When boybands hit the buffers, record companies looked for a fresh type of group - and came up with guitar-wielding pop stars, according to Simon Warner, lecturer in pop music at Leeds University.
Both North and South and 5ive are derivatives of the Spice Girls: whereas most recent boybands have been uniform boys in uniform clothes, these two bands, like the Spice Girls, are made up of carefully distinguished individuals.
On its first two albums, Sweden's Shout Out Louds followed a similar formula by updating the dour post-punk of bands like The Cure and Joy Division with ragged guitar riffs, clean production and girl-boy vocal harmonies from singers Bebban Stenborg and Adam Olenius.