1001 Greatest Pop Songs Of All Time - #3 - Girls Life by Girlfriend/Japanfriend

Alyson: A funny thing has happened to us in the last 12-18 months, and it's this. We've found a secret, but significant, portion of the population of Australia remembers, and loved, early 90s Aussie girlband Girlfriend. We honestly thought before we started our website, it was just us, and posting about our love for them would just be ignored. It took longer than it should to come up that we loved this fantastic band, the band that will always be MY favourite girlband. Comprising Robyn, Siobhann (one of my all time pop idols), Lorinda, Jacqui and Melanie, if you weren't a girl in the early 90s playground that loved Girlfriend, you didn't get to hang around with us, uh-uh, no way. It was fantastic, in the midst of the glorious pop filled winter of 1992, to have our very own, fully functioning, amazingly crafted girl band to adore. Although their only competition is Bardot and Cherry, they are still easily untouched as our very finest girl band. Of course, this being pub rock central, they were "out of fashion" by 1993 (although GF4, the post Robyn plough on, still had a #6 hit in 1994 with Sooner Or Later), and in many ways, they missed a massive trick in not pumping out loads more merch (we had pocket money people!), but we never stopped believing in them, and their fabulousness, and thus, we present them with a worthy tribute to one of their best songs, Girls Life, the song I believe still acts as the template for the entire Spice Girls career.

In one of our most glorious Pop epochs, Take It From Me's by the Girls two weeks spell at #1 (criminally the girls only #1) was replaced on the top of the charts by euphorias Love Me Right (of which more later). In an ideal world, Girls Life would have followed it to the top of the charts. Starting with Robyns buoyant call of "1-2-3....KICK IT!", it's a paeon to sticking together against those randy, rampant boys, and crucially (note books out plagerists) mentions "Girl Power" a full 4 years before Spice came out. But there's so much to enjoy - the debut of the "Girlfriend rap" which in this case ends with "Baby Chill out, we GOT WORK TO DO!" (you can almost see Siobhann nodding defiantly), the final chorus starting with giggles, and then a second Girlfriend rap (TWO for the price of 1) about a Girls Life being "somewhere over the rainbow, you know!", Siobhanns brilliant "put em right by the door!" after Robyn sings about roses by the door - and recently, we accquired the Japanese version of Girls Life (by Japanfriend as we call them) which is so fabulous, and is sung by Robyn in a comedy Japanese accent, and where somehow the giggling even sounds more Japanese...

It's such a brilliant, brilliant song, and there will be lots more Girlfriend to come - it feels so good to give them a place or 10 on a list like this - now, if I could just meet Siobhann....coming up next on the Girlfriend list, their best lyric...

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Claire: I still remember getting off the plane, and setting foot in Alysons house for the first time after living in Scotland for 4 years, and being assaulted with "You MUST love Girlfriend!" while having a Siobhann poster shoved in my face - um, no, who are they I said, to one of the filthiest looks of all time. I don't think she's ever truly forgiven me.

I've only got into Girlfriend in the last few years as a result - I vaguely remember Take It From Me being #1 (I think the week I landed), and it is incredibly frustrating that I didn't get to join in fully in embracing them. I'm now proud to perpetuate their memory a little bit on the Internet, since when we first started our other site, there really was no information on them. Interestingly, Girl's Life goes for about 30 bucks on e-bay some days. I also love that early 90s kitchen sink production that goes into Girls Life, and any kind of fluent girl powered rapping. Unironically, I also now love the girls, for their spirit, their togetherness, and their positive outlook. In the midst of that horrible grunge period of whining and whinging, Girlfriend were a positive influence, and that was amazingly brave.

It's only fitting they make this list time and time again, and next time I induct them, I'm going to write about their most "punk rock" move...