The sisterhood is strong on En Vogue’s tour with TLC and Salt-N-Pepa
When “Born To Sing,” En Vogue’s 1990 debut, was released, the quartet of Dawn Robinson, Cindy Herron, Maxine Jones and Terry Ellis came away with a quartet of Billboard magazine chart-topping singles and laid the groundwork for being one of the most successful girl groups of the hip-hop era.
Fast forward to 2026 and En Vogue has sold 20 million albums globally and the group has wound up second to only the Supremes for No. 1 singles. The current chapter of the En Vogue story finds the trio of Herron, Ellis and Jones hitting the road with fellow ‘90s female acts TLC and Salt-N-Pepa on a tour that brings them to Synovus Bank Amphitheater at Chastain Park on Friday. With this much musical firepower on stage, Herron is eager to not only dip into her own group’s canon, but share the night with her sisters in soul.
“For this tour, you’ll not only get our greatest hits, but you’ll also get a nice mix and interaction onstage of us with TLC and Salt-N-Pepa at different moments,” Herron said. “You may have us all on stage at the same time at some point during the concert.
“I think it’s going to be really great,” she said. “We’re all like sisters. We all admire and support each other, and that’s a good thing. We just anticipate it being a strong female empowerment moment, but it’ll definitely have broad appeal. It’ll appeal to men and women alike.”
The ties that bind En Vogue with its co-headliners go back three decades plus.
“The first time we met Salt-N-Pepa was after we agreed that we would record ‘Whatta Man,’” Herron recalled. “We were not in the studio with them, and they were not in the studio with us. We recorded our parts at different times. We had a meeting, and I think it was in New York. We all met at a restaurant to just meet in person, have dinner and talk about the video and concept. We had a look at a book of different makeup artists and hair people. That was our first meeting. And with TLC — we met them briefly, and I believe it was at an awards show — we took pictures somewhere on the red carpet or backstage sometime around 1993.”
Herron’s own musical journey began in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she and her sister’s earliest musical memories centered around radio and TV of the early ‘70s.
“My earliest musical memory was when I was probably around 7, and we were getting ready for school and some of the hits from the musical ‘Hair’ would come on the radio every morning,” she said. “I remember all of that music, and I remember my mom and her best friend watching the ‘Tom Jones Show.’ I also remember me and my sister and her friends would watch ‘The Monkees.’ Then, I had memories of the Jackson 5. That was my number one.”
The combination of musical theater and the Jackson 5 set the tone for Herron’s future musical aspirations. While her stage debut came in an elementary school Christmas music special when she was only 5, the rabid Michael Jackson fan really hit her stride when she started regularly attending a musical theater summer camp.
“I would attend that camp every summer,” she said. “When I turned 14, my first musical theater performance was in a show called ‘The Education of Junebug.’ And it was at the San Francisco Bayview Opera House.”
When the Oakland-based production and songwriting duo Denzil Foster and Thomas McElroy announced they were forming a girl group, Herron, Ellis, Jones and Robinson were recruited and dubbed En Vogue. After the quartet’s sophomore bow, “Funky Divas,” came out in 1992, the musicians were suddenly on a rocket ride of success and fame. A multiplatinum success that earned En Vogue a second consecutive Grammy nod for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals, “Divas” yielded a pair of top 10 American hits (“My Lovin’ [You’re Never Gonna Get It]” and “Giving Him Something He Can Feel”) along with critical acclaim for the group’s soulful covers of material by the Beatles and Curtis Mayfield.
For Herron, the project’s rapid success was an unexpected and welcome payoff for the sweat equity the ladies put in with Foster and McElroy. “I loved the music we recorded, but I knew it was going to depend on a lot of factors for that album to take off,” she said. “I didn’t want to get my hopes up too high. Everything took off so fast that we were playing catch-up that whole year. It was like a whirlwind that was exciting and a great learning experience. We were traveling to places that we’d never been. It was a lot of work, too.”
Over time, En Vogue’s lineup has changed. Robinson departed in 1997 while occasionally returning in subsequent years, leaving Ellis, Herron and Jones to move forward as a trio. Vocalists Amanda Cole and Rhona Bennett came through the ranks and even Jones left for a decade, before returning in 2025, a development Herron welcomed.
“Having Maxine back, it’s like we never skipped a beat,” Herron said. “She just slid right in and did what she does. It’s great to have her back.”
CONCERT PREVIEW
TLC and Salt-N-Pepa with En Vogue
7:30 p.m. Friday. Resale tickets starting at $58.06. Synovus Bank Amphitheater at Chastain Park, 4469 Stella Drive, Atlanta. ticketmaster.com.