Music: The Authentic Girls

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Since The Catcher in the Rye (or perhaps Beowulf), high school kids have loved to rail against phonies. Rappers and rockers know this and sell themselves to teens by talking about how "real" they are. But recent teen-pop acts like Britney Spears made their fortunes off even younger audiences who craved fantasy figures. Authenticity be damned--stylists picked their sex-bomb outfits, choreographers gave them graceful routines, songwriters wrote their PG-13 come-ons. So it wasn't surprising that last year, when the fans of teen pop hit Holden Caulfield's age, its sales dropped about 50%.

"No disrespect to the Britneys and whatnot, but there's a backlash to that kind of music," says Beth Halper, the DreamWorks A.-and-R. executive who signed Nelly Furtado. That backlash has taken the form of three solo artists who might be termed the Authentic Girls: Michelle Branch, 19, whose CD The Spirit Room has sold close to a million copies since August, according to SoundScan; Vanessa Carlton, 21, whose first effort, Be Not Nobody, has sold 300,000 copies in its three months of release; and Avril Lavigne, 17, whose first album, Let Go, debuted at No. 8 on the Billboard 200 this month. They're young popstresses who write their own songs, play instruments, claim to wear whatever they damn well please, don't dance, and love nothing better than puncturing others' pretensions. They sing pop rock that's gentle enough for ears reared on Mandy Moore but organic and free-range enough--favoring drums and guitar over synthesizers--for Tori Amos fans. Their battle cry could be worded: "To your own self be, like, mega true."

Lavigne's first single, Complicated, features lyrics like "You're makin' me/ Laugh out loud when you strike your pose/ Take off all your preppy clothes/ You know you're not fooling/ Anyone when you become/ Somebody else, 'round everyone else." Holden, get her number. The same goes for Branch, who kicks off her single All You Wanted with the lines "I wanted to be like you/ I wanted everything/ So I tried to be like you/ And I got swept away." Carlton's very album title--Be Not Nobody--is self-esteem-workshop poetry.

In the words of A&M Records president Ron Fair, who has produced both Carlton and teen-pop goddess Christina Aguilera, "The same kids who two years ago were buying 'N Sync and Christina Aguilera records are responding to styles of music that are more song- and artist-driven. They're two years older, and the realism of singers singing their own songs has a lot of appeal. They haven't heard that music sung by their peers before."