Boy band

"Boyband" redirects here. For the New Zealand musical group, see Boyband (New Zealand band).

boy bands
Stylistic origins	Early: soul music, disco, power pop, Gospel music, electronic dance music, bubblegum pop, The Beatles, 1960's girl groups. Influences in early 21st century include pop punk, pop rock, pop rap,emo.
Cultural origins	late 1970's United Kingdom & United States, with precursors dating back to the mid 1960's.
Typical instruments	Vocals- electronic backing - sampler - sequencers. Others use rock band instrumentation: electric guitar, bass guitar, drums, keyboards
Other topics
Eurovision song contest, camp (style), pop idol, teenybopper, postmodernism, consumerism, gay culture, kitsch, pop culture, manufactured pop, tweenager, teen idol,gay icon

A boy band, written in some countries boys band or boy's band, is a type of pop group featuring several young male singers. The members are generally expected to perform as dancers as well, often executing highly choreographed sequences to their own music. Although there are no distinct traits defining a boy band, one could label a band a "boy band" for following mainstream music trends, changing their appearances to adapt to new fashion trends, having elaborate dance moves, and performing elaborate shows. They can evolve out of church choral or Gospel music groups, but are often put together by talent managers or record producers who audition the groups for appearance, dancing, rapping skills, and singing ability. Boy bands often seem to be prefabricated.

Most do not play musical instruments, and the acts are essentially vocal harmony groups (though there are some exceptions, such as groups like A1, The Moffatts, South 65, Marshall Dyllon, Jonas Brothers or McFly). Due to this and their general commercial orientation towards a teenybopper, teens, or preteen audience, the term has negative connotations in music journalism. Boy bands are similar in concept to girl groups.

Top selling pop music boy bands

Boy Group	Sold	Genre	Studio Albums	Members	Years Active
1. Backstreet Boys	100 Million+	Pop	6	4 - 5	1993-present (16 Years)
2. New Kids on the Block	80 Million+	Pop	5	5	1984–1994, 2008-present (12 Years)
3. 'N Sync	56 Million+	Pop	5	5	1995 - 2005 (10 Years)
4. Westlife	40 Million+	Pop	6	4 - 5	1998-present (11 Years)

Top selling R&B music boy bands

Boy Group	Sold	Genre	Studio Albums	Members	Years Active
1. Jackson Five	90 million+	R&B	6	4 - 5	1969 - 1990 (21 years)
2. Boyz II Men	60 million+	R&B	5	3 - 5	1990 - present (18 years)
3. New Edition	28 Million+	R&B	6	6	1983 - present (25 years)

Best-selling boy band albums

Album	Boy band	Worldwide Sales	Year	Genre
Millennium	Backstreet Boys	40 Million	1999	Pop
Backstreet Boys	Backstreet Boys	30 Million	1997	Pop
Black & Blue	Backstreet Boys	24 Million	2000	Pop
Step by Step	New Kids on the Block	19 Million	1990	Pop
Hangin' Tough	New Kids on the Block	16 Million	1988	Pop
No Strings Attached	'N Sync	15 million	2000	Pop
II	Boyz II Men	15 million	1994	R&B
*NSYNC	'N Sync	13 Million	1997	Pop

History

Maurice Starr is usually credited with starting the trend, with his protégé New Kids on the Block, though the term "boy band" did not exist until later in the 1990s. Starr's idea was to take the traditional template from the R&B genre (in this case his teenage band New Edition) and apply it to a pop genre. This formula was in turn redefined by a number of European managers beginning with Nigel Martin-Smith's Take That in the UK, followed by Louis Walsh and bands like East 17, which by the late 1990s, saw the UK pop marketplace saturated with the genre.

TV Producers Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson got four members to perform catchy pop tunes while also acting in a television series. The Monkees are often considered as the original pioneers among boy bands. Formed in 1965, the group disbanded in 1970. Although the term is mostly associated with groups from the 1990s onwards, antecedents exist throughout the history of pop music. The Temptations, popular in the 1960s, and The Bee Gees, The Jackson 5, The Osmonds, and Earth, Wind and Fire, popular in the 1970s, have also been considered a form of boy band by some. Latino boy band Menudo was founded in 1977.

One of the most successful boy band managers is Lou Pearlman, who is responsible for extremely commercially successful acts such as the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC until he was convicted of fraud. In the UK, producer Simon Cowell (noted in the U.S. for the American Idol/Pop Idol franchise) is also known for having managed boyband Westlife, which was created by Louis Walsh and promoted by a former boy band member Ronan Keating of Boyzone.

Since 2001, the dominance of traditional boy bands on pop charts began to fade, to be replaced by what Gil Kaufman of MTV describes as "new boy bands" that are "more likely to resemble Good Charlotte, My Chemical Romance, Simple Plan or Dashboard Confessional".

Current boy bands

Backstreet Boys, B2K, JM and the Chianti-Cheddar Cew (CCC), New Kids on the Block, Boyzone, Take That, Still Pending and Westlife are some examples, which are popular among teens and adults. Boy bands are beginning to peak again in the United States after a 5 year mainstream absence, such as the new R&B/Pop influenced boy bands like Menudo, NLT, Lexington Bridge, US5, C Note, Day26, Varsity Fanclub, NeverEndingJune and B5. Boybands in Asia continue to do well in the mainstream market as popular groups such as Arashi, NEWS, KAT-TUN, TVXQ, Super Junior, and Fahrenheit continue to release chart-topping material in different countries of Asia.

Music genres

Although most boy bands consist of R&B influences, other music genres, most notably power pop, country music, folk music and pop rap are also represented. South 65 and Marshall Dyllon, for example, were both considered country music boy bands. Il Divo, created by Simon Cowell, are a boy band that perform Operatic pop. Since 2001 there has been some crossover with power pop and pop punk, though this is obviously from boy bands that play live instruments. One key convention for boy bands to follow is to follow what genres are fashionable, as opposed to creating something original. For example, as of 2008, boy bands often imitate pop punk, 1960's garage rock, post punk revivalists, pop rap, power pop (a perennial genre) and dance-punk.

Criticism

Boy bands tend to be heavily criticized by some in the musical press for appealing to young pubescent girls and for emphasizing marketing and packaging over quality of music. Such views are reflected in the humorous definition in the Chambers Dictionary: "a pop group, targeting mainly the teenage market, composed of young males chosen because they look good and can dance and sometimes even sing."

In the 1990s, boy bands such as the Backstreet Boys and Lyte Funky Ones sometimes found the term "boy band" offensive and insisted on being called a "male vocal group".

Some critics compare boy band output to the "machine-generated" popular music found in George Orwell's novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, noting that much of their music (as well as the bands' composition) is extremely formulaic. Other critics point to boy bands (and related musical groups) as case studies in commercialism and postmodernism, with little cultural content. Such criticisms can become extremely scathing:

After scouring the country for five boys who could belt out tunes while doing the splits, (Lou Pearlman) assembled a clean-cut collection of effeminate white and Latino-looking boys, all pink cheeks and crew cuts with peroxided tips. Just like the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC, there's the cute blond guy, one with curly hair, the dark one with big dimples, the guy with the funny facial hair and the less cute, but really sensitive, guy. Pearlman herded them into a tiny apartment, forcing these guys in their late teens and early 20s to share bedrooms (hey, less opportunity for illicit sexual activity - at least with the opposite sex), and forbade them to stay out past midnight. He dressed them in coordinated red and silver "rave" outfits and spoon-fed them sugary-sweet lyrics like "Would I cross an ocean just to hold you ... Would I give up all I have to see you smile?" And then he set them loose on concert halls full of 12-year-old girls, who dutifully screamed their lungs out in a kind of mass orgasm fueled by all that scrubbed-clean testosterone.

Pop culture influence

Due to their pre-fab nature, boy bands are not only a frequent target of criticism, but also a frequent source of parody in popular culture, ranging from the television series 2ge+her (which created a parody boy band with five personality types) to a week-long spoof in 1999, wherein talk show host Conan O'Brien, inspired by Making the Band, created his own boy band called Dudez-A-Plenti, after randomly selecting five singers, narrowed down from the population of the entire world. A series of sketches culminated in a performance of a song O'Brien apparently made up himself: "Baby, I Wish You Were My Baby".

Further examples of boy band parodies in pop culture include:

• The Norwegian movie Get Ready to be Boyzvoiced is a boyband mockumentary.

• In the South Park episode Something You Can Do with Your Finger, Cartman formed a boy band named Fingerbang.

• The 2001 film Josie and the Pussycats featured a fictional boy band named "Du Jour." Their hit single, "Backdoor Lover," satirizes the effeminate style of many boy bands and their members.

• In The Simpsons episode New Kids on the Blecch, Bart is recruited for a boy band that is secretly a vehicle for subliminal navy recruitment messages. The members of 'N Sync cameoed in the episode as themselves. Members of another Lou Pearlman-backed band, Natural, did provide most of the group's singing voices. (Marc Terenzi did Nelson while Michael 'J' Horn did Milhouse.)

• In the Justice League Unlimited universe, superhero The Question firmly believes (among his numerous conspiracy theories), that there is an ominous link between boy bands and global warming.

• On the Veggie Tales videos The Ballad of Little Joe and Moe and the Big Exit, Larry, Mr. Lunt, Jimmy, and Junior do a parody of a boy band video for the two Boyz in the Sink songs "Bellybutton" and "A Mess Down in Egypt."

• The Meaty Cheesy Boys were a fictional band created during an ad campaign for Jack in the Box restaurants.

• In the Boyz 'N Commotion episode of the Disney Channel series That's So Raven, Raven wants a boy band named the Boyz in Motion to perform in front of her friends. In another episode, Raven wants the Boyz in Motion to perform in an emergency plan video for Donna Cabonna. The Boyz in Motion are sometimes referred to as The Boyz.

• The Blink-182 music video for "All The Small Things" is a parody of boy bands and other pop stars, most prominently, the Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way" music video.

• The off-Broadway musical Altar Boyz is about a fictitious Christian boy band from Ohio.

• Eminem lyric from "The Real Slim Shady" states "I am sick of you little girl and boy groups, all you do is annoy me"

• In an episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Ryan Stiles' hoedown stanza observes that boy bands aren't bands "unless [they] play an instrument."

• Australian film BoyTown is about a fictional boyband who had their golden age in the 1980s, and reform to sing songs about divorce and picking the kids up from school and to go on one last tour.

• New Zealand radio station The Edge created a cliché boyband, called Boyband in 2006. It consisted of Fat Boy, Gay Boy, Mummy's Boy, Bad Boy and Hot Boy. They achieved a small success in the country, with their cover of The Kinks' song "You Really Got Me" reaching number one on the New Zealand music charts for one week.

• In an episode of Kim Possible, the Oh Boyz appear.

• The Arrogant Worms made a parody song called "Boy Band" which includes lyrics such as "Cause we're singing in a boy band, the words are stupid and the music's bland".

• Totally Boyband was a reality TV show broadcast on MTV in the UK which featured several ex-boy band member in an attempt to reclaim success as part of a new boy band super group named Upper Street.

• The song "Title of the Song" by comedic a cappella band Da Vinci's Notebook provides a line-by-line dissection of the themes commonly found in boy band songs. (Example lyrics: "Acknowledgment that I acted foolishly / Increasingly desperate pleas for your return / Sorrow for my infidelity / Vain hope that my sins are forgivable / Appeal for one more opportunity / Drop to my knees to elicit crowd response / Prayers to my chosen deity / Modulation and I hold a high note")

Success in the genre

Though some fans are wildly supportive of the music, the commercial success of specific boy bands does not tend to last long. As the fans (mostly teen girls) age and musical tastes evolve, they tend to outgrow such groups' appeal. If success is sustained, often one or more members of the band will leave and seek a solo career (particularly if they have some songwriting ability), often with some success, for instance: Michael Nesmith, Jordan Knight, Robbie Williams, Justin Timberlake, Jesse McCartney, Ronan Keating, Brian McFadden, Nick Lachey and Ricky Martin.

Others have gone on to success in other areas. For example, Mickey Dolenz went on to become a successful television producer and theatre director. David W. Ross, formerly of Bad Boys Inc, has become an actor and screenwriter. Sam Watters from Color Me Badd became a Grammy nominated songwriter and producer and Donnie Wahlberg from NKOTB has become a movie actor.

External links

• Top 10 Boy Bands
• Yahoo Pages Boy Band