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The Liberty Belles are an American idol girl group collective that is based out of Washington, D.C. The collective is currently signed to Universal Playback (a subsidiary of Universal Studios, which in turn is a subsidiary of Astrodyne, Inc.), and is comprised of more than 150 separate units that can be found across the Solar System, with nearly 2,000 individual current members. The subsidiary groups perform songs and dance routines that draw from a core canon, and each group also has its own unique songs and styles. The Liberty Belles are known for their patriotic lyrics and routines; many of the groups are connected to various national parks, monuments and cities and have routines that are semi-educational in nature, such as minstrel retellings of Washington’s Crossing of the Delaware or the Battle of the Alamo or Operation Overlord. Those Liberty Belles are also connected to the natural avatar of the park or monument, serving as a younger, sexier mascot for the park.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The Liberty Belles and their associated acts are extremely popular. The core group is comprised of 13 members (most girls retire as singers and dancers by age 24) and release singles and albums on a continuous basis. Since being signed by Universal Playback in 2119, they’ve had 23 singles chart in the top 10 the Billboard Hot 100, including 17 that have hit number one and have spent a cumulative 51 weeks at number one. The other associate acts have contributed a further 12 singles to the top 10 and an additional 62 singles to the regional Billboard top 10s. They have also had incredible critical success; they’ve won 13 Grammy Awards on 25 nominations, and have even won 2 Academy Awards for Best Original Song. The most successful solo member is probably the group’s captain, Columbine, who had a banner year in 2134: she swept the Grammies for Best Record, Album of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance; had 3 number one singles off a number one album; and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Support Actress. The Belles have also branched out to other mediums, including television and film--many older and retired Belles can be found across Universal Studios’ television series and films.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Their most popular non-music property is the smash hit
The Next Liberty Belle, a reality show that takes a large group of candidates and has America whittle it down to one, who is signed as a member of the Liberty Belles--the show has been in the top 3 of television ratings since it premiered in 2124, and it has an average weekly viewership of more than 125 million. While each season winner has been signed to a contract and have seen success, contestants who were voted out early are sometimes offered contracts at a later date. Since 2131, NBC has aired regional versions of
The Next Liberty Belle, which has also proven to be a ratings bonanza.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The Liberty Belles and their associated acts have home theaters where they perform live, and they also have frequent tours. The tours are more general, performing core songs and also individual group songs, while their home theater performances are more specialized, with more specific, historic and patriotic routines. The groups perform for heads of state and other important guests, and their annual Fourth of July concerts are considered the hottest tickets in town. Concerts are also aired on television, almost always on one NBC station or another. Charity is another huge party of the Liberty Belles identity; they have performed thousands of shows for the USO, have granted hundreds of Make-a-Wish wishes and raised almost $25 million for the Wounded Warrior Foundation since entering a partnership with that group in 2126. [FONT="]Universal Playback has also allowed the group and its membe[FONT="]rs to appear in recruiting videos f[FONT="]or the U.S. [FONT="]Armed Forces and the Minutemen (most [FONT="]recently, [FONT="]s[FONT="]everal members had prominent roles in the film
Baptism of Fire about the Ionian Mutiny[FONT="], for which they provided the t[FONT="]heme song).[/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT="]The group began as the brainchild of Astrodyne executive Gus Pressler in 2117. While it began as a normal idol girl group, it quickly came to the attention of Astrodyne president Scot Burr, who, by this time, had taken a keen interest in human cloning and genetic modification. The first generation of Liberty Belles were regular girls, but each successive generation has seen more and more genetically tweaked members who fall within a preferred range of height, weight, body shape, coordination, balance and vocal skills. Astrodyne has also made successive generations more and more racially ambiguous in an attempt to create the ideal American race. A recent report by the Arabian Ministry of Culture labeled the Liberty Belles and the Battleship Girls as “two of the most dangerous tools of American propaganda in the world today”. Despite that report and attempted censorship, the Liberty Belles had 3 top 10 hits in the UAR in 2134.[/FONT]