Recently there has been a resurrection of something that
makes me so happy, the twelve year old in me is bursting with excitement. I’m talking about the sweet, sweet comeback
of boy bands. Here’s the thing, when I
was a super youngin’ tween, the loyalty to your boy band was serious
business. Personally, I was a Backstreet
Boys girl all the way. I had the charm
bracelet with their faces on it (Kevin’s which I cherished most) the stickers
all over my lunchbox, and the cut outs from magazines lining every inch of my
walls. Whether you were into BSB,
N*Sync, O-Town (hah!), 98 Degrees, Hanson or if you were of previous
generations screaming for the Justins and Brians of your day like New Kids on
the Block, Boyz II Men, New Edition the Jackson 5 or the Beatles, you know what
I’m talking about. In those years of
love and devotion for my favorite boy band, I was convinced I would die without
their music and certainly without their pretty mugs to stare at all day.
And then, suddenly when the mid 2000s hit, these men who had
pimply, delusional girls screaming their names started to disappear. For solo careers, for acting, and some even
quit the good life to start a family.
Um, excuse me? How could
you? And when BSB and NKOTB reunited to
create some sort of fused aging, boy band super group, things just weren’t the
same. And not just because they were
missing the perfectly groomed brows of my sweet Kevin. What had happened to the beauty of the
American boy band? And don’t tell me the
Jonas Brothers were a boy band for this generation because, really, who on
Earth was going to see them? Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty satisfied with my
selection of guilty pleasure pop artists today’s culture has to offer. We have a girl that shoots whipped cream out
of her bra, a girl that spills blood from her torso, and a guy that swims to
stage on a river of teenage tears of joy.
But nothing taps the depths of a young girl’s heart like a bunch of well
choreographed boys whose hair hasn’t come in on their chests yet.
But finally, the girl who wore overalls and bright pink
jellies with a bobble watch can rejoice again:
boy bands are back. Crazy
hormonal girls can scream for the likes of One Direction and the Wanted. And while I don’t see myself buying any of
these perfectly groomed teenager’s albums, I sleep better at night knowing that
the young generation of this country has boy bands again. And really, this is the generation that
needed a boy band the most. My
generation had struggle. Spending hours
cutting out pictures, walking to the Ticketmaster to wait in line for a concert
that usually sold out in four minutes, recording every television appearance on
my VHS. But this generation has all the
resources for obsession, without a lot of the effort. You don’t need to get paper cuts that comes
along with intricately cutting out photos of your beloved. Tumblr exists now; you can have a virtual
room of obsession. Lines for a
concert? Psh, I don’t even think ticket
booths exist anymore. And you have YouTube! No more asking mom to tape late night talk
show performances because you have a bed time of 9:30pm.
So thank you, to the sweet genius that realized generations
are nothing without a love for boy bands.
I mean, I guess Bieber captures as much love as a boy band would hope
for, but he doesn’t have three or four friends that show up to events dressed
exactly like him. And he doesn’t even
lip sync. So does he really have it all?
