The new "boy bands"
 

Though it appears that the musical pendulum is finally swinging back towards rock music (and away from pop), I would offer that there are just as many boy bands out there as ever before, only this time they are holding guitars.

Are All American Rejects, Blink 182, Dashboard Confessional or Amercan Hi Fi really any different than Backstreet Boys or N'Sync? Sure, the "rock" a little more, but aren't they basically good looking guys playing extremely safe, radio friendly music for teenage girls?

I know I'm going to catch some flak for this opinion, but I really don't see the difference. Don't get me started on all of the warm, sensitive singer/songwriter wannabe's (read: Jack Johnson, Jason Mraz, John Mayer....)

The difference as i see it is that a "boy band" does not play their own instruments, instead it is 4 or 5 guys standing in front of a band (or recorded tracks) singing and dancing.

thats the only difference, they all still suck though,

the pendelum needs to stop that swinging shit though.

I about died when New Kids On the Block were big, THen I almost died again when Boys II Men were big, Then I almost died again when vanilla ice, and snow, and OMG! MILLI VANILLI

lets face it, the music industry is CRAP
I wanna know who all these cheeseheads are who keep BUYING this CRAP and making it stay at #1 on the charts all the time. no one ever admits to thier britney spears collection or thier boy band obbsession it would seem.

im sorry but working adults should have more inpact over what is top 40 than those kids in middle school and high school, where are they getting the money to screw up the music industry anyway?

anyway, yeah, you guys are scary if you listen to any of that stuff.

I agree with redlemon, at least these bands have a modicum of talent and write their own songs/play their own instruments. N'Suck and company have their songs written for them and all they do is sing and dance

I can't even believe you compared Dashboard to boy bands. I will now shake my head and wonder what you're smoking.

I saw that coming....i know some people are huge DC fans on this board...

All I want to know is: Is there that much babysitting money being passed around right now?

I'm feeling the same way about Jack Johnson.

i hear ya. i do think the 'boy band' phenomenon has shifted to cater a more 'alternative' crowd.

case in point being my 21 year old 'teeniebopper' pop culture boy-band obsessed friend wanting me to go to further seems forever with her and getting into jason mraz, and the whole "punk" thing, etc. while it might be true that some of these bands originally had a more indie non-mainstream following, this is becoming the new cool.

the teenieboppers, pop culture freaks follow the trends. but the fans that have remained in the scene or the music long before them aren't necessarily worshipping the new boy bands either. it pisses me off when i see trendie girls at indie shows :P you can spot them from a mile away.

Well, I DIDN'T say that the other bands wereany good, or that they weren't prepackaged for easy consumption by teenagers.

It is especially humorous with a group like the White Stripes, which tries so hard to seem unpackaged.

It's weird with Dashboard... They started out very underground and then the just sorta blew up. I only discovered them myself early last summer which was before the blowing up period. I was lucky to go to 2 solo shows in NYC this past May and the crowd was great. No 12 year old hard core wanna be punks. But then in September I went to a show in Lowell, MA and the crowd was so different. All crowd surfing punk kids. Personally I wanted them all to go away. But I guess thats what you get with more exposure these days.

The band doesn't really like that type of crowd. They hate the fact that these kids are crowdsurfing during there set. But what are ya gonna do?

I guess you can blame MTV and TRL et all.

As for me... Well, I'm 25 and as far away from punk as you can get. I'm sure some of those kids looked at me at that show wondering what the hell I was doing there. Wearing my Gap jeans and Ralph Lauren polo shirt.... Oh well, I'm there for the music, not the crap that surrounds it.

What is wrong with music that will make you money? I like some of the bands being discussed hear just because they are fun to listen to. Sure they may record some radio friendly songs but they also make some good music that wouldn't get heard as widely without the other songs getting their name out.

The difference is that you listen to the music these bands create instead of looking for the next video.

I'll respectfully remove Dashboard Confessional from my list and replace them with MTV's biggest whore: Good Charlotte.

Don't mess with GC either. Not too often those of us from MD can root for a local band. These guys are really good and sorta fell into the same trap as DC. They really worked to get where they are and MTV can be blamed a lot for their over exposure. 2 years ago the only station I ever heard them on was a local one that was really pushing to help them.

Much better :lol:

Was their music the same 2-3 years ago? I often wonder that with some of these bands that have made it big recently....

Where's the feeling?
 

I actually think you should put Dashboard back on your list. I was a huge fan in 2001, before they got big, and their music was so original.

However, they took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up on MTV with all of the other teenie bopper bands, which this is clearly reflected in their new cd. Dashboard never used distorted or overdriven guitars before their MTV debute, because they never had to.

The direction of their music has radically changed. It's not about the emotional aspect of the song anymore so much as a catchy distorted guitar riff.

Explain please.

You know there is this one band that has changed a lot throughout their careers as singers so i will also call them a boy band. This band is Metallica.

Bet a lot of you didnt like that. Bands change with fame, deal with it. Good Charlotte hates MTV but its one of the major ways to get out to their fans. It doesnt matter. A boy band does not right their own music and most of the time they lip sync and they do these gay dances and they dont play instruments. NO band mentioned here is a boy band.

Two things:

1.) My hate for the pre-programmed pop that is on the charts right now meets or exceeds everyone else's.

2.) This is NOT a new phenomenon.

Everyone seems to forget when criticizing the "boy bands" and the like, that a lot of early rock stars didn't write their own material either.

Elvis, Frank Sinatra, most of Motown, Patsy Cline and many others never wrote their own songs OR played an instrument. The difference was the writing was better.

There are three different types of people in the music industry: Writers, performers and those who can do both.

Numbers in the third catergory are fewer. Keep that in mind.

Criticize the music or a bad performance when necessary, but DON'T down-play a performer just because they don't play an instument or write their own material.

Pop in their new CD. Listen to "Ghost of a Good Thing" Rinse. Repeat.

God of Thunder makes a great point. People aren't going to knock Elvis or Sinatra, but they didn't write their own stuff.

Some of these "boy bands" that you mention do write their own things. Is it for everyone? No. But at least it isn't New Kids on the Block x2.

I like a very wide range of music. I'll listen to a Tool CD followed by Justin Timberlake. All mucis has its place.

All music does have its place but lets not call these groups bands. Bands play instruments. These groups are performers. I do not criticize their performances because some are very elaborate and kick ass from a theatrical perspective. I criticize them being called bands and the fact that some are horrible singers.

i cant even believe you just made that comparison. youre way off, no rock band will ever come close to sharing any attirbutes with nscync....YUCK!!!!

I was thinking something similar to what Derwood posted, but what changed my mind, is that most of these bands will eventually lead kids into other good music. Like if you listen to a lot of All American Rejects or Good Charlotte, you might eventually start listening to real punk, or emo, or stuff like that.

Also, a band like Saves the Day might fit in there if you left Dashboard in, but their lead singer is such a geek that you can't compare them to boy bands. So I guess anything that gets kids into more diverse music than the easy crap harmonies of something like Nsync or Bboys, is good with me.

I liked N*sync when they were underground.

I think Mr. Deflok is trying to make a point here.... Let me know if I'm wrong ;)

Most of the bands listed above were "underground" a year or two ago. And it was the coolest thing ever to be into them because they werent popular or on MTV and such. Now that they are popular its cool to hate them. "Oh, I used to like them before they blew up, now they're sell outs and I hate them" I know a lot of Dashboard fans who feel that way.

If you're going to hate a band that you used to adore because they're earning more money and playing bigger arenas then I think that's pretty shallow. Why not be happy that they "made it"?

I think Averett made a good point. I think its a possessive type of issue. When a band you like blows-up you lose the feeling that you have something special.

blink and dashboard are ok imo ... nothing out of this world...

i liked blink way more back in the days of dude ranch and chesire cat, enema was ok, and take off kinda sucked but i could stomach it, im really liking the new album tho.

dashboard i recently got into thier ok not too great either but i liek the melodies alot, what i dont like is how the lead singer always makes a 2nd version of a song thats jsut him by himself then when u go to d/l it u get that one instead of the bands... i hate it

Yeah that's gotta be a pain in the ass to try to download "Hands Down" since there are 4 different versions. Not to mention "extended" versions that they used to do live.

At least they are not so drippy as some of the older boy bands. They have a bit of attitude. But yeah man i do see your point.

They hate MTV so much that they host shows for them? I dunno, but I think that GC are MTV's puppets right now.

And no offense, but they suck. Badly. The lyrics are so awful...

No seriously, their Ragga-Jungle tracks were brilliant.

Dude, don't hate on Boyz II Men. I'll probably take a lot of flak for this from people who think that any group with a bunch of guys singing romantic songs is a "Boy Band," but Boyz II Men are most certainly not a boy band. They've always been seriously involved in the music they sing if they didn't write it themselves (and, hey, Frank Sinatra didn't write the significant majority of his music yet he was still a great singer and performer), and they're truly VERY good musicians. The interweaving harmonies they sing are FAR out of reach for ANY of the boy bands before OR after them and any of the other imitation R&B acts.

If I'm not mistaken (and I might be, I'm in no way a DC fan) the lead singer was a solo act before they formed a band. So yeah.

And I agree with SM70 on the subject of Boyz II Men. I may be a bit biased though since I pretty much grew up listening to them. They sing great though, and their lyrics are way above those of any boy band.

Bands like this aren't 'boy bands' in the backstreet boys sense of it, but they are just another facet of the corporate music machine. Rock music got fashionable a couple of years ago, and now the majors are pooping out emo, punk and whatever else bands at a rate of one a minute. their songs are catchy enough i suppose, but they all follow the same formula and use exactly the same harmonies. Most of them sound exactly the same as one another. I've totally lost interest in the rock scene lately.

i dont listen to them to get profound knowledge from the lyrics, i just kinda think their music is fun. Dont get me wrong i dont think they are all that great but they are ok. But ya they are MTV's puppets, MTV is so stupid.

I thought this was about boy bands, not MTV's affect on the music scene.

Granted MTV plays a large part in a band's exposure but it does not turn a rock/punk/rap group into a boy band. The boy band tag implies bubble-gum lyrics, synthesizer driven "music" and cute little line-dance numbers.

Metallica, Guns 'N' Roses, and several other bands were/are big-time MTV sluts but they are not boy bands.

yeah totally happeend to me wiht hands down and screaming infidelities

btw good charlotte have totally become mtvs puppets, their musi is terrible, and the lyrics are horrid, they really have nothnig going for them except the fact that i find the gothic guitarist intersting simply because hes in pop punk band and hes agoth, oh and at mtv awards benji tried to kiss him and he ducked

Yup, Dashboard started out as a side project... I could go on about that but Im sure nobody really cares :p

And I'd never classify Boyz II Men as a "boy band" I think they are incredibly talented.

... And that's kind of my problem with these bands. It might sound kind of elitist to say this, but these kids don't know what the music's about! THAT'S what bothers me.

Yeah, they listen to All-American Rejects and Good Charlotte, and eventually they find another "not-sold-out" band that they like, and then that band gets big, too, and the cycle repeats. Their only exposure comes from the product being flashed in front of their teenybopper faces, not from having a passion for the music. (This is a subject that bothers me immensly, so forgive me if I rant.)

Two great examples are Alkaline Trio and Brand New. Alkaline Trio was a very dark band; they had/have ties with the Church of Satan, and their lyrics were really bitter and graphic... and they rocked! They released three full-lengths and a bunch of EPs completely under the radar. But now that they're part of Vagrant, who spawned the embiggening of DC and Saves the Day, and their newest CD sounds NOTHING like their older stuff. It's terrible! It's so generic pop-punk, with bland, pseudo-abstract lyrics that mean nothing that I can't even listen to it. They've changed their sound before, and that's fine, but changing your sound to accomodate the preteen "hardcore" (read: Abercrombie) scene is wrong.

Brand New is a bit different. Their first CD didn't grab a lot of attention because, on the surface, it was generic pop-punk (even though it was really much better). They released a single from it, and it got some airplay; nothing more. Then they released Deja Entendu, which was superb. That CD stayed unknown for all of a month, before word got out that they were really good, and they started getting MTV airplay, and the teenybopper masses got their hands on that, too. But the people who where in the scene knew about them and their new CD before anyone. While I can't say they've sold out yet (even though they toured with DC a while ago), it seems almost inevitable.

Again, it may sound elitist to say that I deserve this music more than anyone else, but there's just something about this style of music that leads me to believe it wasn't meant to be catered to the masses. And there are way too many bands that (have done/ will do) this, and it makes me wonder if the music I love is as sincere as I thought it was...

And Averett, you do make a good point; I don't hate bands that make it big (I still like Blink and NFG), but I don't like Alkaline's or DC's new music at all, because it doesn't feel the same. Okay, I'm done

/rant

Itchy93