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Tag: boy bands

  • Boy Bands of the 1980s…

    Boy Bands of the 1980s…

    My recent obsession with Menudo has me thinking about boy bands from the 80s this week…

    When I was a teenager, I wasn’t into boy bands. I liked what was then called classic rock, music that is way older than I am. Back in my day, we had our share of boy bands. The New Kids On The Block were a big hit, as were New Edition. I preferred New Edition to New Kids, but I know a lot of my friends were fans of the slick dancing moves and silky harmonies both boy bands offered.


    New Kids On The Block’s big hit, “Please Don’t Go Girl”.

    Watching that video makes me suddenly feel ancient. It doesn’t seem like high school was that long ago, but it really was. The woman in the video looks a little too mature for the boys in New Kids On The Block, anyway. After “Please Don’t Go Girl” became a hit, New Kids On The Block became very popular. For awhile, they could do nothing wrong. But then they started to grow up and so did their audience. By the 1990s, they had become decidedly uncool. They changed their name to NKOTB, probably because New Men On The Block didn’t seem very catchy.


    New Kids gets edgy with “Hangin’ Tough.


    “Candy Girl” came out in 1983. I think I might have liked New Edition more because I was a lot younger when they made it big.


    A live performance of “Mr. Telephone Man”.

    Menudo was another boy band that was big in the 80s. I was first introduced to their very Latin sound when I was taking Spanish in school. My teacher was from Cuba and loved their music, so she shared it with the class.


    Here’s a video that features a very young Ricky Martin. I watch him wagging his ass and want to say, “Get it, boy!”


    Ricky Martin when he was brand new to Menudo… He was about 13 here.

    I didn’t like Menudo’s music that much back then, but I must admit I’ve been watching their old videos over the past few days. I can see why they were such a popular boy band back in the day. And Menudo avoided the problems associated aging bands. In most cases, members of Menudo were forced into retirement when they turned 16 or, in Ray Reyes’ case, when they grew too tall for the band.


    Menudo sings at a pool party in 1987. Check out the biker shorts!

    I suppose I could add other bands to this post. The Jacksons and The Osmonds could probably be considered boy bands, except they came from large singing families. And by the 80s, they were men, not boys. Watching these videos, I can’t help but wonder how these guys feel when they see themselves decked out in matching outfits, dancing and singing in front of a bunch of screaming girls. I think about the hours of rehearsals they must have endured to perfect those dance steps. And now, thirty years later, I wonder if the experience of being in a boy band was worth it to them. Money, fame, boyish good looks, and slick dance moves… who wouldn’t want to have those things going for them?

    I can’t help but remember South Park’s hit song…


    Watching boy bands makes me feel like a good finger bang…

  • The Wanted Came Adorable on Chelsea Lately

    The Wanted Came Adorable on Chelsea Lately

    The Wanted's Surprise U.S. Hit
    It’s been a full decade since the end of the last great wave of boy bands, and even then, the most successful of the bunch were of the American variety. So the sudden cross-Atlantic success of British quintet The Wanted with their song “Glad You Came” (which surged into Billboard’s Top 40 Pop Chart a couple weeks ago) feels unlikely and deliciously random. Why, then, a guy might fairly ask, haven’t superior recent singles by JLS or One Direction similarly stormed our airwaves?

    Maybe The Wanted are just really cute, sweet guys – even by boy band standards?

    Last night, fresh from a tour date in Las Vegas and en route to more dates in Canada and then back to the U.K., the group made their American “late night debut” on Chelsea Lately, all five of them piled up onto Chelsea Handler’s guest couch fielding questions about, y’know, their British accents and whether they are “of age”. The group came across wide-eyed and friggin’ adorable – in stark contrast to the residual tackiness of Chelsea’s show (I’m kind of a fan). When Chelsea told 18-year-old Nathan he looked a little like Justin Bieber, he blushingly replied “if someone did something horrible to his face, possibly.” O. M. G. So damn cute.

    “Glad You Came”, which debuted at the top of the UK singles chart last summer, is the lead single from the band’s sophomore album Battleground. The single’s available for download here, but neither Battleground, nor the group’s 2010 self-titled debut have gotten a U.S. release yet. Sadface. Get happy! Watch the video:

  • Hot Chip: The Anti-Anti-Boy Band

    The guys in Hot Chip are only too aware that they are not high-school locker pin-up material. But that has never stopped the quintet of English synth-nerds from fancying themselves as the kinds of cheek-boned pop idols guys like me followed avidly in the pages of Smash Hits 25 years ago. Over the last 10 years, they’ve become indie darlings while perfecting a dance pop sound that, for hipsters, comes dangerously (and for me, deliciously) close to something you might hear on Top 40 radio with their fantastic latest album One Life Stand.

    In the hilariously confounding video for the album’s second single “I Feel Better”, an alluring Auto-tune seduction over skipping beats and syncopated synth-strings, the guys play on the notion that they sound like Top 40 but aren’t by portraying themselves as Britain’s Next Boy Band. Six-pack abs and blank supermodel eyes abound! In fact, the parody is so dead-on that it actually fools one of the video’s commenters (“Don’t like boy bands, that said I think English ones are Much better than American ones.”). Those who actually know Hot Chip know immediately it’s a joke, but then the video turns on itself and the joke gets weirdly violent. Only then the video turns on itself again. And gets weirdly violent again.

    Maybe the band is making fun of boy bands, or maybe they’re paying tribute to their own Inner Boy Band, or maybe the band is just video-game laser-zapping the notion that there’s any meaningful distinction to be made between the pop of Hot Chip and the pop of, say, Taio Cruz. And if there is a meaningful distinction to be made there, we need to be ready to see that distinction erased. Interestingly enough, the video implicates, and destroys, not just “Hot Chip” (the boy band), and “Hot Chip” (the resurrected boy band with new lead singer), but also the audience for both (including the real life Hot Chip, who get zapped around 3:25), which is obliterated with the cold efficiency of War of the Worlds martians.


    Hot Chip – I Feel Better
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