Jennifer Weiner Goes Behind the Music in a Tale of Estranged Sisters
Twenty years ago, the music industry was still fairly flush. There were big budgets for videos, wardrobe and the wooing of press and radio programmers. Stars were made on the road and cemented their followings via monoliths like MTV's 'Total Request Live.' It's an era Jennifer Weiner revisits with nostalgia and a touch of sourness in her latest novel, 'The Griffin Sisters' Greatest Hits.'
Cherry is a 2024 teen with rock-star dreams who believes her destiny will be fulfilled if she can appear on a reality-TV singing competition called 'The Next Stage.' She knows her mother, Zoe, has a past in music — one she refuses to discuss — in a beloved, short-lived 2000s band called the Griffin Sisters, and that the other sister, Cassie, has been M.I.A. for years.
In chunks dedicated mainly to that trio that hop around from the 1980s to nearly today, the sisters' stories are revealed. Zoe was the pretty one; Cassie, the talented one, and Weiner hammers the note underscoring her physical unattractiveness until it's tuneless. Zoe lures her prodigy of a younger sibling out of the house to perform at a battle of the bands, and the nephew of a record label executive happens to catch their set.
The sisters are swiftly signed, given a new name (Grossberg was a little too Jewish) and paired with a songwriter named Russell D'Angelo who joins their band, uniting them in song while dividing them in lust for his attention.
As the Griffin Sisters hit larger stages and their profile swells, Zoe claims Russell and their relationship generates tabloid headlines, but she's increasingly relegated to a backing role in the group. Cassie, who is continually described as a 'fat girl' with untamed hair, is outfitted in a series of bulky pantsuits with 'absurd shoulder pads,' but it's her poetic lyrics that entrance their zealous fans.
So what does this mind-blowing music sound like? This is where Weiner, a steadily best-selling writer who can easily coax the reader along despite the sneaking suspicion we know where this 'Behind the Music' is headed, falls off.
We're told the band's only album, 'Night Ride,' sold 13 million copies in the year following its 2003 release, and its sound is described in magazine and newspaper reviews dotted throughout. The group's aesthetic 'walks the line between pop and rock,' The Philadelphia Inquirer reports. (Hmm.) Cassie's voice is a revelation, melding Aretha Franklin, Mariah Carey, Chrissie Hynde and Liz Phair (but she 'has a sound all her own'). Her lyrics are so raw, they capture fans' fears and desires in couplets worthy of tattoos. (One can only hope that even in this fictional world, nobody inked 'You're a star / You're a scar / And you tore me apart' onto their flesh.)
Sarah Seltzer's 2024 'The Singer Sisters' also spins a novel out of the secrets and songwriting of a family band, including a daughter trying to make a name for herself while leaning on its legacy. The sisters there were '70s folkies; the daughter a '90s alt-rocker; and the lyrics a whole lot stronger. Songwriting is not easy!
Cass Elliot, a seeming analogue for Cassie, does come up in Weiner's book, but the Mamas & the Papas singer was outgoing and unrestrained. Cassie (and everyone else) is punished after she finally pursues pleasure beyond her art. And as Zoe's selfishness meets increasing self-doubt, she becomes the ugly one.
When the band blows up amid tragedy, Zoe shoves her once-starry persona aside and embraces suburban life with a well-meaning husband and his creepy son, who leers at Cherry. Cassie splits for rural Alaska.
Though she goes to extreme lengths to preserve her anonymity, the gifted sister is guilted into singing to an employee at a grocery store celebrating a lonely birthday, and a video briefly ends up on Facebook. Cherry seizes on the digital breadcrumb and hunts down the aunt she's never met to bolster her chances on 'The Next Stage,' and everyone is forced to confront their pasts, and their present.
Weiner has a clear affection for music, and a strong enough sense of the currents undergirding the business — at least, in the early 2000s. (Why Cherry would be hoping for TV fame rather than a viral TikTok moment is unclear.) But 'The Griffin Sisters' Greatest Hits' isn't grimy like a rock 'n' roll novel, or a deep meditation on the ways creative personalities and egos can clash, like the Broadway hit 'Stereophonic.' Still, familiar tunes that go down easy often turn into big hits.
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A recipient of the Annabelle Bonner Medal and a nationally acclaimed journalist, she covers sex, relationships, identity, and adolescence. Her work has appeared in Vogue, Teen Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Nylon, Bustle, and more. Her debut novel, A Hundred Other Girls, was published in July 2022 to critical acclaim. You can connect with her on Instagram and TikTok.
