It's not a long journey to my last port of call here in Boybandland, and by the time the sun is setting over the ocean we're pulling into the harbour, and I note, looking at the country from the rail of the ship, that much of it is made up of forbidding mountainous territory. More so than any of the other countries in BBL I have visited, this region seems to be almost split in half by the mighty mountain ranges. Referring to my information booklet, I note there are only two real cities of note in this rather smaller country, in one of which resides the new boyband called The Wanted, while south of their city, the imaginatively-named “Wantopolis”, their bitter rivals, One Direction, reside in the similarly originally named “The One City”. Tensions are rife between both I'm told, with attacks and sorties being carried out from one city to the other; casualties are common.
So this, then, is the so-called future of Boybands? Two pretenders to the throne, warring against each other and striking from their urban strongholds. Doesn't sound too promising to me, but it's too late for me to try to figure it out now, and I head for my hotel. Everything here is very futuristic, very state of the art: even the hotel concierge is a cyborg, and I don't take kindly to his tone. Her tone. Its tone. Whatever. This is not what I've come to expect, and it's going to take some getting used to. The room is sterile, functional, almost the sort of place you would expect a robot to go to for a break; certainly lacking warmth, but it has all the “mod cons” I would expect, or could ask for.
There are, of course, more boybands on the planet now than you could shake a stick at. The overpopularity of shows like the X Factor has given rise to more and more groups of guys who think they can sing --- some of whom actually can --- and therefore get together to form a boyband. JLS, Blue, Jonas Brothers... and it's spreading beyond the traditionally accepted territories of the UK, US and Europe. Boybands are big now in South Korea and Japan, with even Indonesia throwing their hat into the ring. The place, to coin a phrase, is lousy with them.
But I have no intention of researching, much less reviewing every boyband that has popped up in the last three or four years. Add to that the ones that have reformed, like Take That, Backstreet Boys and New Kids on the Block (the last two of which merged to form one big boyband going under the acronym NKOTBSB), and you could spend your life looking into these bands. I've no intention of doing that. And whereas at least the previous bands I have reviewed I had some little knowledge of, having grown up avoiding their music on the radio and TV, I know precisely nothing about the new crop, particularly the two I've selected. So it will be new territory for me.
One thing about being on a “futuristic world of tomorrowland” is that at least the transport is top-notch. Hover-taxis and zero-gravity buses flit through the leaden skies while sparkling monorails which seem to run on the power of self-satisfaction slip like metal slugs across the imposing city skyline as I arrive in the first of my destinations, I guess you would say my penultimate stop really, the city known as Wantopolis, the lack of originality in its name surely foreshadowing a similar mundanity about the music this band plays? Of course, I've never even heard one single song by The Wanted, know nothing at all about them, so it's to their city that I make my way in order to read up on them and listen to their music so that I can form a cohesive and informed opinion of them when I review their albums.
My heart sinks when I read that the Wanted have Irish members, though they're seen mostly as a British band. Of course, I shouldn't worry: that ship has long sailed, with Boyzone and Westlife already having put Ireland well on the boyband map (sigh), but it's depressing to find that boybands are alive and well in the emerald isle even today. Oh well. Other than that it's a familiar story, with the band being created after auditions of over 1,000 guys took place in 2009, and with three of the later lineup being picked from that audition, with two more added later on. The final lineup became
Max George
Nathan Sykes
Tom Parker
Jay McGuinness
Siva Kaneswaran
The last two were not part of the auditions, and were drafted in later, don't ask me from where. Work began on their debut album, and again familiar faces were to be seen: Steve Mac and Wayne Hector, who had worked with Westlife for most of their career, began writing and producing, and Robbie Williams' songwriting partner Guy Chambers was also involved. It does seem, though, that the boys in the Wanted were contributing to the songwriting from the start, helping out on about half of the songs on the album. Their first single went straight to number one, and after that a second single hit the number two slot. A few days later the debut, self-titled album was released. It went to number four.
The Wanted --- The Wanted --- 2010 (Geffen)
In a display both of raw, naked greed and of over-the-top promotion, the album was released in several different configurations, including one which you could buy with liner notes dedicated to each separate member: so if you wanted all the members' albums you could have shelled out for five albums. Never heard such utter rubbish in my life!
Oh.... kayyyy... There seems to be a SNAFU in progress here. Never one to spend even a cent on a boyband record if I could avoid it, I had a lot of trouble (mostly, I think, due to the sad demise of Demonoid) downloading a working torrent for these guys. In the end, after about seventeen attempts and mounting frustration, and a rising temptation to just write “Look, they're crap, ok?” I found one that would download. But when I look at the tracklisting it seems wrong. Now, after some digging, I see that just to confuse matters, the Wanted released their first album in 2010, self-titled, then their second the next year, and then this year they released an EP called --- wait for it --- “The Wanted”! This was for US/Canadian release and features material from both their first albums, in a move somewhat reminscent of Backstreet Boys' first, or second album, depending on where you live, “Backstreet's Back”.
And guess what I downloaded? The EP. Right, well as they only have the two albums to date, I'm going to be unable to review the first album --- what do you mean, shell out the dollar and buy it, you cheap...? I wouldn't waste the money. Really. I'd rather give it to charity. That's right, I said
give it to charity!
So I'll review this EP, and advise you which tracks come from the original debut. How's that? Yeah? Well, tough.
The opening track, in fact one of the singles from their
second album, “Glad you came”, does not, surprisingly start out as a boyband-sounding song at all; in fact, if anything it reminds me of Coldplay, at least at the start with the lone piano and the Chris Martin soundalike, but then it breaks into a boppy dancer with squealing synths and drum machines, brassy keys which sort of hit a kind of semi-celtic feel, then it returns to the Coldplayism for the outro. Weird. One of only two new tracks on the EP which don't appear on either album, “Chasing the sun” is a house/trance style dancer, with vocoders, thumping drumbeats, stabbing synth and plenty of “Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh!” in the lyric.
Nice cello to open what was in fact their first single, a number one for them, “All time low” which in fact opens their debut album, it's not bad till the drum machines kick in and then it becomes another dancer with more annoying altered voices and vocoders --- why can't people just sing in their own voices? It's beyond me. Well, at least this is more uptempo than all the four Westlife albums I've just reviewed! It's perhaps telling too that of the seven tracks on this EP, not one of them has a writing credit for the band, although they contributed to over half of the music on the debut.
The other new song is “Satellite”, and starts out with low synth so that you think it might be a ballad, but interestingly for a boyband, no, it's another uptempo bopper, one you can dance to. I don't like it, don't get me wrong, but it is strangely refreshing to hear an album that doesn't have ballad after ballad with the odd faster song thrown in almost as an afterthought. Next one up is again from the second album, another fast one, with new-wave/electronica dance synth and a very catchy beat; “Lightning” continues the almost disdain for the “old way” of doing things by cramming as many ballads as possible on an album: up to now, there hasn't even been one.
But no boyband can resist the lure of the ballad forever, and true to eventual form we get “Heart vacancy”, but at least it's not piano-led, with a nice acoustic guitar taking the melody before the drums and piano come in, and even then once the song gets going it's a reasonably uptempo ballad, not a tearjerker, not a cry-into-your-alcopops song, but with a lot of heart and a decent amount of energy, to be fair. And we finish on one more track from the second album, indeed the lead single from that album, “Gold forever”, another boppy dancer.
TRACKLISTING
1. Glad you came
2. Chasing the sun
3. All time low
4. Satellite
5. Lightning
6. Heart vacancy
7. Gold forever
As an introduction to the band, if not their actual debut, I'm impressed that at least the Wanted didn't cram their album with ballads, and that their music is a lot more high energy than the likes of Boyzone, Westlife
et al. But that much apart, I don't see anything revolutionary or new about them. Not that I expected to, but you would wonder how much different they see themselves from the boybands of the nineties, or if they would even wish to be associated with them. Still, like it or not, they probably owe a large part of their appeal and popularity to these bands, who, like it or not, laid the groundwork for the blueprint of what is today's boyband.
The Wanted released their second album last year, however having had no success in the USA at this time they then went ahead and “sampled” the two albums in one, as explained above, in what became “The Wanted EP”, which we have just reviewed. There's not a whole lot else to tell really. They supported Justin Bieber and Britney Spears on their respective tours, and then headed into the studio to record their second album.
Battleground --- The Wanted --- 2011 (Island)
Already with a new label, The Wanted were a hot property, at least on this side of the Atlantic. A few tracks on this album, as already explained, were later included in their 2012 EP, and those that were we'll just refer to as we've already reviewed them. It opens with “Glad you came”, which as we mentioned was a big hit single for them, then goes on to “Lightning”, which again we've reviewed, before the first ballad makes its presence known in the shape of the unexpectedly titled “Warzone”. But is it indeed a ballad? As it goes on it gets more powerful and dramatic, and you get the feeling it's going to break out any minute into a drum-punching, keys-screaming dancer, though it sort of never does really.
“Invincible” is another high-energy bopper, with techno style synth and trancey drumloops, not much in it lyrically but it does move the feet, and it's worth mentioning that both it and the previous track have songwriting credits for some of the boys, whereas the following track, “The last to know” is devoid of their input, though really not that much lacking for, or gaining from, that absence. It's a sort of mid-tempo semi-ballad, and works quite well, with an almost U2 sound to the guitar. Sounding like the first proper ballad, “I'll be your strength” hovers on the edge of becoming an uptempo song courtesy of the rapid, but muted, drumbeat that keeps pace with the verses, breaking out a little in concert with some hard loud synth during the chorus, but yet failing to take over the song. It's another partially written by some of the bandmembers, but the next one is a Diane Warren special.
“Rocket” opens on an almost carnival keyboard sound and then breaks into a romping, pumping beat with attendant sparkly piano .... hell, Warren can't ever do wrong, can she? Whoever she writes for ends up getting a hit, and this has top ten written all over it. The fact that the label chose not to release it really shows a sense of shortsightedness, as this would definitely have been a hit. A nice acoustic guitar and low organ introduce “I want it all”, which is a song written by Siva Kaneswaran and who I can only assume is his brother, Daniel, and Guy Chambers, the involvement of the latter giving rise to the obvious Robbie comparisons, and yeah, it does sound like a Williams song, and in fact for my money this gentle half-ballad comes in as the standout on the album by a long way.
We're back then to the dance/techno boppers for “The weekend”, on which two of the guys collaborate, but really it's nothing special, and the last song they help write is “Lie to me”, which surprisingly again sounds like Robbie Williams, but this time there's no involvement for Chambers. Nice smooth semi-ballad with a very decent chorus, and then we close on the already-reviewed “Gold forever”.
As a second album this is not too bad. There's a lot more heart and power in it than most of the boyband albums I've listened to up to this point, and based on the quality of the songwriting here I wouldn't be surprised to find that the Wanted remain, er, wanted for a good few years yet. Will they have the longevity of Westlife, Take That or New Kids on the Block? Time will tell...
TRACKLISTING
1. Glad you came
2. Lightning
3. Warzone
4. Invincible
5. Last to know
6. I'll be your strength
7. Rocket
8. I want it all
9. The weekend
10. Lie to me
11. Gold forever
That leaves me with just one last trip to make, and in the morning I'll be heading “dahn sath”, to where One Direction hold court, and to try to figure out what, if anything, differentiates these new lights of the boyband wave from their peers, both contemporary and past. Are they as good, or bad, as The Wanted, or have they something different going on? We've seen here that these guys have taken a slightly different approach to the usual and accepted boyband idea, tweaking it slightly to involve much fewer ballads and much more uptempo, danceable songs, but how far can that change go? Is there any room for originality and new ideas in the world of the boyband, or do they all slavishly follow a preset formula, like dodgem cars that can't deviate from their programmed paths? Are all boybands doomed to repeat the same cycle, never breaking free and asserting their musical individuality, if they have any?
Hold that thought.