{"id":413372,"date":"2025-09-10T14:45:22","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T14:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/413372\/"},"modified":"2025-09-10T14:45:22","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T14:45:22","slug":"we-were-ready-to-be-the-next-spice-girls-x-cetra-the-y2k-girl-group-earning-cult-fame-25-years-late-pop-and-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/413372\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We were ready to be the next Spice Girls\u2019: X-Cetra, the Y2K girl group earning cult fame 25 years late | Pop and rock"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like an outsider art version of Sugababes, or kids singing over Depeche Mode ringtones, there\u2019s something both familiar and odd about Summer 2000<\/a> by X-Cetra. Recorded by four preteens in Y2K California, the album distils sleepovers, crushes and butterfly clips into 11 tracks of bedroom pop and Windows 95 R&B, equal parts carefree and gravely serious.<\/p>\n

Only 20 CD-R copies were ever made. But a still-unknown person posted one of them online in 2001, and by 2020 the girls \u2013 now women \u2013 were astonished to find it being discussed on muso forum Rate Your Music. \u201cPure creative expression of these preteen best friends who love each other and wanted to make art together, and that\u2019s so beautiful,\u201d says one user there; \u201cDefinitely on the poppier side of \u2018accidentally avant garde music made by children\u2019,\u201d says another.<\/p>\n

US label Numero approached them about properly releasing the album, which came out on vinyl \u2013 with matching nail polish \u2013 in January and has further grown X-Cetra\u2019s cult following. (The 1975 frontman Matty Healy was spotted picking up a copy in an LA record shop.) Now the band are back together and the subject of a forthcoming documentary. \u201cIt\u2019s been amazing to reconnect musically and creatively with these girls \u2013 we\u2019ve already made two songs,\u201d says member Jessica Hall.<\/p>\n

X-Cetra were four childhood friends, aged between nine and 11: Hall, Ayden Mayeri, and sisters Mary and Janet Washburn. \u201cThere were lots of adventures,\u201d says Mary of \u201ciconic\u201d 90s summers spent in their home town of Santa Rosa. \u201cWe were talking to boys and eventually going to the mall and stuff, but we were also still able to access imagination and play.\u201d The inseparable four formed their own dance troupe and made lo-fi movies, which usually involved \u201ca mistaken identity or gang members, and always murder\u201d, according to Hall. \u201cIt\u2019s that perfect age where you\u2019re not self-conscious about it, you\u2019re just ferociously making stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Ferociously making stuff\u2019 \u2026 (top) Ayden Mayeri and Jessica Hall and (bottom) Janet and Mary Washburn of X-Cetra.<\/p>\n

When the girls started writing songs, they approached Mary and Janet\u2019s mother Robin O\u2019Brien<\/a>, a musician active on the home taping scene in the 1980s. \u201cOur mom is very respectful of children\u2019s personhood and was not condescending,\u201d Mary says of the album\u2019s recording. \u201cShe wanted to represent us in a very authentic way.\u201d O\u2019Brien helped the girls fit their lyrics and melodies to pre-recorded tracks by a German friend, musician Achim Treu. The album\u2019s resulting disjointed oddness is striking, rather like a sassier version of reality TV star Farrah Abraham\u2019s outsider pop classic My Teenage Dream Ended. Speechless has a lugubrious reggae beat; Promises matches girl-group harmonies with ultra-minimal guitar; Wonderland \u201cis using Alice-in-Wonderland imagery to talk about the discomfort of growing up\u201d, says Hall.<\/p>\n

Mayeri says the Y2K era \u201cis so popular right now with young people, but it\u2019s all very commercial stuff being recreated\u201d \u2013 see the remake of I Know What You Did Last Summer, or how pop star Addison Rae channels peak Britney. X-Cetra were drawing from a \u201cwhole quilt of stuff we were listening to, ways we were dressing, and things we were doing that you only really know about if you were there,\u201d she says. As well as the Spice Girls, Mariah Carey and Ace of Base, the girls were into Fiona Apple, the Space Jam soundtrack and Pure Moods mail-order CDs. They loved The Craft (\u201cwe were doing seances all the time\u201d says Mary) as much as Titanic. \u201cWe were distilling what we saw in the culture,\u201d says Mayeri. \u201cIt came out in a warped way because we didn\u2019t understand the context. The situations weren\u2019t relatable, but the feelings were.\u201d<\/p>\n

The band\u2019s lyrics pull from a mix of childhood experience and imagined adulthood. The breezy girlishness of Summer 2000\u2019s title track (\u201cparty \u2019til two, sleep \u2019til one\u201d) is followed by trip-hop and, on Conversation, themes of domestic violence. \u201cThe lyrics can be jarring for people: how do these kids know about these adult topics?\u201d Janet says. \u201cA lot of them are about what we thought could happen in adult relationships. [That age] is such a weird time of mystery and intrigue, with all this unknown stuff ahead of you \u2013 it\u2019s exciting but scary.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

X-Cetra: Summer Forever \u2013 video<\/p>\n

Janet says X-Cetra were \u201cready to become the next Spice Girls\u201d, but after the album was finished, they almost immediately disowned it \u2013 a combination of the rapid self-consciousness of turning 13, and their confusion at the \u201cdissonant and haunted\u201d sound of an album that they hoped would resemble the polished pop they heard on the radio. \u201cWe wanted to sound like hot teens and good singers,\u201d says Mary. \u201cWe sounded like ourselves, which was uncomfortable.\u201d The girls grew up, went to college and left their home town, pursuing careers in tech (Hall), finance (Janet), publishing (Mary) and acting (Mayeri, whose TV and film credits include New Girl and Veep).<\/p>\n

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X-Cetra today \u2026 (l to r) Ayden, Mary, Jessica and Janet Photograph: Jasmine Archie<\/p>\n

Although they never lost touch in adulthood, retaining what Janet calls a \u201cfamilial\u201d relationship beyond the two sisters, the rediscovery and reissue of Summer 2000 has brought them closer. \u201cThe four of us hadn\u2019t been talking regularly for decades until this happened, and now we\u2019re talking every day,\u201d says Mayeri. She is co-producing the upcoming documentary about the band, which will feature their home movies from the time, as well as the new music they made after getting together to film reunion footage last year. \u201cWe got back together in our home town and it was four days of sleepover energy,\u201d says Mayeri. \u201cWe choreographed a dance; we wrote a song with Robin, to see if we could. It was scary as none of us identify as singers, but exciting.\u201d They\u2019ve since done a second session with producer Owen Jackson and songwriter Alexandra Veltri, who has credits with Y2K icons Paris Hilton and Heidi Montag.<\/p>\n

Becoming X-Cetra again has been a full circle moment for the four friends, now in their 30s, creating without the self-consciousness that can plague teens and twentysomethings. \u201cOnce puberty hits you start obsessing about being cool, you get boy-crazy, and all of the creativity goes away,\u201d says Hall. \u201cI completely abandoned a very important part of myself, something that really lit me up as a kid. And now it\u2019s shoving itself back into my life.\u201d Mayeri agrees: \u201cIn your 20s you\u2019re trying on different personalities, then in your 30s, you\u2019re like, I just want to be who I really am. It\u2019s been a homecoming for us to all reconnect to that and to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

The documentary is almost finished, and the band are keen to continue making music. \u201cWe\u2019re still figuring out our collective identity as musicians now,\u201d says Mary. A quarter of a century since Summer 2000, the four friends\u2019 connection and creativity are still palpable \u2013 as the Spice Girls said, friendship never ends. \u201cWe\u2019re all in,\u201d says Janet. \u201cI want to be making an album when we\u2019re 70.\u201d<\/p>\n

Summer 2000 is out now on Numero Group<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Like an outsider art version of Sugababes, or kids singing over Depeche Mode ringtones, there\u2019s something both familiar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":413373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-413372","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115180544239607444","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}