And break out the slap bracelets — the glossy sitcom was just renewed for a second season.

But while incisive pop culture references and sharp writing are hallmarks of any show bearing the pedigree of Tina Fey and Robert Carlock (“30 Rock,” “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”), “Girls5eva” benefits from an even more impressive background cast.

Credit: Heidi Gutman/Peacock

Credit: Heidi Gutman/Peacock

Created by Meredith Scardino (whose bona fides include years of writing for David Letterman, “The Colbert Report” and also “Kimmy Schmidt”), “Girls5eva” shares its executive producer credits with David Miner (“30 Rock,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine”), Eric Gurian (“30 Rock,” “Kimmy Schmidt”) and Jeff Richmond, Fey’s composer/producer husband.

Richmond, who spent a chunk of this century writing music for “Saturday Night Live,” is also responsible for the whimsical musical backdrops of “30 Rock,” “Kimmy Schmidt,” “Mr. Mayor” and Fey’s Tony-nominated “Mean Girls,” among other projects.

But among the many allures of “Girls5eva,” the songs created by Richmond and Scardino deservedly own the show.

And that’s no easy task given the impressive resumes of the cast: Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles (the self-doubting Dawn), Broadway mainstay Renee Elise Goldsberry (fierce glam girl Wickie), “SNL” vet Paula Pell (lesbian dentist Gloria) and comedic actress Busy Philipps (the “hot one,” Summer). As the story goes, the onetime fifth member of the group, Ashley, died in a tragic infinity pool accident; she is memorialized on a bench purchased by her groupmates.

As Girls5eva attempt to mount a comeback in their 40′s after a rapper samples their breakout ’90s hit, “Famous 5eva,” and pushes their name back into the pop lexicon, the women are torn between trotting out the “Total Request Live”-era favorites (“Dream Girlfriend,” “Space Boys”) and writing new material (“I’m Afraid [Dawn’s Song of Fears]”) and what will become their new anthem, “4 Stars.”

Many of the well-crafted songs are available on the “Girls5eva: Music from the Peacock Original Series” soundtrack, including the genuinely gorgeous “New York Lonely Boy,” a Simon & Garfunkel-inspired ballad written by Richmond and Scardino and performed by The Milk Carton Kids.

In a recent interview, the gregarious Richmond talked about creating the music for the show.

Q: When you were writing the “hits” of the girls’ glory days, which ’90s-era artists did you draw from and how much listening did you do?

A: I wish I could say I was this musicologist geek who dug deep into it! I listened to the Spice Girls and Destiny’s Child, but a lot of that (knowledge) goes back to the days of “SNL” because I had to listen to what was current then. I wanted (these songs) to have a legitimate sound and be radio-play earworms. All of the guys who wrote those songs leave you a road map — they’re using this chord progression and that hook and what you hope you can do is take that and make it sound like you added a little something to it. The world might have been bubblegum-y, but they got your attention.

Q: Some episodes had fully formed songs, but others had snippets, like “Rekindling,” which probably takes just as much work to write. Did you and Meredith write everything as full songs and then cut them when necessary?

A: We had very few full songs, even halfway through the season. With the popularity of people putting out soundtracks for TV shows, we started thinking, we can’t have a bunch of half-songs! As we started editing, we thought we could use the end credits to lay in some full songs there. So after we were done shooting and mixing, we were beginning to write full-length songs from the things we had snippets of in the beginning.

Q: How did you get The Milk Carton Kids involved?

A: They’re old friends with Sara (Bareilles) from about 10 years ago. We were cutting the episode that had the shorter version of “New York Lonely Boy” and using my ridiculous vocals and during mixing we said, we need to find somebody to record this and we should quickly write a full song. I called Sara and she said, “Milk Carton Kids.” I listened to them and said, “They’re perfect.” We called them on a Friday and they were into it and they did their cover of the song the following week.

Q: You worked with Sara on “I’m Afraid,” but did she have much other input given her songwriting background?

A: Absolutely. It depended where we were in the scene and how things were moving along. As the storyline progressed and Sara’s character began to find her own voice and wants to write songs, that’s how we got to “I’m Afraid.” I said to Sara, I hear the words and the chord progression and she took it and sang her melodic thing over that. It’s so much her. She found a way to phrase certain things that weren’t rhymes, but she would elongate certain words.

Credit: Heidi Gutman/Peacock

Credit: Heidi Gutman/Peacock

Q: How much of the music was recorded in the studio ahead of filming?

A: We knew with protocol safety it would be great if we weren’t singing a lot (on the set) so we tried to get as much pre-recorded as we could. Before the first week of shooting we were able to get stuff recorded for the first three episodes, but after that, a lot of stuff was sung on the floor with an earpiece on the day of filming. Because of COVID (lockdowns), whenever we were singing something live on the floor, the whole crew would just stop and cry because they hadn’t been exposed to people doing music and people were still in trauma from the pandemic. And when you stick Sara and Renee at the piano to sing this little Frank Loesser song, “Heart and Soul,” then everybody on the floor is wiping tears from their eyes.

Other music-centric TV offerings:

Credit: Laura Radford/Peacock

Credit: Laura Radford/Peacock

“We Are Lady Parts”

Also currently on Peacock resides the charming “We Are Lady Parts,” a British sitcom that revolves around a punk rock band comprised of Muslim women. Rooted by standout Anjana Vasan as Amina Hussain, a studious microbiology student aiming for a Ph.D. who teaches guitar but has a bit of stage fright when it comes to performing, the show is both joyful and heartfelt. Amina’s new bandmates — some of whom are wary of adding her to the group of Lady Parts despite their desperation for a guitarist, include fierce singer Saira (Sarah Kameela Impey), steely-eyed drummer Ayesha (Juliette Motamed) and ever-Zen bassist Bisma (Faith Omole). Whether screeching rugged punk songs such as “Voldemort Under My Head Scarf” or enjoying a group car singalong to The Proclaimers’ “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” with admirable fervency, the group is a hoot. That Amina is also balancing university life with her prim squad of friends and seeking a future husband in her spare time only increases the show’s sincerity.

Credit: Courtesy Netflix

Credit: Courtesy Netflix

“This Is Pop”

On June 22, Netflix debuts the eight-part series, “This Is Pop,” which spotlights musical touchstones such as the arrival of Auto-Tune and the ’90s proliferation of Brit Pop, as well as how race, class and sex factor into popular music. A rare interview with ABBA’s Benny Andersson highlights the “Stockholm Syndrome” episode (a deep dive into Swedish pop), while the engaging T-Pain shares, with much lamentation in the “Auto-Tune” installment, how Usher chastised him for propagating the use of the singing software (Usher told T-Pain that he “[expletive] up music”). The series kicks off with “The Boyz II Men Effect,” which finds the group’s Nate Morris, Wanya Morris and Shawn Stockman revisiting their Philadelphia roots, but also segueing into the harmonizers’ effect on fellow crooners such as 98 Degrees (yes, we have a Nick Lachey sighting). “This Is Pop” includes episodes about the evolution of country music (“When Country Goes Pop”); the history of the Brill Building, the New York songwriting mecca of the 1950s and 1960s (“The Brill Building in 4 Songs”); the progression of festivals, from Monterey Pop to Bonnaroo (“Festival Rising”); and the balancing act of protest songs that also become pop hits (“What Can A Song Do?”).