‘60 Songs That Explain the ’90s’: Beyoncé, Destiny’s Child, and the ‘Star Search’ Loss That Launched a Kingdom

Grunge. Wu-Tang Clan. Radiohead. “Wonderwall.” The music of the ’90s was as exciting as it was diverse. But what does it say about the era—and why does it still matter? 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s is back for 30 final episodes (and a brand-new book!) to try to answer those questions. Join Ringer music writer and ’90s survivor Rob Harvilla as he treks through the soundtrack of his youth, one song (and embarrassing anecdote) at a time. Follow and listen for free on Spotify. In Episode 102 of 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s—yep, you read that right—we’re covering Destiny’s Child’s “Say My Name.” Below is an excerpt of this episode’s transcript.

Star Search is not in the business of getting it right. Star Search usually screws it up. Star Search screwed it up with her.

Britney Spears. Ten years old. 1992. An extra-truncated and convoluted version of “Love Can Build a Bridge” by the Judds. Ten-year-old Britney Spears chewing through the power lines of that OHHH ANYTHING. She loses. She loses to a bolo-tie-wearing 12-year-old named Marty.

Justin Randall, a.k.a. Justin Timberlake. Eleven years old. Also 1992. Also wearing a bolo tie, along with his giant belt buckle and giant cowboy hat as he awkwardly wrestles Alan Jackson’s “Love’s Got a Hold on You” to a draw. He loses. That’s fine, actually. They screwed it up way worse with her.

Aaliyah. Ten years old. 1989. “My Funny Valentine.” She loses. They all lose, man. You ever notice that? Tiffany loses. Usher loses. Alanis Morissette loses. Christina Aguilera loses. And Ed McMahon also biffs the hell out of her name: Christina Aggie-lara, I don’t think so. LeAnn Rimes loses.

But, OK, all right: There is losing on Star Search, and then there is losing on Star Search and then becoming a global megastar who waits 20 years to sample excerpts from the time you lost on Star Search on a song literally called “***Flawless.”

In the unlikely event that you’re unaware, that song connects to this Star Search business soon. Soonish. Destiny’s Child, the pop-and-R&B group formerly known as Girls Tyme, and most prominently featuring future bonkers solo global superstar Beyoncé, who sampled Girls Tyme losing on Star Search 20 years later on a song called “***Flawless.”

OK. All right. The phrase, the hip-hop rappin’ Girls Tyme is where the trouble starts here on Star Search in the fall of 1992. Girls Tyme is indeed a young group of tween girls from Houston, Texas. Future global superstar Beyoncé Knowles, for example, is 11 years old in this moment. Girls Tyme sings, they dance, they do a modest but in this moment rather overstated amount of hip-hop rappin’. Their membership fluctuates, the exact number of members fluctuates, but most of those other members eventually wash out. Nonetheless, Girls Tyme has been kicking ass on the regional Texas talent-show circuit. They’ve been in a boot-camp-type, Motown-esque training environment for more than a year at this point. They’ve cut an album’s worth of demos out in San Francisco, but can’t get a record deal. They got a manager, they got producers and songwriters, they got investors in the emotional and financial sense, they got a large and loud and fearsome and somewhat malfunctioning Machine built around them, including quite a few of their parents.

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Here on Star Search in the fall of ’92—their big moment, their last shot at fame and fortune, vying for a $100,000 grand prize after having spent most likely way more than $100,000 to even reach this point—Girls Tyme does indeed consist of Beyoncé, LaTavia, Nina, Nikki, Kelly, and Ashley. Beyoncé Knowles and Ashley Davis are the ostensible leaders, the lead singers, though Beyoncé already seems to be soaking up more and more and more of the spotlight, to Ashley’s dismay. And speaking of Ashley’s dismay, after Ed McMahon’s unfortunate hip-hop-rappin’ introduction, it mostly falls to Ashley to provide the hip-hop-rappin’ element of this song, which is called “Talkin’ ’Bout My Baby.” These lines, these bars … How old is the person who wrote these bars? I would believe 11 years old; I would also believe 105 years old.

So there’s a great podcast from 2019 called Making Beyoncé, part of a series of biopic-type podcasts produced by WBEZ in Chicago. This one’s hosted by the great Jill Hopkins. And Making Beyoncé does a fantastic job, and a thorough job, charting the rise and fall of Girls Tyme, and also the rise and fall of the Girls Tyme Machine, all the manager and producer and songwriter types who tried so hard to turn these 9-, 10-, 11-year-old girls into legit major-label pop stars, and failed, and failed right here. The Machine fails on Star Search. Girls Tyme loses on Star Search; the Girls Tyme Machine fails on Star Search. But the Girls Tyme Machine had been breaking down for some time already. The rancor, the infighting, the palace intrigue, the bickering parents, the profanity.

So, Mathew Knowles, father of Beyoncé. The quite successful Xerox sales rep turned legit music mogul Mathew Knowles. Mathew is gonna officially start his journey toward being a legit music mogul any second now. In terms of Girls Tyme performances and photos and such, Mathew feels that Ashley is too tall to be out in front in photographs and onstage, and so Ashley should stand in the back, and Beyoncé (his daughter) should be out in front instead. That’s the vibe when the hip-hop-rappin’ Girls Tyme hit the stage on Star Search. The bitchy and rancorous Girls Tyme Machine is now 10 times louder than the girls themselves. It’s not what you want. Though young Beyoncé does what she can, because that’s what Beyoncé does. Listen to 11-year-old Beyoncé Knowles chewing through the power lines of the word wrong.

Deep in the YouTube comments section, of Girls Tyme on Star Search, there’s a popular comment where somebody says, “Kelly carrying the harmony the entire song.” The fandom gets complicated with this group. The fandom is its own Machine. But we’ve got a catastrophic song-choice issue here. According to that podcast Making Beyoncé, the Girls Tyme Machine decides that Girls Tyme will perform a relatively new hip-hop-rappin’ song called “Talkin’ ’Bout My Baby” on Star Search. But the group had way better and way less awkwardly hip-hop-rappin’-oriented songs, two of which are literally called “Boyfriend” and “Sunshine,” respectively. Either of those would be better. But the Machine wants to save those better songs for the later rounds of Star Search, because there are rounds, right? Maybe? I don’t know. This song is bad, all right? Not the performance, certainly not the dancing, not the singing, not even the hip-hop-rapping. All of that is pretty good to pretty great. The song choice is bad. I’m saying this out loud: Girls Tyme probably shouldn’t have won Star Sear—I can’t say it. Never mind. Forget it. Withdrawn. I didn’t say it. I didn’t say it. Don’t come after me.

Girls Tyme lost on Star Search. Girls Tyme lost on Star Search to an acoustic-based Detroit rock band called Skeleton Crew. If you know that, it’s most likely because Beyoncé told you that. These poor guys just wanted to wear their silk shirts and tastefully flaunt their voluminous mullet-adjacent hairstyles and strum their somewhere between three and 25 acoustic guitars and sing their morose, harmonious, loquacious, actually pretty good songs of mild-to-severe philosophical dissatisfaction. Skeleton Crew. Outta Detroit, Michigan. On that Making Beyoncé podcast, various members of the Girls Tyme Machine recall being displeased to learn that Girls Tyme would be competing on Star Search against a rock band full of 30- or 40-something dudes, and one of the dudes in Skeleton Crew jumps in to clarify that at the time they were all “roundabout late 20s.” Yeah, totally. I can totally relate to that, because I, too, am roundabout late 20s, and I have been so for some time.

I was in a hotel room in New York City in December 2013 on the night Beyoncé surprise released her album Beyoncé, with all the videos, including the “***Flawless” video. I was working for SPIN magazine, I was in the content business, and I distinctly remember, I am casually browsing Twitter and I am informed that Beyoncé has just surprise released a full audio-visual album and I go Oh fuck. I love that album; it’s my favorite Beyoncé album if you want the truth, but speaking as a content generator, that surprise Beyoncé drop was a Code Red, extinction-level event. And I could hear, from my New York City hotel room, the sonic boom caused by every magazine and website editor on earth emailing the acoustic-based Detroit rock band Skeleton Crew for comment about their appearance in the Beyoncé song “***Flawless.” You could hear all 10 million interview-request emails hitting Skeleton Crew’s probably AOL inbox simultaneously, like SHHHHBBBBBBBWWWWWW.

I emailed them, or I hope I did. And Skeleton Crew talked, man. Skeleton Crew understood that beating Beyoncé’s old group on Star Search is the one concrete fact everyone knows about Skeleton Crew, unless you are married to a member of Skeleton Crew. Skeleton Crew drummer Greg Tyler, talking to People magazine, he says, “We don’t have any grand illusions. This is Beyoncé’s story, and obviously our ‘destiny’ was to play a part in it. If that experience helped to shape her and make her into what she is now, then what more can we ask?” These poor guys. I can think of a few more things they could’ve asked for, but that’s quite gracious of him, I suppose. Meanwhile, as Greg himself suggests, we turn our attention now to Beyoncé’s destiny.

The short version is that Girls Tyme loses on Star Search, and Mathew Knowles goes up to Star Search host Ed McMahon and he’s like, What the hell am I supposed to do now with these super-talented crying 11-year-old girls with no record deal? And Ed says words to the effect of, Well, we screw it up a lot, and most people who win this show don’t amount to much pop-stardom-wise, so to quote notable Star Search not-winner Aaliyah, in an Aaliyah song that’s coming out like eight years from now, if at first you don’t succeed, dust yourself off and try again. Which is pretty cool and prescient of Ed to say all that, and Mathew interprets all that as Ed giving his blessing to Mathew’s semi-hostile takeover of Girls Tyme.

Mathew is now comanager, along with original manager Andretta Tillman, who dies of lupus in 1997. The group sheds several members, including poor, tall, hip-hop-rappin’ Ashley Davis, whose parents, I think, play some part in her leaving Girls Tyme. Ashley is now better known as Támar Davis, who goes on to work with Prince and eventually has a way better talent-show experience on The Voice. Támar Davis is great. The group is now a quartet consisting of explicit focal point Beyoncé Knowles, Kelly Rowland, LaTavia Roberson, and new member LeToya Luckett. Also, this group is now called Destiny’s Child. Their first album, also called Destiny’s Child, comes out in 1998, and starts with a song called “Second Nature,” and that was all way too long to be the short version, but this is really good, actually.

To hear the full episode, click here. Subscribe here and check back every Wednesday for new episodes. And to preorder Rob’s new book, Songs That Explain the ’90s, visit the Hachette Book Group website.