What in the World - Boy bands vs girl bands: Who makes better music?

Download Boy bands vs girl bands: Who makes better music?

Stray Kids or BlackPink? Spice Girls or Westlife? Music executives - like Simon Cowell - have been creating girl bands and boy bands for decades. And he’s about to launch a brand new competition on Netflix to find “The Next Act”. When we talk about these groups, we generally mean good-looking young women or men who’ve been brought together, and who don’t tend to write their own songs or play their own instruments. Their fans are stereotyped as being teenage girls and their mums.

Is there any truth to the belief that girl bands make better music because they are held to higher standards? The BBC’s music correspondent Mark Savage explains how pop bands have evolved over the decades. We look at the different pressures and stereotyping that girl and boy bands face and we hear from some of our BBC friends - do they prefer girl bands or boy bands and why?

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Presenter: Hannah Gelbart
Video producer: Baldeep Chahal
Producers: Julia Ross-Roy and Adam Chowdhury
Editor: Verity Wilde

Published on Thursday, 11th December 2025.

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