiner3]

35. Good rhythm but you can't dance to it;

[rbnyc]

37. shout out to Lunachicks

[HopeHoops]

38. Bond

[Amerigo Vespucci]

42. The Ronettes