Track 02 What a boy/girl band is (and isn't) Applying a de nition inevitably excludes certain groups that might seem like natural candidates. But it is what it is... Before we crunch the numbers, we need to de ne our subject. And the question is far less trivial than it seems. The phrase "boy or girl band" immediately triggers a speci c mental image: ve guys or girls in matching denim, synchronized choreography, and screaming teenage fans. But this clich masks a much broader, more nuanced category with highly blurred edges. For this monograph, I wanted to build a working de nition, not an academic or de nitive one, but a practical tool to draw the perimeter of our analysis. 5