Boy band

A boy band (American English) or boyband (British English) is a style of somewhat to mostly prefabricated pop group featuring between three to six young male singers who are usually also dancers. Often, they evolve out of church choral groups, or are put together by managers or producers who audition the groups for appearance, dancing, and singing ability. They are similar in concept to Girl groups. Though the term is mostly associated with the 1990s onwards, antecedents exist throughout the history of pop music. The Temptations, popular in the 1960s, may be considered a boy band, while The Monkees certainly were prefabricated, and Latin boy band Menudo was founded in 1977.

Related Topics:
American English - British English - Prefabricated - Pop group - Singer - Dancer - Girl group - The Temptations - The Monkees - Menudo

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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 video clips, 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." Whilst managing the portrayal of popular musicians is as old as popular music, the particular pigeonholing of boy band members is a defining characteristic of boy and girl bands.

Related Topics:
Teen magazine - Video clip - Lou Pearlman - Popular music

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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 (or, sometimes, lip-syncing, though Pearlman insists none of his bands do) to pre-recorded music. More often than not, boy bands are disallowed from composing or producing their own material, unless the members lobby hard enough for creative control (e.g. The Monkees and *NSYNC).

Related Topics:
Session singers - Choreographed - Lip-sync - *NSYNC

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Boy bands tend to be heavily criticized by certain musical press for appealing only to pubescent 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:

Related Topics:
Chambers Dictionary - George Orwell - Nineteen Eighty-Four - Commercialism - Postmodernism

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:: 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.

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::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).

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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 preteen 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).

Related Topics:
Michael Nesmith - Michael Jackson - George Michael - Robbie Williams - Justin Timberlake - Ronan Keating - Ricky Martin

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