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A boy band (or boyband, British English) is a type of pop group featuring between three and six young male singers who are usually also dancers. In addition to pop music, boy bands also sing R&B songs and sometimes hip-hop songs as well. They can evolve out of church choral or gospel music groups, but are often put together by managers or producers who audition the groups for appearance, dancing, and singing ability (often in that order), and often seem to be prefabricated. Boy bands are similar in concept to girl groups. However, even though they are "bands," they rarely play instruments, and the acts are basically "vocal harmony groups." Due to this and the fact that the acts are aimed at a "teenybopper" or "tween" audience, the term has negative connotations in the rock press. For this reason, acts such as Pete Waterman's One True Voice try not to be labeled "boy bands."

Contents 1 Definition 2 Famous boy bands 3 Male/Female vocal groups of the boy band era 4 Parodies 5 See also 6 External links

Definition

Maurice Starr is usually credited with starting the trend, with his protégés New Kids On The Block (though the term "boy band" did not exist until later in the 1990s). Starr's brainwave 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 such as Nigel Martin-Smith and Louis Walsh, till the UK pop marketplace was saturated with the genre.

Though the term is mostly associated with groups from the 1990s onwards, antecedents exist throughout the history of pop music. The Beatles, The Beach Boys, & The Temptations, popular in the 1960s, may be considered boy bands, while The Monkees certainly were prefabricated, and Latin boy band Menudo was founded in 1977. Boy bands often achieve great commercial success.

Equally important to the group's commercial success is the group's image, carefully controlled by managing all aspects of the group's dress, promotional materials (which are supplied to teen magazines), and music videos, the most famous boy band manager being Lou Pearlman. Typically, each member of the group will have some distinguishing feature and be portrayed as having a particular personality stereotype, such as "the baby," "the bad boy," "the nice boy." While managing the portrayal of popular musicians is as old as popular music, the particular pigeonholing of band members is a defining characteristic of boy and girl bands.

In most cases, their music is written, arranged and produced by a producer who works with the band at all times and controls the group's sound - if necessary, to the point of hiring session singers to record guide vocals for each member of the group to sing individually (if the members cannot harmonize together well). A typical boy band performance features elaborately choreographed dancing, with the members taking turns singing and/or rapping(or, sometimes, lip-syncing. Even some of Pearlman's bands have been known to) to pre-recorded vocals and music. Boy bands generally do not compose or produce their own material, unless the members lobby hard enough for creative control (e.g. The Monkees and *NSYNC).

Boy bands tend to be heavily criticized by certain musical press for appealing only to pubescent female teenagers 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." 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' compositions) 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. (Janelle Brown, "Sluts and Teddy Bears," Salon.com, 2001).

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 their 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, Michael Jackson, George Michael, Robbie Williams, Justin Timberlake, Ronan Keating, Ricky Martin). Certain boybands have continued to thrive long after the members have ceased to be 'boys', particularly in Asia-- i.e., SMAP of Japan and Shinhwa of Korea. In these cases, the members have developed into stars in their own right, starring in television shows, movies, and commercials.

Famous boy bands

Male/Female vocal groups of the boy band era

These groups are similar in style to boy bands and marketed at the same "tween" and "teenybopper" markets, but they are mixed gender groups:

A*Teens (Sweden)
4ORCE (Style 2 Style managed band not to be confused with 40RCE from the play "boyband") (United Kingdom)
Hear'say (United Kingdom)
S Club 7 (United Kingdom)
Six (Ireland)
Scooch (United Kingdom)
Steps (United Kingdom)

Parodies

The television series 2ge+her created a parody boy band with five personality types.

In a week-long spoof in 1999, talk show host Conan O'Brien, complaining that he couldn't find a decent "musical guest" for his show, created his own boy band, Dudez-A-Plenti, after randomly selecting five out-of-work actors. A series of humorous sketches ensued, culminating in a Friday performance of a song O'Brien apparently made up himself: "Baby, I Wish You Were My Baby."

The Norwegian movie Get Ready to be Boyzvoiced [1] is a mockumentary about the boy band Boyzvoice, their fans and management.

In South Park, Cartman formed a boy band named Fingerbang.

The 2001 film Josie and the Pussycats featured a fictional boy band named "Du Jour."

In The Simpsons, Bart is recruited to a boy band named Party Posse that is secretly a vehicle for subliminal navy recruitment messages. The members of 'N Sync cameoed in the episode as themselves. Contrary to popular belief they did not do the "Party Posse" voices. Members of Lou Pearlman's other band Natural provided most of the voices. (Marc Terenzi did Nelson while Michael 'J' Horn did Milhouse; the rest are unknown.)

On the Veggie Tales video The Ballad of Little Joe, Larry, Mr. Lunt, Jimmy, and Junior do a parody of a boy band video for the original song "Bellybutton."

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

In WCW, a group of three cruiserweight wrestlers (Evan Karagias, Shane Helms and Shannon Moore) formed a boy band in order to get more attention from women. The group 3 Count performed several songs on WCW Monday Nitro and even acquired a roadie in former-UFC-fighter Tank Abbott.

A play (with music) called Boyband, featuring a band named 4ORCE and parodying the boy band phenomenon of the 90s with songs such as "Coming from Behind," "Our Love is Like Water - H40" and "Integrity," was performed at the Seymour Centre in Sydney, Australia for 2 weeks in 2005 and is returning for a four-week season in March 2006. (Note: not to be confused with the Style 2 Style managed band 4ORCE from Manchester, United Kingdom, who were a male/female vocal group).

In an 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.

See also

• Girl group

External links

• "Sluts and Teddy Bears" - A cultural critique of the boy band phenomenon on Salon.com.

• Boy Band Fan Site

Styles of pop music

Bubblegum pop - Futurepop - Indie pop - Pop punk - Pop-rap - Power pop - Synthpop/Electropop - Teen pop - Traditional pop

Other topics

Boy band - Girl group - Popular music