I love the Bangles, and the one thing that stands out to me is just how under-rated and overlooked they are as a band.

It is overwhelmingly apparent how erased The Bangles are from the mosaic of ‘female’ led rock like the world jumped straight from the Runaways into the 90’s Riot Grrrl without a link in between and the Bangles more than deserve their place in rock.

When you mention the band to anyone, they will offer up some recognition of them being an 80s band (or “girl group”) and I guarantee you that they will follow up their sentence with ‘Eternal Flame’ and/or ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’, or Manic Monday; and that deeply saddens me. I love the band but these songs are not an accurate representation of who the Bangles were.

The Bangles rocked harder than a lot of people will ever acknowledge them for, from the enmity of women playing rock to the way they were often cast aside as some cute gimmick with novelty songs. There is a much richer backstory to the band than just the songs which get radio play. The Bangles were a guitar band!

I created this space in March 2014 to right some of the wrongs I was tired of seeing. My desire then remains the same as now, to create an accessible space with as much factual and interesting information about one of my all-time favourite bands.

Why “Bang go the Bangles”?

I have been asked this question over the years and it still amuses me.

When I was trying to come up with the title for an online archive dedicated to the Bangles, I thought of the connotations of an explosion, something with impact, think a Roy Lichtenstein painting. The expression “bang go the bells” was known to me at the time and I thought, ‘why not add a Bangles flair?‘

I always thought it held the same punchy connotations as one of the band’s early names (The Bangs). It felt like a faithful homage and, well, it just stuck!

Show your support!

Since we began as a tumblr blog in 2014 our site has been purely funded by love and dontations from fellow fans.

If you take any of our scans/resources or researched information, we kindly request that you have the courtesy to credit our website where used.

If you appreciate what we are doing, please consider making a small donation.

All donations are gratefully appreciated and go towards the cost of our domain fees, sourcing rarities like unseen photographs and other assorted media, future posts and further research.

A donation can be made via PayPal using: paypal.me/bgtbarchives