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 […]
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 […]
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, […]