I'm A Bad Boy But I'm Nice (Boyband 15)

[koganbot]

Inspired by Christophe calling Big Bang's "Blue" the greatest boyband song since Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way," I compiled a list of fifteen boyband tracks. Not a best-of, not a survey, but some stuff I think highly of, and enough gaps to call forth lists of your own:

The Jewels "Hearts Of Stone"
Dion And The Belmonts "I Wonder Why"
The Marcels "Blue Moon"
The Miracles "You Really Got A Hold On Me"
The Beatles "She Loves You"
The Temptations "(I Know) I'm Losing You"
The Monkees "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone"
The Jackson 5 "I Want You Back"
The Moments "Love On A Two-Way Street"
New Kids On The Block "You Got It (The Right Stuff)"
Bell Biv DeVoe "Poison"
*NSync "I Want You Back"
Backstreet Boys "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)"
Big Bang "Tonight"
MBLAQ "I Don't Know"

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I was extrapolating forward and back from early '90s usage; so, the male r&b vocal group taken to by kids and teens, with dancing. Orioles and Drifters not eligible, Frankie Lymon And The Teenagers are. "I Want To Hold Your Hand" eligible, "I Am The Walrus" not. "ABC" eligible, "Shake Your Body" not (among other things, vocals too much a Michael-only showcase). I count the Coasters, but I'd have chosen the Robins/Coasters' "Riot In Cell Block Number 9," which is a bit early and the content is probably insufficiently pre-teen (though I myself would've loved it as a tyke). I count the early Wailers, but my choice, "Jailhouse," is too late, and it reaches older than teen. I disqualified duos even though in my heart I'm sure the Everly Brothers belong for "Cathy's Clown" and "All I Have To Do Is Dream," and maybe even Simon & Garfunkel for the electric version of "Sounds Of Silence."

There are a whole bunch of reasons why country duo Brooks & Dunn aren't eligible, but going by sonics alone, "Ain't Nothing Bout You" would be right up our alley (or up the alley of Londonbeat's "I've Been Thinkin' About You," at any rate).

Enormous gaps in my knowledge, obviously; e.g., between "Two-Way Street" and "You Got It" and between "Everybody" and "Tonight." Along with the temporal gaps, there're the geographic (I'm missing Britain most notably, except for one minor band; also missing the Philly end of MotownPhilly, not to mention "MotownPhilly"; but hey, for once there's a genre where Boston matters, hurrah!), the cultural (for instance, I have no memory of what the Bay City Rollers sound like, or whether there were any freestyle boybands other than TKA), and gender (are there any all-women boybands other than Taiwan's MissTER?), not just gaps but vast missing expanses. Btw, there was a woman in the Miracles, Smokey's wife Claudette, though she tends not to show up on live clips.

The Marcels included two whites, but according to Wikip they left when it turned out that the group's being "mixed" meant it couldn't perform in the South.



Possibly the Moments had an audience that was too old; I wouldn't know, and without them the '70s go unrepresented. "Steppin' Stone" veers hard rock, but it's my favorite Monkees track. The Jewels may be just prior to the teen onslaught, but within a year the song was performed live by Elvis and hit the pop charts in versions by the Charms and the Fontane Sisters, and I felt like including it.

4/15 = 27% = titles with parentheses.

The big debate in my mind was whether to count Sweet's "Ballroom Blitz," which would have busted my genre wide open (speaking of Busted).

So have at it.

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(Crossposting at poptimists, to see if it's still a ghost town.)

Comments

[koganbot]

I love Shinee's "Sherlock," but I can't say that it's really a song that is either a pioneering leader of its era's sound, nor particularly its own unique style

Does seem as if a lot of the Korean boyband melodies and harmonies hark back to the early and mid '90s (e.g., *NSync and ilk), which themselves were drawing noticeably on the '80s and '70s. Compare this to a girl group like 2NE1 — it's not as if 2NE1's styles come out of nowhere (I'm sure CL would happily create a list of her rap and r&b antecedents), but what the group have made of those antecedents belongs unequivocally to the '10s (or so I think, anyway, though note Michelle Myers at the Jukebox saying, about "I Am The Best," "those circa-2003 pentatonic string synths sound delightfully anachronistic against all the 2010s dirty bass and sing-rapping," which can be cited to either challenge or support what I just said).

[arbitrary-greay.livejournal.com]

It has been noted that Big Bang and 2NE1 (YG Entertainment) stand in contrast to the other idol groups. Their influences tend to be not just more modern, but also less European. (Definitely less Scandinavian.) So this might actually be a reflection on American R&B/Hip hop focus vs. European electronic/dance focus, although the lines have blurred with the influx of electro recently.

The bit about the "pentatonic string synths" and how they sound anachronistic in the new modern setting reminds me of how SNSD's "Gee" sounds purely Korean to me in composition, to where it just doesn't work in Japanese and they ended up leaving Korean in the Japanese version anyways. Set to those 80s style synths, and it's one of the most novel songs that can and has swayed many a pop skeptic into the world of bubblegum idols. I have yet to hear another upbeat song in Kpop that has sounded so Korean to me, instead of Western-derivative.

Tangent: What is it exactly that sets "Scream" and "Fantastic Baby" apart from "Sexy and I Know It" in quality/acclaim? The disdain for LMFAO seems to derive primarily from their lyrical content and the way they carry themselves as frat boys/assholes/trying to be funny. But then is it just that Big Bang aren't trying to be funny all that's need to excuse "Fantastic Baby?" "Scream" does has some additional elements going for it beyond the electro, mainly that 80s chorus, but is that and their straightforward/seemingly sincere attitude really all that's needed to go from a 2.75 to a 7.33? (I can understand it, though, as one of the reasons I listen to foreign pop music is so that I can enjoy music purely aesthetic, without pop's usually cringe-inducing lyrics ruining the experience.) Or is this another Boney Joan Rule moment?

[koganbot]

Regarding "Scream" versus "Sexy And I Know It," 2NE1 are adorable and female* and, as singers, genuinely talented, and they don't try to make a virtue out of clumsiness. And LMFAO don't just look frattish, they sound it. But they also pretend to be clumsier than they actually are. And I'll mention that my friend Dave recently made a terrific mashup of "Sexy And I Know It" and Aaron Carter's "Aaron's Party," which is so good that I just put it on a mixtape.

The contempt the Jukeboxers have for LMFAO is not shared by the general public in, say, Korea. By hearing "Party Rock Anthem" through its Korean derivatives, I really came to appreciate it.

*As long as I've been making difficult-to-back-up claims about how the adventure in music these days favors faces that are female and young, I'll add that wasted behavior that, in guys, is coming across more and more as boorish can still be genuinely graceful or challenging when done by women. This is the Female Male Codicil to the Boney Joan Rule.

"Fantastic Baby" hasn't seaped into me nearly as well as "Scream" has.

[christophe andersen (from livejournal.com)]

"Fantastic Baby" is my least favorite from "Alive". There are things I like about it but I find the chorus boring and I'm automatically turned off by the phrase "boom shaka-laka". I just can't take it seriously. On the other hand, I can't stop listening to "Love Dust" which also has it's share of cheesiness.

[christophe andersen (from livejournal.com)]

I have always heard a lot of British pop and specifically Girls Aloud in SNSD, especially in "Gee". That might be more in production than composition but not knowing the language at all they still provide a ton of hooks for me to latch onto and sing along with, which is what Girls Aloud did at their best. There's also the name Girls Generation that just makes them an extension of Girls Aloud in my mind. Except for the language, I could imagine Girls Aloud sounding a lot like SNSD on "Oh! - The Second Album". I can't think of any other k-pop I've heard that comes closer to that style of British teen pop.

[arbitrary-greay.livejournal.com]

Wow, that mashup makes the lyrics sound a lot more humorous than the original. This one could almost be a Lonely Island product. Not seeing the MV visuals helps, of course, I can pretend that they're rapping with a wink at the audience, not leering fratboy faces. Obligatory sound association link.

Does British teen pop include the S-Club-and-its-offshoots sound? (Or do you refer to current British teen pop?) Plenty of Jpop sounds like that, and Kpop has its share, as well, including blatant Max Martin replications.

Would you elaborate on the Girls Aloud-ness in "Gee?" I don't hear analysis of "Gee's" influences often, so it interests me.

[christophe andersen (from livejournal.com)]

I would love to elaborate more but as I was listening to some Girls Aloud last night and comparing it to SNSD songs, I was specifically thinking of the song "Oh" and not "Gee". Today I see you were writing about "Gee", which I agree is a bit different and unique.

As for British teen pop, my knowledge and interest pretty much starts and stops with Girls Aloud (from 2005-2008) and the Minogue sisters at various times. I'm also familiar with Sugababes and some of the Spice Girls solo projects. I basically think of British teen pop as not being afraid to go for the big melodies in all their songs, ballads and upbeat dance songs. American teen pop I think of as more R&B and Hip-Hop based at this point without the focus on traditional songwriting. With SNSD, and a lot of Korean pop, I hear the big melodies mixed in seamlessly with the more experimental R&B production. SNSD steer more toward the British sound than some of the others like Kara and 2NE1.

There are also a number of SNSD songs that just sound like Girls Aloud, at least to me. The one that stands out the most to me is SNSD's "Boys & Girls". It could fit seamlessly on Girls Aloud's "Chemistry" album.

[koganbot]

There seems to be a never-ending stream of boybands in Britain, few of whom I like, though who knows what I've failed to hear. And this depends on the definition of boyband. If someone wants to call The Clash a boyband, I'm down with that! And I think Busted and McFly are kind of boyband extensions of the Clash, maybe, and they sometimes did good stuff. I need to explore their catalogs. Tried to get Moggy to tell me if she considered McFly a boyband, and she didn't reply. That sort of band might be what the Jonas Brothers in the U.S. were going for initially. Their first single nicked the start from "Anarchy In The U.K.," "Holidays In The Sun," and they covered a couple of Busted tracks.

But as for the r&b template boyband in Britain, Take That and Westlife and whatever comes out every year as runners-up in X Factor, they rarely reach me ('cept there were a couple of JLS tracks I liked).

I like what I've heard of Girls Aloud a lot, "No Good Advice," "Call The Shots," "Something Kinda Ooh," though I've never gotten a strong overview of them. They seem a bit daunting — cool and haughty. My sense is that they were aimed as much at young career girls as at teenyboppers — though that could well be true of, say, After School and ilk as well. I like that Girls Aloud once sampled Nazareth!

With SNSD, and a lot of Korean pop, I hear the big melodies mixed in seamlessly with the more experimental R&B production.

That's a good description.

[koganbot]

"Sexy And I Know It" sounded like a deliberate comic exaggeration and goof in the original too, I thought. The wink was always there. Which isn't to say LMFAO don't mean it on some level — they realize how average-looking, non-studs they are, that's part of the whole setup and joke; but an underlying message, for them and their fans, is that drunk-ass party slugs like them are doing fine, are as sexy as they need to be (especially when everyone's drunk).

The thing is, LMFAO, being the blustery guys they are, could never do what 2NE1 do, go "Even if you were me you'd be envious of my body" and do it straightup, no hedging, no taking it back. And conversely they couldn't turn around, like 2NE1, and say, "Don't lie to my face tellin' me I'm pretty... 'cause I know I'm ugly" and make it sound true, every bit of the pain, as 2NE1 do. Guys like LMFAO would just sound pathetic/bathetic.

I guess my thesis (or something) is that Teddy Park, who wrote "Even if you were me you'd be envious of my body" and "Don't lie to my face tellin' me I'm pretty... 'cause I know I'm ugly," couldn't be the one to sing those lines, either, not convincingly. Has to be girls.

[koganbot]

On the other hand, that Jordan Knight song that Christophe mentions below, "Give It To You," is impossible for me to hear except as something that ought to be parody, it's so unconvincing. But in '99 it was a hit in its own right, not out of camp fascination.

Did you ever hear 2gether? They were a parody group, from an MTV comedy, exactly lampooning the boyband sound of the year 2000. And their music was good!