Boy/Girl Bands and the Billion Songs Position 10 · No Scrubs (1,471 million streams · Dec 31, 2025) TLC · 1999 A "no" that changed female pop and is still right twenty six years later. What it's about No Scrubs is a manifesto. Three women from Atlanta saying no with rhythm, irony, and surgical precision to a very speci c type of man: no ambitions, no independence, all talk and no substance. The "scrub" is de ned in the rst verse with a concreteness that leaves no room for ambiguity. But the song goes beyond rejection. It's an a rmation: women have the right to have standards. In 1999, that was still controversial enough that a male group, the Sporty Thievz, felt compelled to respond with "No Pigeons." The twist: they used the same melody as No Scrubs, so the original songwriters collected royalties on that 132