BOYS WORLD: Inside A Girl's Universe

Dubbed as the Gen Z Spice Girls, Boys World serves female empowerment that interlaces a glimpse into the future of pop music with a wink into the past. Their energetic, honeyed vocals and R&B edges resemble the girls as an early 2000s girl group at best with their bold aesthetics and diverse personas. With no American girl groups on the scene, Boys World is ready to fill the gap amongst other global groups including Little Mix and Black Pink.

What’s unique is that Boys World is “fiercely democratic” in how they’re organized. There is no lead singer in the group, which allows for each member to spotlight their own artistry and creative skill sets. 

Before being founded by KYN Entertainment — on April 26th 2019, to be exact — the girls posted covers on social media and YouTube to garner attention over social media. For a year, the girls worked on perfecting their soft, angelic vocals and dancing skills while living in Los Angeles.

In an interview with People Magazine, Olivia said, "it was crazy because fans were supporting us even before music. We didn't have anything out. We were just showing our personality, showing our friendship, being able to just build a platform on TikTok, it's been so fun. It's really authentic to us and I love that."

"Some say we kind of resemble the Spice Girls," says Lillian. "That was not on purpose! It's weird how it worked out. They were iconic and everybody loved them. It's really a compliment to resemble them in a way."

Like the Spice Girls, Boys World have different personalities and styles to bring into each song. Growing up, the members listened to pop stars such as Britney Spears and Destiny’s Child. They also take major influences from rock sensations like The Cure, Amy Winehouse and Weezer.

On April 9th Boys World dropped their debut EP, While You Were Out, which echoed their diverse tastes. 

The EP’s lead single, ‘Girlfriends’, was released on October 23rd 2020. The acclaimed delicious truth bomb of a song has over 1 million views on YouTube and over 2 million streams on Spotify. ‘Girlfriends’ starts off with high energy intros, girl-group harmonies and tight melodic songcrafts recalling Veruca Salt or Little Mix. The lyrics, “You know girls stan girlfriends over boyfriends”, highlights the power of friendship and to not give into toxic relationships. The song is filled with positive messages that center each girl’s vocals, styles and attitudes to smoothly blend their pop-funk chords and trap beats. “Baby I can love you or love you not / Hope you’re down with the friends I got”, the group sings. “But if you're not, gotta cut you off / 'Cause you know girls stan girlfriends over boyfriends”. Basically, a big f**k you to any flaky boyfriend that wants to break a girls’ friendship apart.

The group's music video — which starts with the girls running a "girlfriends hotline" as they answer calls from teen girls who need relationship advice — conveys their natural singing talent and ability to fuse all their favorite genres into one glossy chorus. The girls practiced the “Girlfriends” choreo for over 64 hours and “filming the music video was really, really cool because we’ve been working on ‘Girlfriends’ for over a year,” said Elana.

"It's a girl empowerment song for sure," said Lillian. "It was inspired by our friendship."

Shortly after releasing their first single ‘Girlfriends’, four members of Boys World had a tiny "GF" tattooed on their wrists.

Boys World also launched a mini-series on YouTube called Girlfriends as an intimate look into their life for fans to share in. Their fans, also known as “STARS”, contributed to the band’s rise to success and large fan base through the power of social media, mainly TikTok. Boys World document their everyday life on their TikTok account (which they launched in January 2020), sharing everything from positive affirmations over homemade face masks to song covers and dance rehearsals. Their first short, 15-second cover song ended up getting over two million likes, and it easily jump-started their careers.

Especially during COVID-19 lockdowns still in effect, Boys World wants to “give our fans as much content as we can, 'cause we know everyone's just at their house", said Olivia. "We think about the way we'd want to see someone that we look up to."

The girls released ‘Wingman’ as their second official single on January 29th. “‘Girlfriends' is more pop," Lillian said. "'Wingman' is kind of funky, and 'Tiptoe' has a trap vibe." It was the first song Boys World ever wrote as a group.

The lyrics “I'm a little selfish with my personal space / Call it greedy but I really like the extra room / Over anybody tryna feed off my plate / I don’t share and I don't care if you expect me to”,

calls for independence and that a woman doesn’t need to be swept off her feet and saved by a man.

Along with songs like ‘Tiptoe’, ‘Relapse’ and ‘Touched by an Angel’, the EP's five tracks center around a storytelling complex — the cyclical and transformative nature of relationships — but it's the group’s empowerment and friendship that holds the project together, from their raucous, playful vocals and harmonies to the warm sisterhood they've created.

Besides pushing for female empowerment in every aspect of society, the girls contribute to wider socio-political conversations about educating on their massive social media platforms. “We're proud of what we stand for. It's important to show everyone that though this might be hard, we have to do it,” said Olivia.

In the ‘Girlfriends’ music video, Makhyli is seen interpreting American Sign Language, Olivia answers a phone call in Portuguese and Queenie gossips in her native Tagalog.

Last summer, Boys World attended Black Lives Matter marches and helped raise bail funds for protestors. They're interested in the fight against "social norms, gender norms and the social standards of what a woman should be. When it comes to positivity and awareness, whatever we put out, we want to attract those kinds of people too. And if they're not, maybe they can learn through us”, said Boys World in an interview with Billboard.

It's all about girls supporting girls. As Boys World continues to navigate through the intimacy of relationships and a woman’s search for independence and self-love in their upcoming releases, the girls usher in a new era for U.S. girl groups.

"We're trying to do something new, innovative, that hasn't been seen in a while," said Makhyli. "When you hear a Boys World record, you hear the friendship, you hear the energy, you hear the fun in the music."