One of my stated goals in writing the Band Names section (lo those many years ago) was to receive hate mail from hysterical 14 y/os, eager to defend the honor of their crush of the week. That's never really happened, and ironically, I've gotten far more hate mail from reading comprehension-challenged rock band fans who see the occasional high rating for a boy band's name, and confuse that with my actual opinion of the quality of their music.
I have some mail today from a fan of a boy band, but it's rather disappointing. The band is one I've never heard of since including it on my list (no idea how I heard of it to include it back then), and the mail isn't really a flame. Still, we takes our joys where we can find them.
RE: Westlife.
You really should get your facts right before start spilling dribble about a band you don't know anything about.
Firstly, They have released up tempo songs.
Secondly, Only one member is from Dublin (East coast of Ireland), the rest are from Silgo, (West coast of Ireland) That's why they are called Westlife.
I wasn't even sure I had that band on my listing, and was quite grateful the emailer had mentioned their name, since I never would have known who they were talking about otherwise. To
quote myself:
A band that most of us in the US are fortunate enough to have never heard of. They are huge in the UK and Europe though, and are a boy band poured from the same mold as 98ยบ or 'Nsync or whoever you want to compare them to. Young girls love them, adults who have no taste in music like them, everyone else wants to cram them into a gravel crushing machine. They apparently differ from the Backstreet Boys in that they don't even attempt to do any uptempo rock/pop. They just go right for the kill with one sappy love song after another, melting the hearts of insecure 14 y/o girls everywhere. Join me in despairing for Western Civilization.
Their name is not much. The point of most boy band names is to scream, "boy band" immediately. They almost always actually include the word "boy" in them, just to be doubly-sure no one is in any doubt as to their inauthenticity. These guys are from Dublin, which is on the east coast of Ireland, but on the west side of the Irish sea. That might be where they got the name, or it could be something else entirely. Not that it really matters.
I gave them a 2 with zero bonus points, and I don't see any need to adjust that score at this point. I have no idea where I learned anything about the tempo of their music; I wrote the Band Names entries in 2002, before YouTube or Wikipedia made researching this sort of thing effortless, and what info I accumulated back then was from listening to samples of songs on Amazon.com album sales pages, scanning some fansites, etc. I suppose their hits back then must have been all ballads, hence my comment, though 1) Accuracy was not my ultimate goal in those write ups (since inaccuracy was often funnier), and 2) Obviously I knew they had some songs that weren't about mopey love; they weren't an R&B band, after all.
Curious if the band even still existed, I checked wikipedia and was amazed to find that
Westlife is still around, remains popular despite no longer being boy-band aged, has sold tens of millions of albums worldwide, and is huge in the UK and Asia. They've never had any sort of hit in the US though, which is probably why I've never heard of them; not that I've allowed more than the vaguest consciousness of pop music to penetrate my awareness since about 1994. The female who sent this email has an @UK return address, so that much makes sense, at least.
On a larger level, it seems that boy bands are a dead genre right now. In the US, at least. I've not heard of any new popular ones in years, and the fact that the forty-year old Backstreet Boys are trying to get some hype for a reunion seems to indicate that the genre is pretty moribund. Something is filling that void, of course; there's always a tween-aged girl market for catchy, sappy, non-threatening pop, but TV shows from kids' networks like Nickelodeon and Disney Channel
seem to be filling it. Never fear though, pop culture is forever cyclical, and within 3 or 5 years the tide will turn and new groups of shiny-faced, lightly-choreographed, lip-synching, 22 y/o's will be appearing on TV screens and posters in the pink-themed bedrooms of 11 y/o girls all across this sporadically-great nation.
Update: Speaking of the death of boy bands and who young girls are pledging their musical hearts to...
meet Hannah Montana.
All over the country, little girls are crying that they want -- they need -- tickets to see their idol, a 14-year-old named Miley Cyrus (a.k.a. Hannah Montana) in concert, and from coast to coast that has pushed mommies and daddies to extreme measures. That's why some scalpers and brokers are asking for as much as $3,000 a ticket, politicians have been staging news conferences and Ticketmaster officials have been ducking for cover.
"Hell hath no fury like the parent of a child throwing a tantrum," said a weary Joe Freeman, vice president of Ticketmaster. "People who have been in this business for a long time are watching what's happening, and they say there hasn't been a demand of this level or intensity since the Beatles or Elvis."
Somewhere, a reptilian, Don King-like promoter is furiously scheming to get his pack of well-scrubbed, miniature Justin Timberlands on an upcoming Disney Channel show, and once he does, boy bands will be back!
Labels: band-names
