Holding On to Wilson Phillips
I decided after covering the Beach Boys I wanted to tackle Wilson Phillips next. The first reason is that two of the members of Wilson Phillips are Brian Wilson’s daughters Carnie and Wendy Wilson. The third member Chynna Phillips was the daughter of Michelle and John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. At the same time despite this connection to 60’s rock royalty Wilson Phillips has always been written off by critics and music snobs as just light pop fluff. People just kind of think of them as a footnote at best or a joke at worst and I think that’s a damn shame because there’s a reason these girls were so popular for a short time at the start of the 90s.
In a lot of ways the rise and fall of Wilson Phillips seems to correlate with Paula Abdul’s career. Both acts were huge at the start of the 90s but after the arrival of Grunge and Gangsta Rap both acts saw a swift and sharp decline in sales and airplay and they were all but forgotten by the mid-90s. In fact, I remember the first time I heard Wilson Phillips was on MTV 25 Lame, which is where I also first saw the music video for Rush Rush by Paula Abdul. It was for the music video to Hold On, which the comedians tore into. Yet like Rush Rush I kind of liked what I was seeing and hearing despite the comedian’s taunts and sarcasm. That said, one joke actually stuck with me which is when the group is strutting down the boardwalk at one point and one of the comedians declares it a Wilson Phillips pride parade! This was something I would reference a lot in the coming years but more on that later. Still it showed how in less than a decade Wilson Phillips, like Paula Abdul, had gone from being pop royalty to a joke.
Still seeing that video on that countdown left an impression on 14 year old Doug. I remember not long after being in a Wal-Mart with my mom and seeing a CD compilation of early 90s hits that was only a few dollars and Hold On by Wilson Phillips was on it. It also had some other hits I had recognized from the radio such as Unbelievable by EMF and Right Here, Right Now by Jesus Jones but I got it mostly for Hold On.
My next contact with Wilson Phillips came when I was in a hotel watching VH1 (we did not get VH1 for a long time in California.) It was Pop Up Video, which was at the height of its buzz, and that is when I saw the music video for Wilson Phillips second single Release Me. At this point I didn’t realize they had other hits besides Hold On so to hear they not only had a second single but that it to went to # 1 (something I learned from Pop Up Video thank you) made me take more interest in these girls now. Eventually as noted in my Paula Abdul article I bought the CD compilation Entertainment Weekly 1990 which had Release Me on it.
For a while that was as far as I went with Wilson Phillips, especially as I got more into Classic rock and Grunge as the 2000s progressed. Then one night in college around 2006 after coming back to my dorm late one night I heard Hold On by Wilson Phillips being blared from someone else’s dorm. It reminded me how much I actually liked that song and I dug out my CDs and ripped Hold On and Release Me to my iTunes library. This is when I really started reading up on Wilson Phillips. I discovered they had a few other big hits such as the # 1 hit You’re in Love and the #4 hit Impulsive.
I also discovered two articles about Wilson Phillips from Entertainment Weekly from 1990 and 1992. These 2 articles were fascinating because of how they depicted the rapid rise and fall of Wilson Phillips during the early 90s. The first article was written when the girls first exploded on the scene and their second single Release Me was climbing up the charts at that time. In this article Wilson Phillips were declared the next big thing in pop music with their record company declaring them “The Franchise.” They also discuss how they seem to have equal appeal with younger and older audiences. My favorite part of the first article though is when they talk to Brian Wilson. It discusses how he has had an estranged relationship with his daughters over his years, especially due to him being placed under psychiatric care for a decade. Yet he tries to stay in contact with them every day and says that he follows their progress on the billboard chart every week and it gives him the same thrill he used to have tracking the Beach Boys singles on the charts back in the 60s. This part really melted my heart especially after everything Brian had been through to find happiness in his own daughter’s success was really touching to read.
https://ew.com/article/1990/08/31/wilson-phillips-2/
The first article makes it seem like the future is wide open for Wilson Phillips and they are going to be THE pop act of the 1990s. Then I got to the second article called The Decline of Wilson Phillips. Here we see just how quickly the pop music machine can chew you up and spit you out! The girl’s second album Shadows and Light is declared one of the big disappointments of 1992 despite still going top 5, going platinum and having 2 top 40 hits. It’s funny to look back at the 90s when the music industry was at the height of its powers and see that a platinum album with just 2 top 40 hits could be considered a disappointment back then. How times have changed! Re-reading the article recently the thing that stuck out the most this time for me was the in-depth discussion about Wilson Phillips hair & makeup and how much their image had changed and how their new image is no longer appealing to the youth market. There’s a quote from a record label employee who says: “I remember a time when those girls could get their hair and makeup done for $450 and have it done in two hours. Now it’s a $7,000 project, takes half a day, and they come out looking like 38-year-old women.”
https://ew.com/article/1992/11/27/decline-wilson-phillips/
Ok there’s a lot to unpack here. First saying that 450 dollars and 2 hours in the chair is just another day at work is interesting. To get Wilson Phillips ready every day takes a lot more time and effort than it does for most male musicians, who can just roll out of bed and wear clothes they found on the floor and no one bats an eye. Then they talk about how this new image makes them look too old and that the label basically can’t sell that image because the youth won’t connect with it. Here again we see how much pressure there is on women to look and act a certain way in order to be relatable and successful. If they come off too sophisticated or God forbid old then people won’t like them anymore! WOW! Plus, just the fact that we spend a huge chunk of this article talking about the girls’ hair & makeup and trying to use that as a factor for why their music won’t sell anymore is the height of sexism in the music industry. These kind of things don’t get discussed with male musicians for the most part and it shows the double standard women have to balance in order to be accepted that their male counterparts don’t really ever have to think about.
Another example of sexism with Wilson Phillips is how people talked about Carnie Wilson and her weight. The fat jokes came fast and furiously from SNL, to late night talk show hosts, to Beavis and Butthead. In the era of Lizzo its easy to forget just how much pressure women have at maintaining a certain weight and look in order for them to be desirable to men. Because let’s not forget that if they are not desirable to men then they have failed as a woman! Even women, like comedian Julie Brown, poked fun at Carnie’s weight. Never forget that the patriarchy is so effective that it gets women to shame other women for not living up to a certain standard.
Carnie’s weight obviously bothered her though it at least it felt like she wanted to lose weight in order to be more healthy instead of just being considered more attractive. Carnie ended up going through with a stomach staple procedure which made the news in the late 90s I remember. Wilson Phillips were no longer that culturally relevant by then but Carnie looking skinny and therefore beautiful was worthy of news coverage and accolades!
Again, this is something that really doesn’t happen to male musicians. Take Blues Traveler for example. While John Popper did have some fat jokes thrown at him, he still didn’t face pressure to lose weight in order to sell records. When reading reviews for Blues Traveler albums back in the 90s nobody talks about his weight or the band’s image at all. Journalists and rock critics focus more on Blues Traveler’s music instead, which is how it should be. When Blues Traveler stopped selling as many records in the late 90s nobody said it was because of the group’s hair and makeup or that their lead singer was overweight, they just said the music didn’t connect with people anymore. Still Carnie doesn’t shy away from talking about her weight loss struggles. She is trying to be more body positive and help others who are struggling, which is admirable and again something that doesn’t get talked about enough in popular culture in a positive way.
Still these two articles from Entertainment Weekly remain two of the most essential articles I have ever read about pop music. Together these 2 articles sum up the disposable nature of the music industry and how unfairly women are treated and discussed compared their male counterparts.
Still let’s get back to the music shall we. I ended up buying a 10 track greatest hits by Wilson Phillips at Newbury Comics for $3.99 when I was home from college. Let me tell you that CD has gotten a lot of play over the years! Like Paula Abdul sometimes less means more since I pretty much liked all but maybe 1 song on it and therefore I could let it spin on shuffle over and over again in my car without having to keep skipping tracks.
Shortly after buying that greatest hits I kind of got into a Wilson Phillips phase in a big way during the middle of college. This is also when I learned that a lot of my friends who were girls loved Wilson Phillips! First was close friend Jen who together we kind fell in love with Wilson Phillips. We would gently mock them but that was just a way to deflect the fact that we really loved them. We even started a Facebook Group for Wilson Phillips back when Facebook groups were just for your college so we had a total of 10 members but hey other people on campus liked Wilson Phillips besides us. Then there was my friend Mallory who said when she was younger she and her friends would “play” Wilson Philips. What she meant is they would all be a different member when they were five years old and strike poses in their driveway next to the car as Wilson Phillips music played which sounds so freaking adorable!
Then there were the 2 girls from VIC, the college internet radio station where I did Alternagold for 3 years, who had their own show Sunglasses at Night which was all 80s music. Talking to them I learned they too loved Wilson Phillips but since their music was from the early 90s they couldn’t play it on their show since they really tried to keep the music they played from just the 80s. Meanwhile my show Alternagold was mostly 90s but all Alternative rock so I couldn’t play them either. So we decided to do a crossover episode one night where we played just pop music from the 90s and we played everything from N Sync to Mariah Carey but Wilson Phillips was why we did it in the first place and I remember Wilson Phillips got their own 3 song block during the crossover. We also all sang along to Hold On together in the studio too.
Now remember we were still not quit at the era of YouTube yet. We were about less than a year away from that so I ended up buying the 2 Wilson Phillips VHS Tapes used off Amazon for dirt cheap. I basically paid more for the shipping then the actual price of the videos. The first tape had their first 3 music videos Hold On, Release Me and Impulsive and the second tape had their next 3 music videos with You’re In Love, The Dream Is Still Alive and You Won’t See Me Cry. Each video also had behind the scenes footage with the girls as well as interviews with them. Like the Paula Abduls VHS tapes I had, these tapes were really my first time hearing the girls talk since again YouTube had not arrived yet and I was too young to watch MTV when Wilson Phillips was popular in the early 90s. It confirmed what Jen and I had believed about the girls, which is that Wendy is pretty shy and a little awkward on camera, Chynna is the leader who loves to talk, and Carnie is by far the coolest and funniest member of the group. I had most of my girl friends over one night and we watched both videos in a student lounge one weekend and it was a fun girl’s night. Unfortunately I couldn’t find clips of those VHS tapes on YouTube, but here’s a an interview from 1990 on MTV that is sure to be a blast from the past for many. Remember MTV VJ Martha Quinn?
Wilson Phillips, while never my all-time favorite music act, continued to be a big guilty pleasure for me in the years that followed. Whenever I was walking down a boardwalk or near a beach I would say this is like the Hold On video and start strutting and say it’s time for a Wilson Phillips Pride Parade! I even met some guys who would grudgingly admit that Hold On was a pretty great pop song. At my wedding Hold On was the final song of the night and everyone sang along to it at the top of their lungs. It was magical!
Wilson Philips will never be cool but that doesn’t mean their music doesn’t matter to people because it does. There’s a reason Wilson Phillips has the big cameo reveal at the end of Bridesmaids and why Harold and Kumar can’t resist singing along to Hold On while they drive to White Castle. There’s a reason why Wilson Phillips continue to tour and record albums (usually covers from the 60s and 70s now) and why they headline Gay Pride concerts across the country including D.C. Capital back in 2015. Their music meant something, especially to girls and gays, even if the rock elite will never throw them a bone. Also say what you want about their music but they can sing and their harmonies are beautiful. It’s clear they love not just the music of their parents but other 60s and 70s folk rock/pop rock legends like Simon & Garfunkel, Linda Ronstadt, Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles, The Byrds, and America along with The Mamas and the Papas and the Beach Boys. Their vocal harmonizing is clearly influenced by those acts and shows Wilson Phillips is just as influenced by the 60s as say Oasis are with their Beatles worship. It’s just that Oasis is a rock band fronted by men, who also act like assholes, so therefore that makes them cooler.
A lot of people give me grief or poke fun at me for liking Wilson Phillips, much like they do for a lot of female pop acts I like, but I really don’t care either. The older I get the less I’m here to impress other people with my taste in my music. Pop music in general can get too tied down by what is cool and what isn’t when really all that matters is if the music connects with you. There are plenty of acts considered cooler and better than Wilson Phillips who I have no affection for whatsoever and that’s OK. I like what I like and just like my gayness I should not be ashamed of that anymore. In fact, I may need to strut down a boardwalk soon and have myself a Wilson Phillips pride parade! It’s a guaranteed pick me up!
