…this is where this blog starts, but there’s no guarantee it’s going to end in the same place.
I don’t remember the exact quote.
But he said in an article a couple weeks ago how every decade has a boyband and there hasn’t been a major one since One Direction. A void he’s hoping to fill with a docu-series about putting his latest boyband together.
This is something people continue to have a lot of opinions about. Mostly revolving around the fact that Simon is taking credit for putting together One Direction and Little Mix on his talent show The X-Factor- when, in fact, the person that put these groups together were other mentors.
The show had a very limited run in America, ending after only 3 seasons. But as far as I know, it’s still going strong in every other country in the world, including the UK. Unlike American Idol (or its predecessor, Pop Idol, in the UK), X-Factor had no age limit and had four categories, each mentored by a different judge on the panel. Some people auditon as already established groups but after several cuts are made, sometimes groups are created from contestants that didn’t quite make the cut as solo acts. This is how Fifth Harmony (arguably America’s best known act from their limited run of the series) came to be.
His comment also drew ire from a lot of diehard BTS fans. And there are MANY of them.
As someone who grew up with a number of boy bands, I’ve kinda wanted to weigh in for a while and now is my opportunity to do that.
First off- the whole idea of a docu-series putting the band together… I was there in the early 2000’s when “Making the Band” was on ABC and O-Town was the end result of it. I never watched the show, but O-Town was promoted so heavily afterwards it was hard to escape them. “All or Nothing” was the one single I remembered and it was a really good song. They also appeared twice on the Pokémon 2000 movie soundtrack, doing the theme for the Pikachu short as well as another song.
Then the band broke up and nobody heard from them again. Although Ashley Angel Parker, the only person everyone remembers from the group, recently made an appearance on The Masked Singer.
So… I can only conclude that any attempt to recreate this series is going to be pointless. As pointless as The Bachelor/ette where almost nobody stays together after the series ends.
Second… the BTS comment. K-Pop bands have been trending in a big way for the past several years. So it’s bizarre that Simon is acting like there’s a boyband void a One Direction successor needs to fill, as if BTS doesn’t exist. I don’t even listen to BTS and I want to call him out because of that oversight.
Ok, rephrase… I don’t listen to BTS by choice. The only time their music comes across my ears is when their songs are used in commercials or some episode of one of FOX’s 3 music guessing shows. And I’m only aware of BlackPink’s existence because they featured on “Sour Candy” from Lady Gaga’s last album.
And third… I want to say that my heart belongs to only one boyband so no other one will ever take their place. But even without going fangirl crazy over One Direction like everyone else did, I liked a lot of their songs.
Now, I think I’m just over the whole trend and I really don’t see the point anymore. Boybands have ranged in age over the years, but typically, boybands are composed of members from age 12 up to mid to late 20’s. I’m in my mid 30’s now so unless Max Martin or Jack Antonoff is writing their music for them, I’m not going to have interest in any group in that vein. Just isn’t going to happen.
I don’t claim to be an expert on boybands and I don’t want to try… too much to keep track of.
But it is kinda fascinating to see how these groups have changed and evolved over the years and… yeah, every decade or generation seems to have their own boyband.
Some consider the Jackson 5 the first boyband- at least in the way we think of boybands, which is a group of guys that sing harmonies together and play instruments. There’s even an argument for The Beatles and Rolling Stones being the first boy bands. During their heyday, they were young men who played instruments and girls in their teens and 20’s loved them.
For me personally, “boyband” refers to a group of 4-5 guys who sing harmonies and dance while they sing.
Meaning that New Kids on the Block from the late 80’s would be the first true boyband to check those boxes. I can count the number of NKOTB songs I know on one hand and I think I think I can name maybe 3 of the members. Joey McIntrye (cuz he was on Dancing with the Stars), Donnie Walberg (cuz he’s on Blue Bloods) and Jordan Knight (who I’d seen around). All boybands also need signature dance moves and “The Right Stuff” has a shuffle move that always brings a smile to my face when I think of it.
I’ve also heard from other people that, technically, New Edition was the predecessor for all the major boybands I grew up with in the 90’s. I’d only heard a handful of their songs but the style is definitely something I’d heard in *NSYNC’s stuff especially. I’ve heard the genre “New Jack Swing” mentioned a number of times and I believe their songs are a classic example of it.
But even after listening to Prince for as long as I have, I know some of his songs are rockabilly only because people have said it. But I have yet to identify that genre without any context clues- if that makes any sense.
The true heyday of boybands ran from the mid 90’s to the mid 2000’s… then there was a void that lasts up until One Direction. Then they went their separate ways and BTS came in around the mid 2010’s. As far as I’m aware.
Growing up, I had Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC and 98°. I loved the first two especially, but with some Watchmojo lists mentioning 98° songs lately… I kinda wish I’d paid mroe attention to them because they had some really good songs. “Give me just one night” is the only one I own in any capacity. “I do (Cherish you)” was also a really good one.
But BSB and *NSYNC was a Max Martin gold rush of brilliance- some of the catchiest earworms in the history of music. He’s one of those dudes that, if I was met him in person, I’d do a fangirl scream and shake his hand to thank him for writing so many songs from my teen years.
There was just one thing missing with those groups… the age gap. Nick Carter was born in 1980 and Justin Timberlake was born in 1981. Everyone else was older and at the time I was listening to them, I was 12-13. Nick was my favorite cuz he got all the great high notes but the attraction wasn’t so much that I rushed out to buy his solo album when he put one out. And I never did listen to it. Justin, on the other hand… he was positioned as the heartthrob of the group but I felt no attraction at all. I still don’t get it… and I feel like as the years go by, I like him less and less as a singer and as a person (particularly all the Britney stuff that’s come out in recent years). Only his acting (voice and on-screen) is halfway decent.
My personal peak with boybands was Dream Street… which I sadly discovered in the last year they were together. And they still hold that special place in my heart they had back then. Several other boybands came out around the same time that I wound up ignoring completely because I found THE one.
I’d seen the commercials for their CD but the first time they grabbed my attention was on a radio channel on an airplane… that used to be a thing back in the 2000’s. Funnily enough, the selection of songs from their album came at the back of another boyband that was on my radar at the time. Youngstown did the song from the Inspector Gadget movie and I remember maybe 2 songs from the album they played on the airplane. After finding Dream Street, I sorta forgot about them. I’ve tried to find that same album a few times since but never did.
Dream Street had the one key element I’d been missing from the other boyands- the relability. They were all born in 1985 with the exception of Jesse, who was born in 1987. And I was in the middle in 1986. Ergo, it was a lot easier to pick a favorite that you’d be obsessed with where you’d write your name with their last name and plan your wedding. I never did that, but I did cast myself as their love interest across numerous fanfictions. The only one I never “dated” was Greg. I’d started working on a story but never got past the first couple of chapters.
The Click Five- which is a boyband the same way The Beatles were- was my rebound after Dream Street disbanded. But even that didn’t last forever.
One Direction came about and they were clearly the shiny new toy of the music industry the same way Backstreet Boys and NSYNC had been. At one point, there was even talk of a rivalry between them and The Wanted, the way BSB and NSYNC were put up against each other by their jerk of a manager, Lou Perlman. But that rivalry never came to fruition. The Wanted just had “Glad You Came” (ironically the song Chris Trousdale auditioned for on The Voice and nobody turned for him… The Voice has a horrible history with lack of successful winners, but I’ll never stop being mad about that) and disappeared.
One Direction had tons of great songs. “Story of my life” will probably be their best known with “What makes you beautiful.” But “Drag me down” is probably my personal favorite- only because it’s not as popular as some of the others.
Futher proof that Dream Street will always be it for me is days like today.
We went away on vacation mid to late May. I think the high from being away finally wore off the other day so I’d been feeling kinda down. Out of nowhere, they made a cameo in my dreams, which they hadn’t done together in years. And it felt like they were giving a personal concert to cheer me up. I planned to only listen to the songs I remember from the dream today and wound up playing the entire album. And it was absolutely worth it.
The timing of this might also have to do with the fact that Chris Trousdale would’ve turned 39 on the 11th… hard to believe it’s been 4 years since his untimely passing. Ever since I revisited all the old Dream Street footage with him recently, these songs haven’t been far away.
The Musings of DreamyPopRoyalty 