Fifth Harmony Wrestled Back The Power Of Having A Voice

By Larisha Paul


An eponymous album marks a major moment in an artist's career. For females, owning one's work, body, and artistry can be especially powerful, even political. While in Women's History Month, MTV News is highlighting some of those iconic statements from some of the largest artists on the globe. This is Self-Titled.


The cards were stacked against Fifth Harmony from the starting. From the time that Normani, Lauren Jauregui, Ally Brooke, Dinah Jane, and Camila Cabello were wrangled into a girl sort by Simon Cowell like a gender-swapped One Direction right after auditioning as soloists on The X Factor in 2012, any intention of each member establishing distinct identities as performers had been thwarted. Even if only momentarily, the presence of Fifth Harmony as key players in an orchestrated pop machine required these ladies, only between 15 and 19 years old at the time, to trade their individualism for a shot at success before they had a chance to explore the complexities they were sacrificing.


Unknowingly, Fifth Harmony were also inheriting the low retention rate of girl groups in American popular music, which has long been driven by the misogynistic belief that numerous ladies couldn’t function on a collaborative level without falling out with one another in a fight for the spotlight. It wasn’t a fair hand to have been dealt, however it gave them something to prove. Soon after spending their formative teenage years being compared to one another while filling in pre-shaped pop molds, Fifth Harmony looked inward on their third and afterward final album Fifth Harmony and restored the confidence in their voices that had been concealed beneath years of being kept quiet.


For their first two album cycles, 2015’s Reflection and 2016’s 24/7, the five-piece worked the pop machine, churning out more formulaic chart contenders loaded with timely cultural references. Whenever the latter record’s lead single, “Work From Home,” became their biggest hit to date, peaking at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, there was a faint glimmer of hope for the future of Fifth Harmony as genre titans. Although whenever Cabello reported her departure to pursue a solo career in late 2016 in a less-than-amicable split, the prophecy of failure endowed to Fifth Harmony seemed inevitably set in motion. At the time, Epic Records hadn’t nevertheless locked in one third album for the sort, nevertheless didn’t the four-piece at least deserve a chance to show that their framework as performers hadn’t been fully dismantled?


For the opening time since their 2013 debut EP Better Together, Fifth Harmony were suggested a meaningful role in the songwriting process for their self-titled record. In four years, across two albums, the group’s members were only credited on one song: “All in My Head (Flex),” where their names appeared alongside 17 others. At some point early on, the corporation of Fifth Harmony became one of hit-chasing to set up their presence in pop music, then sacrificing the possibility to bolster their skills as musicians sort in attempt to preserve that presence. “They don’t give you time to breathe or like what you’re doing, or to even permit it to grow into something anymore,” Jauregui instructed them “Zach Sang Show” in 2018, soon following the sort reported their indefinite hiatus. “If it didn’t chart inside the opening five minutes of it being released, like, it’s a flop.”


Maybe their label was afraid that giving Fifth Harmony a megaphone to voice the reality of their experiences as young girls coming of age in the sort wouldn’t make for catchy radio hits. Although by the time they had reached Fifth Harmony in 2017, the four-piece were as much company females as they were performers. They knew how to play the game. Even if getting into the studio to put pen to paper didn’t yield hyper-personal explorations within song, it was more about the authority of establishing and exercising a crucial role in that space — about proving that they can contribute their own flare to the formula, too.


Brooke and Normani led the charge on the flirtatious “Make You Mad,” which evenly divides up the vocal spotlight over snappy production. The hypnotic chant of the chorus exudes power and confidence with a promise that there’s no one quite like them. Nevertheless just a couple of spaces down on the tracklist, the pair pull the curtain back for a more susceptible lyrical efficiency about embracing insecurities on “Messy.” Normani and Jane set the bar high on “Lonely Night,” making self-worth a priority over fleeting pleasure, while Brooke and Jauregui make the categorize the life of the party on the forward “Sauced Up.” Nevertheless it’s on “Bridges” that Fifth Harmony adeptly joins as a collective to comment on a tumultuous political landscape taking aim at individuality.


In late 2016, Jauregui published a letter ahead of the presidential election in which she declared that her identity as a bisexual, Cuban-American woman would never be a point of shame in the face of hate. While in the promotion of Fifth Harmony, the singer more openly embraced that selfhood, though felt it was also personalized an experience to share through four voices, rather than simply her own. At the same time, Normani started opening up about the isolation of being the only Black woman in the sort, even having to step back from social media soon after an onslaught of racist hate flooded her mentions. For the group’s music to have been intertwined so deeply with shifts in R&B and hip-hop — the music she grew up on in New Orleans and Houston — Normani deserved more than to have her identity diluted for any collective benefit.


One of the greatest shortcomings of Fifth Harmony becoming the hugest girl order to dominate since the Spice Females was the orchestrated need to flatten the identities of those females that, in one way or another, mirrored that of their young, predominantly female audience. They were also intricate to have been kept from vocalizing their perspectives, whether they had been totally barred from doing so or simply stripped of the confidence that would permit them to. Nevertheless whenever they were given the chance on Fifth Harmony, in tandem with an embracing of their sexuality and autonomy, a fire was ignited that primed each member for solo success. Whenever they couldn’t make loud declarations as writers, they locked into a sense of authority as performers.


If a lyric didn’t feel right, they didn’t have to sing it. If a dance move felt like also much, or insufficient, they could integrate their own changes as leaders rather than puppets. Any time whenever they sang, “Gotta keep it on one hundred with ya / The original me wouldn't fuck with ya” on “Angel,” it was clear that a needed transition of power had been made. Ahead of the album’s release, Jane instructed them Los Angeles Times: “We are being more respected this time around. We are in a place where we know what we want and who we are. We’ve recognized our truth and what we have to issue — and our power.”