It was nearing the end of 2004, a year or so after The Cheetah Girls movie had debuted on the Disney Channel. The stars of the movie - about a teenage girl band trying to make it big - had gone their separate ways. Disney asked them to get back together and tape a song for Disneymania 3, the annual concert special in which bands cover classic Disney songs.
It would be the Cheetah Girls' first time performing in front of a live audience.
They took the stage for a power-pop rendition of I Won't Say I'm in Love from the movie Hercules. Nobody was prepared for what happened next.
Screaming. Girls. Hordes of them.
"It was crazy," says Cheetah Girl Adrienne Bailon. "Just hearing somebody cheering for you without a director saying 'Applaud.' We got together and said 'We need to take this show on the road.
'"
Two years and another movie later (not to mention a clothing line at Sears, a video game and Cheetah-licious musical toothbrushes), the Cheetah Girls are playing to arenas full of screaming young girls. They play Wednesday at Nokia Theatre in Grand Prairie, returning for another concert there Jan. 26.
Like High School Musical and Hannah Montana, the Cheetah Girls are a breakout hit for the Disney Channel, which is quickly perfecting the art of taking the music from its original TV shows and movies on the road.
Adrienne Bailon, who plays Chanel. She was born in Manhattan and speaks fluent Spanish (her family tree stretches to Puerto Rico and Ecuador).
Kiely Williams, who plays Aquanette. She's the fashion-minded one of the group. Williams and Bailon are also members of an R B group called 3LW (3 Little Women).
Williams is also writing an advice book for teens.
Sabrina Bryan, who plays Dorinda. She's been dancing since she was 7 and helps choreograph the girls' moves.
She has a workout DVD for girls called BYOU: The Hot New Dance Workout.
In real life, they're ages 23, 20 and 22, although they like to say they're 17 in Cheetah years.
Those are the three who tour.
In the movies, they're joined by Raven, who plays Galleria, but who doesn't do concerts, because, well, she's got this TV show on the Disney Channel, and her own solo career and things like that.
In the original book series that inspired the movies, there's even a fifth Cheetah Girl - Anginette, Aquanette's twin sister.
You did know the Cheetah Girls started as a series of books?
Sixteen books, to be precise, written by Deborah Gregory, a former columnist for Essence magazine. In 1998, she was approached by a woman at Hyperion Books, a division of Disney, who asked if she'd ever thought of writing anything for kids.
She came up with the Cheetah Girls, based on her own memories of growing up as a foster child in New York City and her lifelong love of fashion.
The Cheetah Girls discover their "growl power" and find the "jiggy jungle," the magical place inside a scary big city where dreams can come true.
"There weren't a lot of multicultural, hip children's books," Gregory said. "I wanted to give them fun, hip books to read - that they would want to read.
"
As for the cheetah thing, Gregory's nickname before all this was "the Leopard Lady." (Now her nickname is "Mama Cheetah.") Her whole house is done in cheetah and leopard prints.
She wears cheetah clothes and cheetah sunglasses and signs autographs with a cheetah pen.
In the beginning, Disney was simply interested in a book series, but Gregory could see the girls becoming a real band. "The whole vision came from the Partridge Family: a fake group touring, in books, in a TV show about themselves.
"
The idea was first pitched to the Disney Channel as a TV show, but that didn't pan out and the project was reworked as an original movie. Raven, who was already all over Disney, was a natural to play Galleria. The movie aired in 2003, the DVD sold more than a million copies, and the soundtrack album went double platinum.
The Cheetah Girls is just one of about 70 original movies made by the Disney Channel in the last nine years. These movies are specifically aimed at "tweeners" - ages 9-11 - "the group that Disney never used to be able to appeal to," said Michael Healy, senior vice president of original movies for the Disney Channel.
And to target tweeners, Disney Channel movies tend to be contemporary, kid-driven and musical.
Very, very musical.
After the epiphany at Disneymania 3, the Cheetah Girls put out a holiday album in 2005, Cheetah-licious Christmas (featuring perhaps the fastest version of Feliz Navidad ever recorded), and toured smaller venues around the country. The second movie, Cheetah Girls 2, set in Spain, aired in August, followed by a soundtrack album and the current big-arena tour.
And the screaming kept getting louder.
The decibel level that can be reached by an arena full of young girls was a shock not just for the band, but for their backstage crew as well. Mostly male.
"It was hilarious to watch them. The first few shows, there was a lot of wincing," said Melissa Wiechmann, co-manager of the band. "Your ears get used to it.
"
What is it about the Cheetah Girls that inspires such adoration from legions of young girls?
"It's being proud of who you are. It's self-empowerment.
Girl power. Being an individual," said Bailon. "We can all celebrate our cultures, and our differences.
We have our own opinions, yet we can come together and do something we love."
For parents, the Cheetahs' music is a logical step up from the Wiggles and Laurie Berkner. The content is safe, and the songs aren't awful.
"The music's pretty cool for the parents, too. It's not like we're doing the Teletubbies or something," said Wiechmann.
When this concert tour is done in February, the girls will head into the studio to record their fourth album, which should be in stores by June or August.
Bailon said the girls will have more of a hand in songwriting and producing on this album. The goal is to get the music played on Top 40 radio, not just Radio Disney, said Wiechmann.
There's also talk of a third Cheetah Girls movie, although nobody is sure if Raven would be in it.
As for Gregory, the author who created the Cheetah Girls, she is writing a new book series called "Catwalk," about a bunch of aspiring fashion designers at Fashion International High School in New York. The kids will seek to rise above using their talent for fashion - much as the Cheetah Girls did with music.
She's not writing for Disney this time, but for Random House, which has signed on for two books.
Gregory is still writing the first one, and is aiming for publication sometime this year.
We can't wait to see if Disney makes a movie out of this one. Just imagine .
.. a cheetah-licious Project Runway!
Adrienne Bailon, who plays Chanel, recently talked about what it's like to be a Cheetah Girl:
Star-Telegram: What's your favorite piece of Cheetah gear?
Bailon: Sabrina's is her Louis Vuitton cheetah bag. Kiely has some Guiseppe Zanotti heels, in red cheetah.
My favorite is a shirt that's part of our new clothing line at Sears. It has "Cheetah Girls" on the front, all in sequins. It's hot pink with gold sequins.
I am obsessed with gold. Anything gold, I love.
S-T: Do you three like to shop?
Bailon: We pull the tour buses over to the Super Wal-Mart at 2 in the morning. We can be in there for hours. We buy comfy clothes for the bus.
DVDs. Electronics. Stuff for our iPods.
Stuff for our computers. Video games to play with the crew.
S-T: Have you ever gotten to see a real cheetah?
Bailon: We got to visit the Cincinnati Zoo, and they have real live cheetahs. They gave us a tour. It was amazing.
We also met the head of the Angel Fund, a foundation that helps save the cheetahs. They're an endangered species. We'd love to be a part of that charity as much as we can.
S-T: What's the hardest part of being a Cheetah Girl?
Bailon: You gotta have energy. It's a lot of hard work.
We spent crazy hours putting this show together. We were very hands-on with the project.
S-T: What's the most fun part of being a Cheetah Girl?
Bailon: Getting to travel. With your best friends!
S-T: You're touring all over Texas: Grand Prairie, Austin, Laredo, San Antonio, El Paso.
Will you get to do any touristy things while you're here?
Bailon: In Corpus Christi, on our last tour, I got a chance to visit the Selena museum. In Houston, there's the Galleria, of course!
(The Cheetah Girl played by Raven is named after the mall.)
S-T: What are you doing when this tour is over?
Bailon: We're going to New York to do some publicity work, then to Barcelona to shoot an episode of Disney 365.
It'll show the places where we lived, where we ate, where we shopped, where we shot some of the scenes for Cheetah Girls 2. Then we're taking a mini-vacation, the three of us girls. A Mediterranean cruise.
I've never been on a cruise!
The Shirelles ushered in the golden age of girl groups with Will You Love Me Tomorrow?
The Supremes were just that, with Diana Ross, Flo Ballard and Mary Wilson.
Martha and the Vandellas had everybody Dancing in the Street.
Josie and the Pussycats purred as a Saturday-morning cartoon girl group.
The Runaways, fronted by Joan Jett, rocked out.
The Go-Go's got the beat, and got noticed because they played their own instruments.
The Bangles walked like Egyptians.
Salt-N-Pepa was one of the first hit female rap acts.
The Pointer Sisters ...
we're so excited!
Wilson Phillips were less famous for their singing than for their rock-star parents and member Carnie Wilson's struggles with her weight.
En Vogue freed our minds with their hip-hop classiness.
TLC invented "new jill swing" but lost Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes in a car crash in 2002.
The Spice Girls really did turn it into Spiceworld, in spite of those ridiculous nicknames (Baby Spice?).
Shonen Knife, a Japanese pop-punk trio, was a favorite of Kurt Cobain's.
Destiny's Child gave birth to the modern R B girl group, and to Beyonce.
The Dixie Chicks proved girl groups could talk politics as well as sing.
SOURCES: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, MTV.com, VH1.com
- Lisa Davis, Special to the Star-Telegram
Wednesday Tuesday Jan.
3 and Jan. 26
7 p.m.
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