You may hate me, but it ain’t no lie…”
You want to break out into dance and finish the refrain at the top of your lungs. But you look around at all the people near you rolling their eyes at ‘N Sync, so you shrug your shoulders and suppress the urge. “Boy bands are lame. Only losers rock out to the Back Street Boys or One Direction,” you remind yourself as you think of the 1D fandom with which you do not want to be associated.
Today, it is popular to do the opposite of what is popular. But this is impossible because one is doing the popular thing by not doing the popular thing. It’s a Catch-22 and it doesn’t make any sense.
A prime example of this is the boy band phenomenon. Most likely, if you asked someone if she (or he!) liked One Direction, she would insist that One Direction is lame and has obnoxious preteen fangirls who have no taste in music. But if “What Makes You Beautiful” came on the radio, nobody would turn it off, even though all of the passengers in the car would mildly protest the song. And by the end, everyone would be singing at the top of their lungs.
How do I know this? The answer is simple: The official music video has 437 million YouTube views. Two million people have purchased the song. Millions loved this song enough to spend three minutes and 18 seconds and $1.29 on it.
But the boy band craze didn’t start with One Direction in 2010. It didn’t even start when the term was coined in the ‘90s with the likes of the Backstreet Boys, ‘N Sync or Boyz II Men. Teenage girls have been putting up posters of boy bands since at least the ‘60s, when The Jackson Five, The Beatles, The Beach Boys and The Monkees were being blasted on every transistor radio.
Boy bands are popular for a reason. It is a lot more fun to sing about “Fun, Fun, Fun” with The Beach Boys than to sing about being a “Creep” with Radiohead. “The Best Song Ever,” by One Direction has a far better message than “Low” by Flo Rida. And after learning that “Fancy” covered by Reba is actually about prostitution, even die-hard country fans could use the Backstreet Boys singing “Larger than Life” to bring some sunshine back into their day.
That isn’t to degrade the other songs. They each have their time and place, just like boy band songs. Except that the place and time for boy band music is all the time, because it is extremely catchy. In fact, I am sure one of the aforementioned songs is now on repeat in your head (You’re welcome). Just because a genre is popular, does not mean it is inherently bad. Popularity and reach are kind of the point of the music industry, after all.
Kissing Joey on the ‘N Sync poster above your head every night before you go to sleep is nothing to be ashamed of. And neither is owning both One Direction albums and singing along to them every time you take a shower. Hiding your true music taste and pretending to think boy bands are lame when you would rather stop talking because “I Want It That Way” just came on the radio would be far more of a shame. While you were joining your friends by deriding what’s popular, others were forcing their way to the front of the stage and getting Nick Lachey to sign their sneakers. So now they have one-of-a-kind sneakers, and you have… well… nothing.
Instead of pretending to dislike something you truly love just so you seem cool, go ahead and embrace your inner boy band fangirl and shout ‘N Sync at the top of your lungs:
“Baby bye, bye, bye.”