Okay, so my usual taste in music is pretty odd. I like weird, artsy crap or musical contradictions like "dance-punk." It wasn't always like that, however... I used to like...not-so-good music. Admit it. When we were kids we ALL listened to the Spice Girls, we would fight with our friends about which was better: N'Sync or the Backstreet Boys, and you loved Britney Spears... the virginal "I'm oh so innocent" one... before she got "not that innocent." Back when she was indeed a girl and in no way a woman.
Well, while I was looking up crappy boy bands on YouTube to try and get my fix of nostalgia I thought of something: GENRE! The boy band is such a concrete genre... pliable, yet consistent. There was always the pretty blonde boy (the most likely to get a solo career later on), the one that turns out to be gay a few years down the road (not always, but more frequently than you think), the one that seemed just a bit too old and awkward to be there (but secetly this one was the best singer). Regardless, there were dozens of personality classifications, but they were there.
This all started after the death of disco. The genre had been highly producer-driven, but now people were blowing up Gloria Gaynor records and producers needed a new way to satisfy their inner control freak. Then one day an ingenious producer realized that you could sell records with a few pretty faces and dance moves... New Kids on the Block was born. After only a brief hiatus since the death of disco, the producer had one again seized control of the music charts and throughout the nineties, groups reigned supreme. You didn't have to be able to play an instrument, you just had to dance and sing in unison... easy.
Here's what's so interesting about this... even though the members of boy bands were cardboard cutouts, people were tricked into believing they had personalities. "The Bad Boy," "The Innocent One," "The Older Brother-Type." They were so generic but thousands of preeteen girls and... err... sexually-confused boys were smitten.
I should end this. It is getting rather long, but I'm going to open this for debate. Thoughts?
2gether was a pretty good spoof of the boy band and sort of continues what i've discussed here
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More food for thought, while Orlando may be notorious for spawning numerous boy bands, Boston is actually the birthplace of the boy band. Arguably the first boy band, New Edition, started in Boston as well as the first "modern" boy band, New Kids on the Block...
Awesome Rob. Awesome.
I'd like to proclaim, however, that I avoided the shitty music fads in my childhood. I was brought up with The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Pink Floyd and other classic rock and it's been that way my whole life.
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