A boy band is a vocal group consisting of young male singers, usually in their teenage years or in their twenties at the time of formation. Generally, boy bands perform love songs marketed towards girls and young women. Many boy bands dance as well as sing, usually giving highly choreographed performances. South Korean boy bands usually also have designated rappers. Most boy band members do not play musical instruments, either in recording sessions or on stage. They are similar in concept to their counterparts known as girl groups.
Some boy bands are formed on their own, but most are created by talent managers or record producers who hold auditions. The popularity of boy bands has peaked three times: first in the 1960s to 1970s, with e.g. the Jackson 5, the Bay City Rollers, and the Osmonds; the second time during the late 1980s, the 1990s and the 2000s, when acts such as New Kids on the Block, Take That, Backstreet Boys, Boyzone, NSYNC, Five, Westlife and Blue dominated global pop charts; and the latest time in the 2010s up to the present, with the emergence of groups such as Big Time Rush, the Wanted, One Direction, and K-pop acts such as BTS and Seventeen.
History The term was not established until the late 1980s when Lou Pearlman decided to form a record company to promote a new singing and dancing group after becoming fascinated with the success of New Kids on the Block.
Although generally described as a rock band, the highest-selling band in history – the Beatles – have been described by several journalists as "the first" or "the original" boy band, "before anyone had thought of the term", exclusively due to the enthusiastic response they received from their young female audience.
Other critics, however, have pointed out that this assessment of the Beatles as a "boy band" could be applied to all other bands of the 1960s, saying, "if they were a (boy band), so was everyone else" and is countered by others, including Ringo Starr, who point out that, from the beginning, the Beatles wrote and exercised creative control over their own music, played their own instruments, were not manufactured by a record label, and did not feature the choreographed dance moves that later came to be associated with boy bands. The Beatles did, however, inspire the production of the 1966 television series The Monkees, which featured a music group of the same name, created for the show, that consisted of the four starring actors. The Monkees had a career as a rock and pop band after their songs from the TV series were released as successful records.
Late 1960s and 1970s: the Jackson 5, the Osmonds and the Bay City Rollers
Although the term "boy band" was not commonly used then, the earliest predecessors of this format were groups such as the Jackson 5 and the Osmonds which helped form the template for boy bands. The Jackson 5 were a sibling group that established many musical conventions that boy bands follow. For instance, their music featured close harmonies from soul music and catchy pop hooks influenced as much as they were by Motown and acts like the Supremes. The group also incorporated choreographed dance moves to their performances. All members of the band sang, which is a common convention of a boy band, as opposed to having a front man and the rest on instruments; thus, no one person dominated the stage. Also a sibling group, The Osmonds first started singing barbershop music for local audiences, before being hired to perform at Disneyland early in their career. Their appearance in a televised Disney special earned them additional TV spots, such as The Andy Williams Show and The Jerry Lewis Show.
Scottish rock boy band, the Bay City Rollers, achieved considerable success commercially worldwide during the 1970s, becoming "the first of many acts heralded as the 'biggest group since the Beatles' and one of the most screamed-at teeny-bopper acts of the 1970s".A Beatlemania-alike revival had been mentioned before when T-Rex were a top act in 1971, introducing glam rock, and in 1972/73 when Slade were riding high in the UK singles and album charts. They have sold an estimated 120 million records worldwide, however some claim their record sales could be as high as 300 million. Their debut studio album, Rollin' (1974) achieved considerable commercial success internationally, debuting atop the albums charts in the United Kingdom, as well as the top ten in Australia. It also reached the top forty of the albums charts in Canada, Japan and New Zealand, and finished 1975 as the 16th best selling album of the year in the United Kingdom. In May 1975, they released their second album, Once Upon a Star, which continued their commercial success, again topping the albums charts in the United Kingdom and reaching the top ten in Finland and Australia. It spawned the successful single "Bye, Bye Baby" which reached number one on the singles charts in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia, and became the best–selling single of 1975 in the United Kingdom. Their first full-length album to be released in the United States and Canada, Bay City Rollers, was released in September 1975, topping the albums charts in Canada and peaking at number twenty on the US Billboard 200.
In Japan, Johnny Kitagawa formed his first boy band in 1962, called Johnnys and after their initial success, started the company Johnny & Associates, that continued to produce highly successful new groups in the following decades. He also established the trainee system, under the name Johnny's Jr., that was later adapted by the K-Pop industry.
Late 1970s and 1980s: Menudo, New Edition, and New Kids on the Block
The Puerto Rican boy band Menudo, appealing to young Latina audiences, was founded in 1977. Menudo had a convention unique among boy bands: when a member turned 16, became too tall, or their voice changed, they were replaced. The members of Menudo were generally aged 12–16. Menudo had a large impact in Latin America and in Asia; Menudo fever there was compared to Beatlemania and it was nicknamed "Menudomania".
Boston group New Edition was formed in 1978 and reached their height of popularity in the 1980s, meaning they are often credited for starting the boy-band trend, even though the term "boy band" did not exist until the 1990s. Maurice Starr was influenced by New Edition and popularized it with his protégé New Kids on the Block (NKOTB), the first commercially successful modern boy band, which formed in 1984 and found international success in 1988. Starr's idea 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.
Bros (abbreviation of the word "brothers") were a British boy band active in the late 1980s and early 1990s, consisting of twin brothers Matt and Luke Goss along with Craig Logan. Formed in 1986, they scored multiple top 10 hits between 1987 and 1989 and in 1988 became the first modern era–style boy band to have a multiple platinum-selling album in the UK, with Push, still one of the most successful boy-band albums in the UK. Other big boy bands in Britain during the late 1980s were Big Fun and Brother Beyond.
1990s: Boyz II Men, Take That, Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, Westlife, Seo Taiji and Boys and the birth of modern K-pop
The ongoing international success of New Kids on the Block inspired music managers in Europe to create their own acts, beginning with Nigel Martin-Smith's Take That in the UK (formed in 1990) and followed by Tom Watkins, who had success with Bros in the late 1980s and formed East 17 in 1991. East 17 were marketed and pitted against Take That as "rivals" with a rougher or harsher attitude, style and sound. Take That reformed in 2006 after a decade-long hiatus and became one of the most successful groups in British music chart history, with renewed chart success internationally, especially in Europe. Irish music manager Louis Walsh, who had witnessed the impact of these British boy bands, put out an advert for an "Irish Take That", thereby creating Boyzone in 1993. MN8 (formed in 1992), Let Loose (formed in 1993), and Damage and 911 (formed in 1995) were also successful boy bands in Britain; however, by the late 1990s all these bands had split up.
All these artists were very successful on both the singles and albums charts domestically and internationally; however, with the emergence of Britpop and the commercial co-option of indie rock, many boy bands were ridiculed by the British music press as having no artistic credibility, although some, such as East 17 and Take That, did write most of their own material. The media attention was then placed on the "Battle of Britpop", and the bands Oasis and Blur replaced the importance and rivalry of Take That and East 17 as the two new biggest bands in Britain. However, boy bands continued to find success in the late 1990s, such as Five, Another Level, Point Break and Westlife. In 1995 successful German music manager Frank Farian, who had been manager of Boney M and Milli Vanilli, put together Latin American band No Mercy who scored a few worldwide hits during the mid-90s.
Although being American and the sons of Tito Jackson, a member of the Jackson 5, 3T had several hits singles across Europe in the mid-1990s, despite limited success in the US, and finished the second biggest selling act of 1996 in Europe behind the Spice Girls. In Japan, SMAP debuted under Johnny & Associates in 1991, and became the agency's most successful group to date, enjoying tremendous success and selling over 35 million records.
In 1992, South-Korean artist Seo Taiji formed the boy band Seo Taiji and Boys (Korean: 서태지와 아이들) together with dancers Lee Juno and Yang Hyun-suk, which went on to become highly successful and is credited with changing the South Korean music industry by pioneering the incorporation of rap and breakdance, creating the prototype for the modern hybrid K-pop genre.
In the early 1990s in North America, with New Kids on the Block's continued success and Color Me Badd also having success, boy bands became a continued staple of the Billboard charts. Continuing this success in the mid-1990s, most prominent boy bands were African American and had R&B and gospel elements, such as the groups All-4-One (formed in 1993) and Boyz II Men (formed in 1988). Boyz II Men are also the most successful boy band act on the U.S. Hot 100. Although they had success on the Billboard charts, they were not marketed towards youth but more towards adults. It was not until 1997 and the change to pop-oriented groups such as Backstreet Boys, 98 Degrees, NSYNC, the Moffatts, and Hanson that boy bands exploded commercially and dominated the market in the United States. This period in the late 1990s marked the height of boy band popularity in North America, which has not been seen since.
Arguably the most successful boy band manager from the U.S. was Lou Pearlman, who founded commercially successful acts such as the Backstreet Boys in 1993, NSYNC and LFO in 1995, O-Town in 2000, and US5 in 2005. Backstreet Boys and NSYNC became the two biggest boy bands in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, and Backstreet Boys went on to become the best-selling boy band in history with over 100 million records sold.