Fifth Harmony - 7/27

Pitchfork 62

If “The X Factor” has done one good thing in its many years of manufactured drama and purposeful audition mockery, it’s near-singlehandedly keeping alive the decades-old tradition of the pop girl group in the West. While they never disappeared worldwide—girl groups and their alumnae dominate J- and K-pop, for instance—the only two Western girl groups with consistent pop clout are the UK’s Little Mix and the States’ Fifth Harmony, both products of their respective countries’ “X Factors.”

There are some downsides to this. Most groups that get far on “The X Factor” are assembled from failed solo auditions, and while plenty of girl groups are unglamorously cobbled together via some backstage machination or other, it’s one thing to know that and another to watch five solo hopefuls get rejected on live-TV and then jettisoned into a band with three consecutive names slapped onto it, one of which was a Bruno Mars family act and one of which was a Musiq Soulchild song. And while the “X Factor” process selects for vocal talent and marketable personality, it rarely selects for the two together; what you end up with are a lot of singers with indistinguishably winning voices and #winning presence. Fifth Harmony’s early singles sounded less like the work of a coherent group than a diva scrimmage, each singer trying to outperform the rest—inevitably, because that’s literally what they came on the show hoping to do.

It’s been several years and hits since then, though, and Fifth Harmony’s had some time to grow into themselves. The first track on 7/27—the day the group originally formed—is as good a State of the Cowell-Administered Union as any. It begins like a retread of past hit “Worth It,” down to the deliberately squawky sax beat, but soon becomes a pep talk for fans complete with cheerleader whoops, a call to (immaculately toned) arms, and a showcase for each vocalist, now with discernibly individual personae: Ally on lead and Dinah on backup, Normani with the near-rap, Lauren’s cool alto balancing Camila’s Ring Pop of a voice. (Rumors of the latter being groomed for a solo career, at least as of this album, are exaggerated; 7/27 is as vocally egalitarian as any girl-group album of the past decade or so, and better for it.) It’s easily the best potential single the group’s ever released.

It also sounds exactly like 2003—specifically, like a cut off Christina Aguilera’s Back to Basics or Mya’s Moodring. An even eerier flashback comes with “Not That Kinda Girl,” which rehashes the look-don’t-touch theme that was everywhere in pop in ‘03 and adds Missy Elliott, who as usual lately is operating at maybe 50% of peak but is welcome nevertheless because 50% of peak Missy is still pretty damn good. The echoes of early-'00s R&B radio seem to say more about the length of the pop nostalgia cycle than anything about Fifth Harmony in particular, which points to a larger issue: For all the group’s done to establish each singer vocally, they’ve yet to pin down a sonic identity, nor a lyrical identity beyond vague empowerment, and 7/27 dutifully triangulates every trend and radio format of the past couple years. There’s stuttery, pitch-shifted EDM with “The Life.” There’s the fake r&bass track “Work From Home,” wherein Dr. Luke protégé Ammo imitates rap producers imitating DJ Mustard. There’s even diluted reggae and Fetty Wap collaboration, both on “All in My Head (Flex),” which samples Mad Cobra’s “Flex.” About half the tracks have tropical-house synths stuck in like cocktail umbrellas.

Unsurprisingly, the trendier the track, the worse Fifth Harmony showcase it proves. Several of the songs also suffer from brutally protracted lyrical metaphors that function as near-parodies of pop song form. It’s not entirely Fifth Harmony’s fault, for instance, that r&bass ceased to be a thing well before “Work from Home,” or that everyone missed Jordin Sparks’ near-identical 2015 single called “Work From Home,” or even that everyone (somehow) missed a certain megastar’s No. 1 single about work-work-work-work-work-work. It’s definitely their fault that this single involves a lot of metaphorically sexing up the freelance life, which is perhaps the least sexy labor arrangement in world history. (More accurate first verse: “worried about basically everything, wearing ripped pajamas”). Or that only Ty Dolla $ign—whose verse is one big leadup to a T-Pain-esque “put in overtime on your booooddddyyyyyyyy!”—takes the material as seriously as he should, which is to say not at all.

Like most girl groups, Fifth Harmony trades in the kind of pop-cultural press-quote feminism where the group can say they are out squash gender roles and “gender-institutionalized thinking” while recording a fantasy of a stay-at-home sexter reassuring the household breadwinner that he’s the boss at home. And like girl groups historically, they grapple with how to reconcile that independence with love. The original girl groups were as liable to record love songs as wistful, even macabre cautionary tales. Modern groups Little Mix and Spice sing love songs, but they couldn’t be more obvious that their heart belongs to their besties. Destiny’s Child, with few exceptions, repudiated love entirely: “if you ain’t in love, I congratulate you.”

7/27, though, approaches the subject with full abandon. “I Lied” thoroughly rescues its conceit from Michael Bolton hell and turns it into a sighing, feverish surge reminiscent of “Countdown.” Bonus track “Dope” is even more crushed-out, with a track that sounds like jittering through the whole runtime of a slow jam and lines delivered like so many words to stumble over en route to the big confession: “I don’t know what else to say, but you’re pretty fucking dope.” It strikes that rarest of balances for crush songs—confident but skittish, sure of one’s exact feelings but clueless about what to do next, independent but nevertheless absolutely swooningly done for—and also feels like a first. Mediocre girl-group material is a cartoon simulation of women’s lives. Good girl-group material reflects them. Great girl-group material recasts them in 3D with all the color cranked up. Finally, albeit in flashes, there are hints that Fifth Harmony may reach that peak.