Stranger in a Strange Land: Trollheart ventures into the world of boybands
 

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I watch the coastline nervously as it comes nearer, and a trick of perspective seems to make it bob up and down on the water. I know of course that it's me, or rather, the ship that's carrying me, rising and falling on the swell of the ocean as I approach this new and daunting land, but my brain refuses to register that. Perhaps that's due to the trepidation I feel on making this journey. I look at my ticket and heft my shoulder-bag, and not for the first time ask myself why I'm doing this, why I'm putting myself through this torture?

Then I remember my promise to myself, and to the good readers of my Journal, back at Music Banter. I have decided to, Jackhammer-like, do my very best to try to ensure that I know as much about genres with which I am only peripherally acquainted, in order to fulfil, in a way, that old adage, know thine enemy. I do not expect to get into this music, but I want to be sufficiently informed that, the next time I slag it off, I can at least feel that I know what I am talking about. It's very easy to say “I hate reggae” or “All rap is awful”, or indeed “Punk is all noise”, but if you haven't listened to any of that music in any real depth then you're just as guilty of bias and ignorance as someone who has seen Genesis play “Follow you follow me” on TV and maybe heard Marillion's “Kayleigh” on the radio who says that all prog rock is rubbish. They don't know that, haven't taken the time to find out what the music is like, have based their opinion on the tiniest examples of that music, and so have come to a totally uninformed and biased conclusion.

My aim is to travel to the most foreign musical countries I can, sample the local music, and try to if not understand it, at least take the good parts out of it, or if they can't be found, relate why I find that particular music so unappealing. At least the next time I say, for instance, Bob Marley is rubbish (sorry, Marley fans, just an example!) and someone says you know nothing about reggae, I will be able to quote albums, artistes and songs to back up my assertions. Of course, these voyages could do the opposite, and change my mindset, so that I will in fact get into these bands, these different genres, or if not get into them, at least get them. That would be interesting, to say the least.

And so, my first, purposely-chosen as perhaps one of the scariest genres to be explored is the clinical, cold, empty and formulaic world of the Boyband. At least, that's how I see such music. Whether this trip will change my mind, whether I will begin to see some good in this genre, or whether I will be able to appreciate with a new ear the music of such bands as Boyzone, Nsync and Backstreet Boys, is open to question. But at least no-one will be able to say I didn't try.

So, I remind myself, that's why I've come all this way, and as the coast comes ever closer into view, my heart begins pounding faster, and I reach for an anxiety tablet to calm my fracturing nerves. As the ship gets closer, and I can now make out the garishly coloured buildings that dot the coastline of this pristine country, a strange sound comes to my ears, borne on the wind, which itself sounds like nothing less than a frothy digital piano playing the same chords over and over again, till it is surely enough to drive hardened sailors mad and cause ships to dash against the rocks. How the captain stands it is beyond me.

I start to clap my hands to my ears, to shut out the awful sound, but then remember my promise, and grit my teeth and endure it as it becomes louder as we drift nearer and nearer. The sound resolves into a low, vibrant hum which seems to maintain the same level while at the same time appearing to rise in pitch. I shake my head, fish out a sandwich from my bag for energy as I stand at the rail of the ship, in the bow as we nose into the harbour, and with trembling hands quickly run up the last prog rock track I will be able to listen to before I have to turn my full attention to the simpering, poe-faced adolescent pap that passes for music from the residents of these islands. Sorry, that wasn't very open-minded, was it? Well, I'm not on their land yet, so sue me.

Before I know it, I'm leaving the ship on shaky legs, my ipod surrendered to the purser to eliminate any temptation to listen to other music, and making my way down into the docks and up into the many small villages which dot the area around the coastline. I realise with mounting horror now what that sound is, and it almost sends me screaming back to the ship, which I realise with hammering heart is gearing up for departure already. Understandable: few if any journey to these dark islands; this trip cost me, and no-one would stay here longer than they have to!

But the sound! Yes, there it is again, higher-pitched and stronger than when we were coming into the harbour, and now that I'm on dry land I can make out the incessant, frenzied, almost overpowering sound of thousands upon thousands of female teenage voices just screaming, almost as one, at the top of their voices. There are no words can be made out, just an endless, indecipherable cacophony that hurts the ears and threatens to shake the brain loose from the skull.

I have arrived in Early BoyBand Land.
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(note: my thanks to the designers of the maps used here. I have no way to contact you - or even determine who you are - in order to ask permission for their use, so hope you will not mind this somewhat irreverent use of your fine work, which is not meant in any way to denigrate or make fun of it. Just Boybands.)
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The truly scary thing about this country is its size! Boybands have been around since the Dawn of Time (well, the late seventies) but only really came into vogue with the emergence of New Edition, and on their heels New Kids on the Block, generally accepted as having been the first “real” Boybands. But just what is a Boyband? Well, in the unlikely event that there are some of you out there blessed enough not to know what I'm talking about (World War 2 ended almost seventy years ago, by the way!) here's what Wikipedia, the online Encyclopedia of Everything, the web's version of the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - though without the amusing voiceover and graphics - has to say on the subject.

”A boy band (or boyband) is loosely defined as a popular music act consisting of only male singers. The members are expected to dance as well as sing, usually giving highly choreographed performances. More often than not, boy band members do not play musical instruments, either in recording sessions or on stage, and only sing and dance, making the term somewhat of a misnomer. However, exceptions do exist. In many cases boy bands are brought together by a producer through an audition process, although many of them form on their own.”

(The above was copied and pasted directly from the Wiki entry, the only time I have ever done this. I usually utilise Wiki for much of my information, but none of it is ever copied down verbatim. This once, I felt it was right to do so, given the largely false and insincere makeup of these bands. No dubbed vocals, though!)

So, definition confirmed, it seems to be agreed that the first two real boybands were these two, and although there was of course the Jackson Five, I don't really consider them a boyband, mostly due to the fact that some of them could, and did, play instruments (Tito played lead guitar, Jermaine bass and Randy played both keyboards and drums) and the teeny-bopper sensation of the 70s, Scotland's own Bay City Rollers, but again, they played instruments, at least some of them, and to my knowledge did not engage in any of the choreographed routines endemic to Boybands nowadays, so I'm not including them.

Onward, brave heart! The fire awaits! Or something...

No.

Yes, I'm afraid so.

You know, some people have referred to the Beatles as a boyband (Ugh), and I guess, if you want to get technical, you can go back to early doo wop or the harmony pop groups of the fifties like the Four Aces for example.

Anyway, assuming you are omitting bands like the Beatles and Hollies from this list (and I hope you are), does that mean we have to endure, ugh, the Osmonds? :eek:

No. Didn't they have Marie? Anyway, I'm only going from the 80s, when the so-called Boyband phenomenon is agreed to have really begun. And we begin with these guys.

Part One: "Out of the mouths of babes and little children..."

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And so I flag down a taxi and point out my destination on the map. It's a small city further north and inland, called Editiona Nueva, which my driver helpfully informs me is the local language for “New Edition”. Well, thanks for that Einstein! I could have figured that out myself! We travel for some time through deserted roads and past vast plains of sand before we come to a somewhat run-down town, with a village clock that seems for some reason permanently stuck at six-fifteen (whether this is morning or evening I don't know) and a lot of people roam the streets in unfashionable clothes. I'm right back where it started, and it looks like the inhabitants have remained there, in 1982. I check into the nearest hotel that doesn't look too rundown and seedy, and after eating and freshening up I head off to the local library, laptop under my arm, to make my first report.

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And so it is, in the city named after the first ever real Boyband, I begin my tale. In 1982 New Edition came second in a talent contest and were “created” as a new version of the Jackson 5 by producer Maurice Starr, and included the now-famous Bobby Brown in their lineup. The original personnel were as follows:-

Bobby Brown
Michael Bivins
Ricky Bell
Ralph Tresvant
Ronnie DeVoe

Signed by Starr and taken to his recording studio to record their first album, 1983's Candy Girl the boys must have been somewhat nonplussed to receive a cheque for the grand total of $1.87 each after completing their first major concert! This despite the fact that Candy Girl had yielded them four hit singles, one of which went to number one!
Candy Girl --- New Edition --- 1983 (Streetwise)
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Impressionable kids? Certainly sounds like it. Sounds like they were totally ripped off by an unscrupulous manager and record label boss - thank God that doesn't happen anymore! ;) But the average age of the band members, for want of a better description, in New Edition was fifteen, so I suppose the fame and glory must have gone to their heads, the money a secondary concern. You can be sure ol' Maurice Starr made sure he got his ninety-nine point nine nine percent of their earnings, though!

We'll return to the story of these guys later, and see how they got on, but for now the time has come that we all feared, me most especially: time to knuckle down and actually listen to the music! Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...

It starts off funky, with vocoder and slap bass, then the almost childlike voice of Ralph Tresvant singing the rather incongruous, given their tender age, “Gimme Your Love”. Perhaps "Gimme Your Lunch Money" might have been a more appropriate song title! Of course, in any given Boyband it's really impossible to say who's singing the lead vocals, as they all seem to take that role, but Wiki says that Tresvant was brought on board as their lead singer, so I guess it's him. There's a female voice in there too - I think: I mean, these guys are so young it could be their not-yet-broken voices I'm hearing, but a girl is credited on the album - said to be one Tina B, and there's a lot of beginner's guide to rapping. All very embarrassing, but it must have struck a chord (not literally) as it sold very well and started a lucrative career for the guys. Well, initially as mentioned it just lined the pockets of Maurice Starr, but he was soon to be jettisoned.

“She Gives Me a Bang” does not after all seem to be about the latest hairdressing styles, but has some nice bright keyboard work, with some pops and whistles from the synth which would become quite synonymous with this sort of music down the years. The melody in places almost reminds me of Robert Palmer's “Some Guys Have All the Luck”, and again the vocals are shared, seems like just between two of them. Maybe. Hard to tell. Seems Starr plays keys, synth, bass, drums, guitars, vocoder …. obviously maintaining a tight control over his protoges. He also produces, engineers and mixes the album, and writes or co-writes all the songs bar one. Control freak much? I suppose at least he could say he earned all but $9.52 from the album's takings.

The first of no doubt many ballads comes with “Is This the End” (which sadly it was not), an odd song to put on your debut album, I would have thought, one of their hit singles, and it's not too bad. The drums are nicely measured, the keys just the right amount of sugary sweet and the guitars add a sort of George Benson flavour to the song. Hey, give me a break! I know virtually zip about Boybands, and have less interest in them! I'm doing my best! :)

“Pass the Beat” is a real “street”-song, with elements of rap and breakdance, lively keyboards and the ever-present grumbling bass that seems to always accompany songs of this type. It's sung in a type of playground chant, making it just that little bit more annoying than it was at first. Seriously, I'm going to make a real effort to find something to praise or something nice to say about these albums, I just haven't come across anything yet! Well, “Is This the End” wasn't completely terrible, unlike the rest of the album so far...

(Sorry to do this to you, guys, but you knew the dangers when you followed me to Boybandland!)

There surely can't be anything to look forward to about a song called “Popcorn Love”, can there? No, there isn't, and it sounds distressingly like the next track up, their number one hit single “Candy Girl”, which is right up there at the top of my list of songs I would cheerfully erase from history, had I the means. Like, what is the point of a song like that? You won't be surprised to hear that I skipped right over it, but as I say, “Popcorn Love” is virtually a carbon copy of the hit single. Originality, zero.

Perhaps the only potential bright spot is their cover of the Bo Diddley number “Ooh Baby”, but no, they've removed all the soul and blues from it and made it another vacuous pop song. Well, I guess Starr is to blame for that. Still, at least the germ of a good song remains: can't kill the classics! Got to wonder though: what the hell was he thinking here? If this is, as it obviously is, an album aimed at teeny-boppers, impressionable young girls and the kind of audience who wouldn't know the blues if it Facetimed them, why would he include a Bo Diddley song? Who's going to care? Anyone who would appreciate that kind of song is unlikely to have been listening to this album, and that's not the sort of listenership Starr was trying to attract. Was he trying to show that this “band”, to be generous, had more about them than just sugary-sweet ballads and dancy pop songs? Why? Who would care?

Seems to me like he was trying to put something in maybe for the daddys of the teenage girls who were going to be subjecting them to this pap, and maybe give them a chance to say “Oh I know that song” most likely to be followed by a scowled “They're ruining it.” Again, makes no sense whatsover. If you're marketing a band like this, sure, maybe three albums down the line, when your money (ahem sorry, their money, of course: their money!) is made, then you can diversify a little and say “look! We're not just pop stars! We appreciate the classic blues!” But not on your debut, when nobody knows who you are, and those who do, or will, are going to give less than a pair of fetid dingo's kidneys for Bo Diddley, much less know who he is. The song will, and I'm sure did, vanish and get absorbed into the saccharine hodge-podge of pop ditties, drowned without a chance to save itself, dragged down, never to be seen again. I'm sure Bo was spinning in his grave.

More tinny keyboard and whistling synth, as well as the never-far-from-the-melody bass on “Should Have Never Told Me”, then we're into (thank the stars!) the penultimate track, “Gotta Have Your Lovin'”, and you wonder where bands like this would be without a vocoder? It's used so often it's almost overused, and it becomes a real pain listening to every bloody line routed through its circuits. Oh well.

The album closes on “Jealous Girl”, which rather surprisingly is only the second ballad on it. Nice piano and some decent guitar work with a sort of waltzy beat which would be revisited by the likes of still-to-be-discovered Boys II Men on their big hit “The End of the Road”. There are definite elements of the Jacksons here too, not a surprise as this band were conceived as a replacement for them.

Well, I still hate Boybands, but this is just the first of three albums from each band I'm going to try to struggle through. Perhaps my opinion will change over the course of these articles, but I wouldn't bet any big money on it!

TRACK LISTING

1. Gimme Your Love
2. She Gives Me a Bang
3. Is This the End
4. Pass the Beat
5. Popcorn Love
6. Candy Girl
7. Ooh Baby
8. Should Never Have Told Me
9. Gotta Have Your Lovin'
10. Jealous Girl

After the debacle of their first concert, New Edition successfully sued Starr and his company and were released from their contract, signing to record giant MCA and releasing their second album, which they simply entitled New Edition, no doubt as a sign they were being reborn, leaving behind the highs and mostly lows of the Starr era, and starting over again.

New Edition --- New Edition --- 1984 (MCA)
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With a label giant behind their second album, New Edition were promoted as more of a clean-cut, boy-next-door image which would in fact characterise most Boybands for the next quarter of a century, with bands like Boyzone and later Westlife, Nsync, Backstreet Boys and Take That all projecting a wholesome, “safe” image that would appeal as much to teenage girls as to their parents. Boys like this couldn't possibly be a bad influence, could they?

MCA also gave the boys top writers and producers to work on the album, among them Ray Parker Jr., later known for his megahit “Ghostbusters” (who ya gonna call?) and as a result the album was more cohesive, mature and gained a much larger and more diverse following than New Edition had enjoyed up to now. Also, without Starr, the boys finally made some decent money, no doubt welcome after being ripped off for two years by their producer-cum-taskmaster!

“Cool it Now” opens the album, with a beat and melody that would later surface on Whitney Houston's “I Wanna Dance with Somebody”, and became an instant hit single when released, as did the second track, the Ray Parker Jr-penned “Mr. Telephone Man”, recalling the motown hits of the sixties and seventies, with nice vocal harmonies and a lush keyboard sound. Definitely a more mature sound, less of the kids snickering about girls that more or less permeated the first album, and music aimed at an older, and (slightly) more demanding audience.

Another ballad follows, this standing out as being the first New Edition song written by members of the band. “I'm Leaving You Again” also has a motown feel to it, and was written by Ricky Bell and Ralph Tresvant. To be completely fair, for a first attempt at songwriting it's not half bad, with that squidgy bass and paced out drums while in the background the synth lays down a pretty sumptuous backing track. Digital piano features heavily on this album, in line with the thinking about eighties ballads, which always seemed to have to have a digital piano melody running through them. “Delicious” is a mid-paced ballad, inoffensive but with plenty of synth and piano. Also features some pretty good acapella vocal harmonies at the end.

In comparison, “My Secret (Didja Get it Yet?)” is just intensely annoying - I really couldn't care what their secret is. Was a single though. No accounting for taste. “Hide and Seek” makes me want to hide and never be found, blatantly ripping off the Eagles' lyric “Sneakin' up behind ya/ Swear I'm gonna find ya” from “One of These Nights”. The saving grace of this album, and I would venture to predict, most if not all Boyband albums, are the ballads, which at least are bearable. Even though the digital piano is in overdrive again, “Lost in Love” is a nice little song with good harmonies, though it is pretty devoid of ideas and just more or less repeats the same phrasing over and over. Not the big Air Supply hit then.

The first songwriting credited to the whole band is nevertheless nothing to write home about, and “Kinda Girls We Like” fulfils its exceptionally limited potential, with an annoying rap before “Maryann” closes the album with another eminently forgettable track which does at least have a decent line in sax.

TRACK LISTING

1. Cool it Now
2. Mr. Telephone Man
3. I'm Leaving You Again
4. Baby Love
5. Delicious
6. My Secret (Didja Get it Yet?)
7. Hide and Seek
8. Lost in Love
9. Kinda Girls We Like
10. Maryann

So that's the second album from New Edition. A little more mature yes, but ultimately I don't see a massive difference between it and the debut. The army of songwriters and producers seem to have failed to have come up with any noteworthy songs really, and after the second track it all kind of descended into more mediocrity for me. At least with Starr gone there was no more butchering of blues classics, so that's something to be thankful for, I guess.

At the end of 1985 Bobby Brown was out of the band, replaced by Johnny Gill, who went on to record three more albums with New Edition, and is in fact still with them. The first he recorded with them will be the last example we'll look at here, 1988's Heart Break, said to be yet another move in the direction of more mature, polished pop and away from the “bubblegum” music of their previous years. Yeah, well, we'll just see about that...

Heart Break --- New Edition --- 1988 (MCA)
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Interestingly, it starts with a synthy, almost prog-like intro, with a spoken vocal behind rising cheers and applause, which makes it sound as if the thing is live, and in fact segues into what also sounds like a live song, the actual opener (as the intro - called, in a flash of original thinking, “Introduction”! - lasts just over a minute) “That's the Way We're Livin'”, which comes across a little Prince-y circa 1999 or Purple Rain, with some surprisingly good guitar parts and for now, no rap. Very eighties dance, kind of reminds me of Five Star, though of course they were a female band. Fairly generic, but not too bad.

“Where it All Started” continues the Prince/Janet Jackson style, a slower, funky song with much programmed synth and keyboards, and a lot less guitar than the previous, and things slow down a little for “If it isn't Love”, a semi-ballad that gets a little more intense and passionate near the end. The album is peppered with things called “skits”, which are apparently twenty or thirty seconds of “street talk” as the guys discuss their conquests, real or imagined. They're nothing to do with the music, such as it is, so although there are three of them in total I'm going to ignore them.

Next up is “NE Heartbreak”, a dancy, Paula Abdul-inspired number, followed by a short annoying rap then “Crucial”, with more funky bass and stabbing synth --you know the sort: remember “What Have You Done for Me Lately?” That sort of thing: sudden, loud stabs of chords either on their own or in staccato sequence, the sort of thing pioneered by the likes of Jackson, Abdul and Prince, and which became an integral part of most dance music, it would seem, right up to today.

The first proper ballad comes in the form of “Superlady”, with some very tasty horns and a nice piano and guitar backing, and there's another laid-back smooth ballad following it, the rather not-bad “Can You Stand the Rain”. Okay, okay, it's actually quite good, in fact I'd pin it as the standout track on the album thus far. Very mature sounding, well crafted and quite effective. A third ballad follows, in the shape of “Competition”, and I have to admit, when they pull out the stops on the slower songs on this album they really do sound good. Lovely addition of sax helps to create a really cool atmosphere for this song.

And yes, there's a fourth ballad to come! Talk about throwing everything together! “I'm Comin' Home” is really nice, but to be honest I think these songs would have been better spread evenly throughout the album, where they would have had more of an impact, and serve to break up the faster (and quite frankly, inferior) songs. Also, having them one after the other lessens their effect, I believe, as you kind of think, “Oh here's another ballad”.

And yes, you guessed it! The album closes on yet another ballad: that's five in succession, almost half of the album. “Boys to Men” is a nice song, and did in fact apparently inspire the creation of another Boyband - can you guess which one? - but at this point it's number five of five, and though it's very good in its own right, I maintain my opinion that it would have had more effect had it come after a fast song, or even a bad one. As it is, I find it a case of the shrugging of the shoulders, a very small bit like the recent John Sykes album I reviewed, Loveland, which is nothing but ballads and slow songs. I love them, but they have their time and place, and unless you're someone like Air Supply (and even they rock out very occasionally! Okay, no they don't, but they try, bless their little hearts – they don't know they're born, do they?) you really can't expect a full album of ballads to hold the attention.

So that's the last of our look at the first credited Boyband, New Edition. I'm not singularly impressed by them - but then, I didn't really expect to be - but I have to grudgingly admit they have a little bit more about them than I had originally expected. This is the band that gave us “Candy girl”, after all! Nonetheless, I don't see their albums remaining on my hard disk once this article is finished.

TRACK LISTING

1. Introduction
2. That's the Way We're Livin'
3. Where it All Started
4. If it ain't Love
5. Skit #1
6. N.E Heartbreak
7. Crucial
8. Skit #2
9. You're Not My Kind of Girl
10. Superlady
11. Can You Stand the Rain
12. Competition
13. Skit #3
14. I'm Comin' Home
15. Boys to Men

After fleecing New Edition and then being sued by them, thus having to release them from their ironclad contract, our good friend Fagin - sorry, Maurice Starr! - simply dusted himself off and went in search of another band he could make money off. This time he went for five white guys as opposed to black, and so New Kids on the Block were born.

And so I pack up my laptop (after having availed of the hotel's power supply to charge it up for the journey) and pop on my shades as the early morning sunlight filters through the far-off mountains and sparkles off the pools of unnameable substance that dot the ground around here. I hear my taxi arrive, pay my bill and head out to the car, jumping in the back.

We're on the road again, where rather worryingly, more Boybands await...

We drive southwards, for in this land of the elder Boybands there are only two regions which house the history and music of the first two known Boybands, and so it is to N'kotbia we drive, the cabby engaging in rambling chit-chat which I do my best to ignore. My head is swimming with close harmonies and digital piano chords, and the word “baby” running around like a beheaded chicken, and the repeated listens to New Edition's catalogue have not helped my stomach to settle after the rather choppy journey to this strange land. Oh well, on we go.

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The first thing I notice on arriving in the main city is that this is a far cleaner place than Editionia Nueva: it's more upscale, scenic and prettier than the place I have just left. Is this because it is a middle-class white neighbourhood? Possibly, but whatever the reason I'll be glad not to have to wade through trash on the streets of this town! And maybe I can get a hotel where I can sleep through the night without being eaten alive. Hope springs eternal, but as we pass rows of white picket-fenced houses and well-maintained buildings, with smart top-of-the-line cars outside each house, the place screams “Suburbia!”

I pay off the cabby, find my hotel - which is a lot nicer than the one I've just left - and settle in before beginning my gruelling second day's work.

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Formed, as I already mentioned, by the same man who “made” New Edition, and marketed as “the white New Edition”, New Kids on the Block (NKOTB) also came from Boston, and consisted of founder member Donnie Wahlberg, brother of actor Mark and indeed an actor himself later, who, having won an audition with Starr out of hundreds of teenage boys all looking for instant stardom, helped Starr put the rest of the band together. First he recruited his brother, but Mark left before the band began playing or recording. The final lineup ended thus:

Donnie Wahlberg
Jordan Knight
Jonathan Knight
Joey McIntyre
Danny Wood

There were some other changes along the way initially, but this is the known lineup of NKOTB, although originally they weren't called that. The label demanded a change from the name Starr had given them, Nynuk, and so they changed to New Kids on the Block, or NKOTB. As with New Edition previously, Starr maintained an iron grip on his new moneymaking machine, writing the lion's share of the songs on their debut self-titled album, and producing it as well as playing most of the instruments. Success, however, would not be repeated right away, and the album did very poorly, with the result that Starr had to struggle to find the boys gigs, unlike New Edition, who had embarked on a big tour when their own debut smashed the charts.

New Kids on the Block --- New Kids on the Block --- 1984 (Columbia)
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Desperate to emulate the original success of his former protoges, Starr made the crucial mistake of trying to make NKOTB be New Edition, writing them bubblegum pop songs and worse, giving them raps to perform. New Edition, as we have seen, although successful with their debut, built their lasting fame and appeal on subsequent records, which were more mature and less kiddish. Starr's gamble didn't pay off, and here's why.

As an album, and indeed career, opener, “Stop it Girl” is weak, sugary, throwaway. If you're going to “unleash” the next Boyband on the world - shame on you, but if you're going to - you have to grab people's attention from the off, as with any album, and this song does not come close to doing that. It's faceless, generic tripe, with that damn vocoder again! “Didn't I (Blow Your Mind)” is the first ballad on the album, a lot better. Hold on: should that not be “Did't You Blow My -” uh, no? All right then, forget I spoke. Oh, you have. I see. Well, not surprisingly, it's an old seventies cover. As a matter of fact, though this album largely left the charts unshaken, it would be this track which, when re-released after their second album hit the big time, would reignite interest in this album. It's quite a nice little ballad, with nice piano and nice guitar. Just nice, period, as the Cat from Red Dwarf once said. Of course, it would be emulated and copied by Boybands down through the years, and become the template for every hit single from Westlife to Nsync and Blue to JLS.

“Popsicle” sounds as you would expect, simple bubblegum pop in the style of early New Edition, with another annoying rap, while “Be My Girl” is another ballad, nothing special, another generic slow pop song, but it does showcase some of the voices rather well. There's still not, though, to borrow a phrase from our transatlantic cousins, a whole lot going on under the hood.

The title track attempts to address this, doing its best to stamp the album with the identity of these new successors to the first Boyband. It's basically a rap with little in the way of music, just percussion and some “scratching”, is it they call it? That thing where they run a record backwards over and over? Never really got that personally, not even when Run DMC did it... and though next track “Are You Down” tries to change the format and kick it up a notch, it's too jarring a change, with heavy drums, deep throaty keyboards and a rap. I guess it piques the interest, but you're left wondering where this band really fit in, what they're about?

“I Wanna Be Loved By You” is a soul-style ballad, where each of the band “introduce” themselves - ”I'm Danny, and I'm a Taurus...” Yeah, nice chat-up lines, guys. Original. It's an exceptionally self-indulgent song, even for a Boyband, and I officially hate it. Just so you know. Marillyn Monroe must be turning in her grave. Typical Starr crap. David Soul might also raise a not-at-all-amused eyebrow at “Don't Give Up on Me” (a plea from Starr to potential fans, perhaps?) which does at least ramp up the power a little more, with bright keys and pulsing bass, nice percussion and an almost rock melody, until closer “Treat Me Right” actually bops and rocks along quite nicely with a really not too bad ender, with elements of swing and doo-wop, as well as gospel and a little blues. Nice.

It's certainly not an album that was ever going to shake the world to its foundations, and were it not for the success of the followup, that may have been the last we ever heard of New Kids on the Block. Unfortunately for me, fate had other ideas...

TRACK LISTING

1. Stop it Girl
2. Didn't I (Blow Your Mind)
3. Popsicle
4. Angel
5. Be My Girl
6. New Kids on the Block
7. Are You Down?
8. I Wanna Be Loved By You
9. Don't Give Up on Me
10. Treat Me Right

Disappointed with sales of the debut album, and the Kids' reception by the public in general, Starr herded them back into the studio for over a year until they produced their second effort, 1989's Hangin' Tough. Like New Edition before them, the guys decided they hated the bubblegum, “safe” approach of the debut and demanded more input into the new album, as well as their look. However, though three of them received credits as “associate producers”, Starr maintained his iron grip on the songwriting, but this time he in fact cracked it, and after initially looking like the new album would bomb just like the first, and NKOTB would be dropped by Columbia, sudden increased airplay and then interest from MTV saved them, and the album eventually went to number one, making the Kids, within a few short years, one of the hottest properties in the US music scene.

Hangin' Tough --- New Kids on the Block --- 1988 (Columbia)
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The album opens with a very Paula Abdul-type dance song, “You Got it (The Right Stuff)” is typical of the sort of thing that would emanate from bands of this nature for the next ten years or more, until they all seem to blend together into one song, indistinguishable one from the other. That's how I see it, anyway. This, and the three tracks which follow it, were all released as singles and broke the charts wide apart. “Please Don't Go Girl” is another soul ballad with the soon-to-be familiar spoken intro, clicky drum machine beats and electric piano. The quality of the vocal harmonies is deserving of praise, indeed, but then again, since none of them play any instrument or write the songs, they had bloody better know how to sing together! Again, that's my take on it.

More swirly synth and digital piano introduces another ballad, one of their bigger hit singles, “I'll Be Loving You (Forever)”, which made it all the way to the number one spot. “Cover Girl” is actually a huge surprise, with its screaming, soaraway guitar intro, and its Springsteen/Dire Straits-like piano. Another big hit, it reached number 2, and although it sort of slides into generic pop after the promising opening, it's still my favourite on the album due entirely to its unexpectedness (is that a word?).

“I Need You” is another ballad, as the poor digital piano gets another workout, and then the title track throws down the gauntlet, creating yet another smash hit for NKOTB, and another number one. Almost reminiscent of Joan Jett's “I Love Rock and Roll”, it's again something of a surprise, and not a totally bad track really. Then “I Remember When” takes us back into the sugary realms of Boyband ballads (this makes the fourth ballad so far), with a certain seventies soul feel to it, before “Whatcha Gonna Do About it” transports us to the world of Janet Jackson, with a very hard-edged dance number, more of those stabbing synths and glissando keyboard runs.

Starr relaxes his death-grip on the songwriting - or perhaps the boys manage to pry his fingers loose for a moment! - to allow Wahlberg, Wood and Jordan Knight to contribute to the writing of “My Favourite Girl”, but to be honest they needn't have bothered, as it's nothing special and doesn't stand out as any different to the rest of the tracks. Closer “Hold on” starts out with some nice slap bass and possibly acoustic guitar before it falls back into yet another generic pop/dance track, although there is some pretty rocky guitar work there near the end. And so we come to the end of the album which broke New Kids on the Block, and assured they would become a household name.

I can see the differences between this and their debut, just as New Edition distanced themselves from their first album and upped the ante. It's a lot more polished, professional and has some far superior songs on it, though a lot of it sounds to me like it could still have used some work. Well, what do I know? By the end of the year the album had shot to number one, and there was no stopping the new guys!

TRACK LISTING

1. You Got it (The Right Stuff)
2. Please Don't Go Girl
3. I'll Be Loving You (Forever)
4. Cover Girl
5. I Need You
6. Hangin' Tough
7. I Remember When
8. What'cha Gonna Do (About it)?
9. My Favourite Girl
10. Hold on

And that was it. Just like that, the band Columbia had been intending to drop due to poor record sales and thinking they had no future, suddenly became one of their biggest moneyspinners, and Maurice Starr was laughing all the way to the bank. NKOTB had conquered America by 1990, and the rest of the world by the following year. Merchandising contracts followed, and the Kids even had a syndicated cartoon show on TV about them. They were huge business, but it would not last.

Allegations of lip-syncing (eventually withdrawn) hit their fanbase hard, and as the world shifted its focus away from Boybands towards the emergent gangsta rap scene and grunge rock, the Kids (now officially known only as NKOTB) parted company with Starr, and began to write and produce their own albums. These were not as successful as their second and third albums, and interest in NKOTB began to wane. Members left, record sales dipped and finally in 1994, disappointed with reaction to, and sales of their fourth album, the perhaps appropriately titled Face the Music, they decided to disband altogether.

But as Count Dracula once warned, “You cannot kill what does not live!” and the boys reunited in 2008 for a triumphant comeback album and tour, and Lord help us, they're touring this year even as I write, supporting another Boyband, the Backstreet Boys. So it seems they're baaaaacckkk! Where's me Marillion albums?

So the last album we'll look at here is then, not surprisingly, their comeback album, recorded fourteen years after they had split up.

The Block --- New Kids on the Block --- 2008 (Interscope)
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Oh well, apparently they're back to their full name, as the album sleeve attests to. Have they changed their musical style? Are they writing decent songs? Are they, in short, any good after almost a decade and a half in the wilderness? Enquiring minds want to know, so down I go, into the pit of despair. The things I do for you guys...

Well, one thing I notice from the liner notes (okay, okay, Wikipedia!) is that there are a lot of big guest stars on this album, whom we'll get to in due course. I do have to say though that the opener, “Click Click” is a whole lot more mature and professional than anything I've heard from them to date: age does seem to have improved them, or maybe they've just gone full circle. After being the flag-bearers and vanguard for the Boyband movement in the eighties, perhaps they have now looked at the work of some of the “young pretenders” and decided those bands know what they're doing (considering the moolah they're raking in) and followed suit.

From the off, it's a lot less annoying an album than any of the others I've listened to, with restrained, echoey piano and keyboard rather than the stab of the synth that permeated their previous albums, at least the ones with Starr involved. It's a sort of semi-ballad, lots of handclaps and an easy melody. Nice opener. Then we come across the first of the big name involvement, Ne-Yo guests on “Single”, with that annoying updated vocoder vocal that is so prevalent in dance and r&b bands these days. Is it autotune? It might be autotune. Sets my teeth on edge, anyway. The song is relatively restrained though. Not bad so far.

“Big Girl Now” features the flavour of the year, Lady Gaga, but it's a real example of the kind of song I hate, and I find it empty and vacuous. So, normal service resumed then! Oh well, let's not write them off just yet: we're only three tracks in. “Summertime” starts off as a nice laidback ballad, gets a little more animated, but it's pleasant enough, with some busy synth in the background of the melody. Another ballad follows in the shape of “2 in the Morning”, and it's okay, nothing special but hey, it doesn't make me throw up, and that has to be good!

I notice that most of the songs on this are written by members of the band, mostly in fact Donnie Wahlberg, and it's got no less than twelve producers! Overproduced? Maybe. “Grown Man” features the Pussycat Dolls and Teddy Riley (who he?) - starts off with a kind of country rock melody, but with the Dolls on the track it really comes across as one of their songs, possibly a missed opportunity. “Dirty Dancing” comes in on a nice clear piano line which continues through the song, and it works quite nicely against the handclap drumbeats, while the ridiculously titled “Sexify My Love” is just basic throwaway, very forgettable apart from the title, then Timbaland guests on “Twisted”, close to a rock song for part of the track, and not too bad at all, nice orchestration on the strings.

New Edition, of all people, appear on “Full Service”, and Lady Gaga reprises her role, making the song something of a celebration as the two old Boybands meet. Probably like if Zep and Purple guested on the same song. Maybe. Though more likely, probably not. Exuberant feel to the song, at any rate. “Lights Camera Action” sounds like someone's playing that old pop hit “Popcorn” in the background, and has the by-now-standard talking intro, but beneath it's just another boring dance song really.

Akon pops in for “Put it on My Tab”, but as I say, the problem with these guest appearances is that it seems to me that each takes over the song and makes it in their own image, so it's hard to relate it to the Kids Who Are No Longer New on the Block. A case of pulling in stars to bolster up the album, perhaps? I personally feel it detracts from rather than benefits the comeback album, making it difficult to work out whether they've changed or improved at all. Used to be Maurice Starr who controlled them, now ostensibly they control their own music, but they do seem to have handed over a lot of creative control to these guests they have invited to contibute.

At least the closer, “Stare at You” is a decent, very decent ballad, and leaves you with a good tune in your head as you close down your media player and wonder what next for the New Kids?

TRACK LISTING

1. Click Click
2. Single
3. Big Girl Now
4. Summertime
5. 2 in the Morning
6. Grown Man
7. Dirty Dancing
8. Sexify My Love
9. Twisted
10. Full Service
11. Lights, Camera, Action
12. Put it on My Tab
13. Stare at You

And so I return to the dock, watching the ship slide in closer through the early afternoon fog that shrouds the harbour. My first visit to Boybandland is complete. I've learned a lot, and I do have something more of a regard for the bands I've investigated, but I'm not going to be running out and buying a ticket for the NKOTB/BSB concert just yet!

As I look back from the rail of the ship, pulling away now from the dock and heading back out to sea, I ruminate on the beginnings of this thing called a Boyband, and wonder how much blame the bands that came before them have to take for the creation of this beast? After all, without the Jackson 5 or indeed the Osmonds, there might never have been a belief that a band could exist without any instruments, that more than one person could sing and that they should also dance.

I guess we can't blame New Edition or New Kids for being a product of their time, and to be fair, it's more the later, media-saturated bands like Westlife and Take That I have a problem with. And I know I'll be soon listening to their brand of music when I reach the second island in this weird country, and begin to trace the history of the nineties Boybands, particularly those from my own native Ireland.

Until then, I think I'll go belowdecks and review a Venom album or two: got to do something to get that bloody digital piano out of my head!

Part Two: "Gonna write a classic. Probably."
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The voyage has been long and troubling, more for the fear of what lies at its destination than due to any maritime adventures along the way, of which there have been precious few. It's been almost four months since we left the faintly shimmering coastline of Early Boybandland behind, and as is my task I've spent the time reading up on and - say it without fear - listening to the music of what I will term the “classic boybands”, although that's something of an oxymoron: there's nothing classic about any of these bands, nor will there ever be. But on a scale of let's say importance to the genre, these bands would be best known and rank the highest. New Kids on the Block and New Edition may have started the craze back in the early eighties, but it's really the nineties that this whole thing got totally out of hand, and boybands started springing up everywhere, like branches of Ikea or Starbucks.

All of the bands (I know, I know, but what else can I call them? Know what I'd like to call them … keep it friendly, keep it friendly...) I'll be looking at here started their careers in, and enjoyed their biggest successes throughout the 90s, so qualify as “classic” boybands, purely for that reason: they're seen as the “big guns” of the boyband movement, the ones people remember or revile when they talk about this genre. These are the ones who decided to start butchering some classic songs along the way, as if spinning out their own puerile pap (isn't this article nicely balanced and unbiased?) wasn't enough of an insult to music. These are the ones who most contributed to, even helped create, the cult of the personality, or indeed, the celeb, the ones whose image, love life, actions and fashion mattered a whole lot more to their fans, in general, than their music.

Of course, I don't know too many boyband fans - at least, none that will admit it! Anyone reading this who is one, I welcome your discourse on the subject, as I am quite figuratively taking your heroes apart here (I say figuratively, as were I to say literally I would be liable to be jailed for murder) and they don't seem to have anyone to defend them. But to be totally fair, I'm not just writing about how bad they are. To be completely frank, I know very little of boyband music, and one of the aims of this feature is to try to understand, if I can, more about what drives these bands and their fans, why they are or were so popular, and where, if anywhere, they deserve a place among music's rich history.

So this time out I have four boybands to concentrate on. I know last time I only did two, but that was the early boybands and there really weren't (mercifully) too many of them at that time. By the nineties they were rampant across the face of the Earth like some incurable disease (sorry!) and therefore there are many more to cover for this period, and were I to decide to do so, I could probably write about nine or ten. But I want to restrict it to four, which is about all I think the universe will stand for at this moment, so these are the ones I'm going to be investigating on the second leg of my voyage to Boybandland.

To be completely fair and impartial, nationality-wise, I'm choosing two American, one British and one Irish - God how I hate to admit we had boybands, but we did, and two of the bigger ones too! - and they are Nsync, Backstreet Boys, Take That and Boyzone. I know Westlife probably fit this category too, but as they only recently broke up (who cheered? Oh, it was me!) I plan to hold them back for the third and final part of this treatise. Hell, they're pretty much carbon copies of each other anyway! Now, now, no pre-judging... what am I saying? I've already prejudged all these bands, and rightly so. They've made my life hell, polluting the airwaves for nigh-on thirty years now. But the idea is to see if I can scrape off the gloss and the surface paint, peel back the layers (if there are any) and look beneath the surface to see what's underneath, if indeed anything is, or if these bands are all as empty, vacuous and pointless as I believe they are.

As the wind sighs in the sails of our ship and the ancient timbers creak in protest (hey, I could only afford passage on an old tub! I'm not made of money, you know: who do you think is paying for this expedition? Yeah, you're talkin' to him!) I can begin to make out the misty coastline of my new destination, Terra Permusica Major, which roughly translates to “Greater Boybandland”.
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As the old schooner begins the slow approach into the harbour, I consult my travel guide and learn that Greater Boybandland - usually referred to as GBL - is basically broken into four main areas, regions or countries: no-one is quite sure what category they fall into, and the governmental structure around these parts is, shall we say, fluid and changeable. But for my purposes I'll refer to them as kingdoms - which I don't think they are, but it suits my narrative, and as the whole ethos of the boyband genre is making everything suit your particular plan, that seems appropriate.

The first is the one we head towards, and it's called Chicotania. It is here that the main archive concerning the first successful boyband since New Kids on the Block (and indeed, the most successful in terms of sales of all time, with over 130 million records sold), the Backstreet Boys, is located, and here where I will learn what I need to know for my article. In Chicotania I will sample (shudder!) the music of these young guns of their time, and examine their phenomenon, try to work out what it was about them that made them so successful, almost ridiculously so. They still exist today.

Later I will head east, to the kingdom of New Southland, where I will research the other big American boyband of the time, the weirdly-named Nsync, then it's a three-day train journey to the very southernmost tip of this country to Tha'Takken, to read about and listen to the first big example of this genre to pop up outside the US. Finally, I will take a relatively short busride back north to Boyzeire, a much smaller realm which houses the Early Irish Boyband Archive.

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As I disembark from the ship and head through Customs, I'm almost immediately surrounded by people. These guys are not well-dressed, and seem very much down on their luck. One offers to sell me a “genuine” Fender Strat for the price of a cup of tea. I politely refuse, but give him some money. BIG mistake! Like sharks sensing blood in the water, the others crowd in and press upon me as if I were the Messiah and they all looking for miracles. Some wave guitars, some thrust ratty pieces of paper purposefully in my face, with comments like “Look man, I just need someone to record this song, yeah?” or “If you see Timberlake tell him I wrote this for him”, and other such requests, demands, even threats.

A sudden shout of “Mr. Cowell! Simon Cowell!" rescues me as the wretches all turn their eyes to the left, beginning to move off in the direction indicated, shuffling with the half-desperate, half-hopeful zombie-like gait of a auditionee for the X-Factor, and I turn to behold my saviour. A small, swarthy man with a large heavy moustache and deep, dark eyes, Max will be my guide for the first few weeks of my visit to GBL, and will ferry me to my first two destinations. I'm eternally grateful to him for rescuing me, though as we stow the bags in the boot and I climb in the passenger seat, I confess I am somewhat bemused as to who the people who had been accosting me are.

“Ah yes, session men.” Max shakes his head gravely. “You have to feel for them. They do all the work, backing the band and playing the music, but they never get any recognition. They're the lowest class around here,” he confides to me, a slight tremor in his voice betraying his contempt for the situation. “Everyone loves The Kids, of course: the boyband members, not to mention their managers and producers. They get all the plaudits. But these guys: you can't not have sympathy for them.” I resist the urge to correct Max in his use of a double-negative, and hold my tongue as he expounds further, the tan-coloured Vauxhall Viva clanking and creaking almost as much as the boat that brought me here, as we pull into traffic.

“Time was,” he reminisces, “this country was full of guitarists, drummers, keysmen. They made an honest living, forming bands, gigging, recording. Life was good. Then the boybands came, and they were relegated to the status of second-class citizens. Terrible.” He shakes his head sadly, and for a moment I feel a little selfish as I find myself less concerned with the plight of these out-of-work musicians as I am with Max keeping his eyes on the road ahead. But his grip on the steering wheel is firm, and his eyes scan the twin lanes ahead as he pulls out and passes a large green bus, whose driver, a woman of African origin, flips him the finger as he passes, her pearl-white teeth glinting like jewels in her mouth.

“Terrible”. The last word comes almost four minutes after Max last spoke, and takes me by surprise, but I suppose he has been thinking about the situation of the unemployed musos as he drives. I feel compelled to ask why they don't just move on, and he shakes his head again. “None of them have the sort of funds that would allow them to do that,” he tells me. “Most spent all their money on their instruments, and what they occasionally pick up as session musicians for these upstarts wouldn't come close to what they need for the fare out of here. And even then, where would they go? You came here by sea,” he turns to me, precipitating another flutter of my heart as two motorcyclists zoom by, one on either side, and a police siren (or maybe an ambulance or fire engine) sounds in the distance. Is it getting closer?

“You've seen how far this boyband nonsense stretches. Why, you have to go thousands of miles before you leave the influence behind. I heard you say you have been to Terra Permusica Minor already?”

“What?” I'm a little thrown, as I haven't heard the name before. He sighs.

“No-one uses the old names anymore.” Another disapproving shake of the head. “These days it's called Lesser Boybandland,” he clarifies, “or Early Boybandland, something like that. I prefer the old names. Still, they mean the same thing. But you have been there, yes?”

“Early Boybandland?” I understand now. “Yes, I have. In fact, I came direct from there. Almost four months the crossing took.”

“So. And even that relatively slow and not exactly glamourous form of travel cost you, I have no doubt. And beyond here lies an even worse place, which they now call Future Boybandland, though most of its residents have taken to calling it New Boybandland. The old name,” he confides to me, “is Terra Permusica Ultima - some fools think it means “ultimate Boybandland”, but it does not. It literally translates as “The last Boybandland”. So there is a very long way to go if you wish to escape the insidious clutches of life in Boybandland”, he concludes, “and going a long way means paying a lot of money. So most of the musos just hang around here, drifting from city to city, realm to realm, staying not too long in one place or the other, always on the lookout for work but seldom finding it. Ah, Scherzattach!” he snaps, and I assume this is some ancient expression of distaste. “Tis a bad hand they've been dealt, and no mistake.”
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We continue on in silence for some time, each of us wrapped in our own thoughts, as the highway begins to thin out and more fields and hills become evident, as we obviously move away from the city and towards the outlying country. As my attention begins to drift and my eyes start to close, I suddenly see a huge structure passing by on the right, almost gone before my eyes and brain can properly register its presence. Quickly, I fumble out my camera and snap a picture, looking back as it recedes in the back window, its rapidly diminishing bulk evidence that we are travelling at some speed.

I look at the picture I have taken, having not had enough time to properly take in the huge statue - for such it seems to have been - in any detail before we are past it and it's behind us, vanishing rapidly, its configuration becoming less and less visible and discernible as the Viva speeds along, out into the countryside. What I can make out, now that I look at the picture, seems to be the figure of a huge man or manlike form, must be well over twenty feet tall, probably closer to thirty. The man - if indeed it is a man - seems to be large and fat, with a sloping, balding forehead and small square spectacles that cover small, squinty eyes. He appears to be dressed in an orange jumpsuit and is standing on something, though I can't quite make out what it is: the speed at which we passed the icon has blurred all but the largest aspect of the form.

I turn to my guide, asking what was that? He shrugs. “Ah yes,” he intones. “Pearlman, one of the most hated figures in Boyband history. A real pariah.” My blank look leads him to explain: I have never heard of this Pearlman of whom he speaks. He goes on. “The statue is one of several, hundreds even. One such stands at the entrance and exit to each major city here in GBL. It represents the figure of Louis Jay “Lou” Pearlman, who was the creator, if you like, of both Nsync and the Backstreet Boys, and indeed also formed and mentored other boybands and young artists. The statue depicts him standing in a prison jumpsuit, as you have probably worked out, as he was eventually jailed for mutiple fraud, embezzlement, conspiracy and money laundering offences.”

I have my recording ipod out now and I'm listening eagerly, and taping it all for later transcription and inclusion in my article. “The statue further shows him standing on the prone bodies of five young men, meant to represent neither Nsync nor BSB, but more a symbol of the many artists he cheated and lied to during his career. He swindled both the two big ones, and others, out of hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars, and had so many legal cases against him it just wasn't funny. Most got settled out of court, but eventually the weight of his crimes was so unsupportable that he was indicted on federal charges and he's now serving twenty-five to life.”

Max lapses back into silence then, and I ruminate upon the, as I saw it at the time, nefarious Maurice Starr, who also cheated his charges, infamously paying New Edition the princely sum of one dollar thirty-seven cents each for their first world tour! I thought that guy was a scumbag, but my god, Pearlman makes him seem like a saint! Seems no matter where boybands went, sneaky, greedy and crooked managers and promoters followed, like bodylice or bands of marauding lawyers. They were everywhere!

After a while I begin to nod off, as the sun starts to slip behind the darkening hills and the night air turns cold. The ancient Vauxhall is not air-conditioned, but then, I come from Ireland, where most of the cars are not, and anyway it's seldom warm enough to merit such technology. I am, however, glad when Max turns on the heater: it seems nights in GBL can be damn cold!

I listen to the steady click of the car's engine as we travel along the country roads into what is fast becoming night, and I allow my eyes to slide shut, as I contemplate the work that awaits me in the morning.

It's well past two in the morning when the car finally bumps to a halt, and Max shakes me awake, advising me we have arrived. The hotel is not the most glamorous, but it's not a fleapit either: I had and have limited funds, but I refuse to stay anywhere that inserts an extra letter into hotel, making it a hostel. Hostage, more like! So it's a two-star at best, but at least I can be reasonably confident that breakfast at the Millennium - named, I'm informed, for Backstreet Boys' third and most successful album - won't have to be shared with any bedbugs or cockroaches. I hope.

I awake in the morning, refreshed and with a new sense of purpose. I take a little time to look around and note that my surroundings are very New York skyline-like. Despite the two boybands who will form the first part of my research here in the north of the country being from Florida, I see little evidence of blue seas and condos. Instead there are skyscrapers reaching up into smog-choked skies, fleets of yellow taxicabs haring along the roads in tightly-knit packs like metal wolves, and the sounds of traffic, police sirens and alarms fills the air. When this place was built, they obviously had a very stylised idea of America in general, and this is the impression they have left here.

I leave the hotel and head down towards the library, where I'm about to begin my investigation into the multi-million-selling phenomenon that is one of the first truly “great” (I use the word advisedly) boybands, America's own Backstreet Boys.
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As we've already learned, boybands are not formed, they're created. In the eighties it was Maurice Starr who was the Godfather, with the likes of New Edition and later New Kids on the Block on his resume. Going towards the nineties this position of power was taken over by one Lou Pearlman, whom we have met in statue form on the way here. A man who began his career in aviation (and made a mess of that, going bankrupt) he would finish it in pokey, having cheated successive boybands and other artists he managed out of millions of dollars, perpetuating one of the world's largest ponzi schemes, and falling foul of everyone from the Better Business Bureau to the federal government.

But back in 1992 he had placed an ad for a new band to take up the reins dropped by the aforementioned two bands from Starr's stable, and fancying himself as the new Starr, wanted to manage and produce boybands that would make him rich and powerful. Unlike Starr, he never seemed to have any real interest in the music, beyond what it would bring in in terms of cold hard cash. He was not a musician, and did not come from a musical background, despite having Art Garfunkel as a cousin. Pearlman's talent, it would become clear, lay not in music but in cheating people out of their hard-earned, setting up phantom companies and selling stock in them, and doing anything he could to make a dishonest buck.

Having already decided to form a group, Howie Dorough, A.J. McLean and Nick Carter had hooked up with cousins Kevin Richardson and Brian Littrell. Seeing Pearlman's ad they auditioned for him and won the contest, releasing their first single the next year. Despite the tough, street-sounding name of the band, it was in fact chosen by Pearlman, who decided to name the band after a market in Orlando, the Backstreet flea market. How's that for shattering your illusions? Just as well they weren't from Ireland, or they might have been called Moore Street or The Liberties! Anyhow, their first single was not exactly a resounding success, but moreso in Europe, where they were to have their biggest initial successes, leading to their touring schedule being mostly concentrated on the likes of Germany, Holland, France and Switzerland. Their first album, imaginatively self-titled, followed in 1996.

Backstreet Boys - Backstreet Boys - 1996 (Jive)
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Originally released only in Europe and a few other territories, due to the less than meteoric initial rise of the band in their native USA - that would follow later - their debut album was later released, under the same name but bearing tracks from this plus some from their followup, in the US. For handiness' sake though, for the purposes of this article we're considering the release of this album as their official first, with Backstreet's Back their second, and then on to the third in Millennium, and so on.

Not that surprisingly for a boyband album, it opens with close-harmony singing, which in itself is not too bad, then the handclap beats and funky guitars and keys cut in, and a disco/dance beat unleashes “We've Got it Goin' on”, which incidentally was also their first single, released before the album came out. There are some pretty cool trumpets too, though as is usual with boyband albums all attention is focussed on the singers, and the musicians -- without whom these guys would be little more than acapella singers, or the nodern equivalent of a Barber Shop, um, quintet : G4, anyone? - get little or no recognition. But whoever they are they're good at what they do.

It's not long before we hear the familiar mainstay of the boyband, the digital piano, as “Anywhere for You” becomes the first ballad, though without question not the last. As it goes, it has to be said it's not a bad song, though it would become subsumed among the generic lovesongs that BSB would shovel out by the double fistful as they tightened their stranglehold on the charts, and pried open more teenage girls' - purses! I was going to say purses, you dirty - on their rapid climb to the top. It's pointless trying to discover who is singing any one song (and anyway I don't care) as they all pretty much sound the same to me, and I also don't think it's important or germane to the issue, so I won't be giving you that information, as I don't have it, nor do I intend to look for it.

Back to the dance numbers then, with another close-harmony acapella intro as “Get Down (You're the One for Me)” assaults the aural senses. Even more handclap beats, stabbing synth chords and warbly keyboards, and a song that no doubt featured one of their many clever dance routines. With lyrics like ”You're so fine/ Gonna make you mine” you know what to expect, but it's still a little of a nasty shock when they start rapping! Oh no! Just when I thought I could stand no more! There is, however, to be completely fair to them, a nice slow bit in the middle, but it's nowhere near enough to save this piece of garbage.

Much better is the soul/gospel oriented ballad “I'll Never Break Your Heart”, sounding a little too close to Boys II Men's “I'll Make Love to You” for me, but then, most of these songs sound the same - stop it! Be professional! Make an effort! Okay then, I will, but the comparison stands. Whose was first? Let's see... Boys II Men's effort was 1993, so these guys could be accused of copying, or at least taking elements of the melody from “I'll Make Love to You”. Hmm. Yeah, it's really not that bad a song, and best of all there's no rap in it! Nice strings arrangement on the song too.

Next up is “Quit Playing Games With My Heart”, a slower, less dancy number but still with those ubiquitous handclaps and some nice laidback keyboards. It's slow enough to qualify as a ballad, so let's call it the second ballad on the album. Another thing that leaves my eyebrows completely unraised is that not one song on this album is written by, or has any input from, any of the boys, and with a very few exceptions, that's the pattern throughout their career. I can't claim to know any of the many writers they employ on the album (or rather, that Pearlman presumably uses), but they may be well-known in pop circles. One thing is clear though: of the five producers of the album, four of them are involved in at least some of the songs.

More dance nonsense with “Boys Will Be Boys”, which (and again, sorry for the silly comparisons but) sounds similar to Sabrina's “Boys Boys Boys”, and that's going all the way back to 1987, so there's no place to hide with that one, guys! Mind you, that's about the only thing of note on this generic dance tune. Here, let's also note some comparisons with the Cuban sexbomb singer Gloria Estefan, who had songs called “Anything for You” (BSB's effort it titled “AnyWHERE for You”) and also, though it wasn't so titled, “Bad Boys” had the refrain “Boys will be boys (bad boys, bad boys)” so what do you make of that? Nothin' huh? Have it your own way then. Next! Well, "Just to Be Close to You" is a sort of half-ballad, half-rap, not a bad song with some nice vocal harmonies, heavier drumming that almost seems to avoid the everpresent handclaps, then “I Wanna Be With You” ramps up the tempo with a curiously ABBA-style opening and then some pretty solid horns, a dance beat but ultimately I'd classify this as another mostly empty song.

Some serious digital piano heralds the return of the handclaps for “Every Time I Close My Eyes”, and really the best thing I can say about this is that it comes in as one of the shorter tracks on the album. Not so “Darlin'”, which runs for an agonising five and a half minutes, a really twee ballad with a totally annoying spoken opening in which one of the guys “talks to his lady”. Oh pass the sickbag! These guys must have been laughing all the way to … Pearlman's bank account. Yeah, sorry, forgot that. They got ripped off bigstyle didn't they? Well, I'm not unsympathetic, but I reckon they made up for it in later years. Not exactly on the breadline now, are they?

Still, terrible as that song was, the worryingly-titled “Let's Have a Party” doesn't hold any big surprises, specially with its opening line ”All I wanna know/ Is where the party at?” Has no-one heard of apostrophes or prepositions anymore? Couldn't last through this one, sorry, and then we're onto “Roll With it” - no, not the Oasis song, too early for that, and a far superior song in the case of the latter. Another semi-ballad/dance/pop tune, ah hell, these all sound the same to me. Nothing special about this. And the album finishes on another generic, annoying dance number, “Nobody But You”, leaving me to wonder how I'm going to make it through, what, four of their seven (to date, with a new one due this year, Lord help us!) albums? Maybe if I call in sick...?

Then I remember: there's nowhere to call in sick to. This is my project, my decision, and come hell or high water, I have to see it through to the end. But it's going to take a hell of a lot of courage and self-discipline, and I may even take up smoking before it's done...

TRACK LISTING

1. We've Got it Goin' on
2. Anywhere for You
3. Get Down (You're the One for Me)
4. I'll Never Break Your Heart
5. Quit Playing Games With My Heart
6. Boys Will be Boys
7. Just to Be Close to You
8. I wanna be with you
9. Every Time I Close My Eyes
10. Darlin'
11. Let's Have a Party
12. Roll With it
13. Nobody But You


As if I wasn't already annoyed enough with the whole boyband thing, Backstreet Boys are giving me a headache, not surprisingly with their music (though that's bad too) but with the insane double-releases and half-releases of their first two albums, to suit the almighty American market! I've already discovered that I accidentally downloaded the American release of their debut, which is essentially half the tracks that were on the European one AND half from the proper version of this album, which was a pain and necessitated much You-Tubing. Now I find the same holds true for my version of this, ostensibly their second album but in the USA their first, as above. So now I have an album with tracks on it I don't need, and without ones I do.

So off to bloody YouTube I go! Again! Not to mention that some of them seem to be Windows Protected files which won't bloody play unless I download a licence! GAAAH! WHY am I doing this??? And can someone please explain to me how one song on an album can be protected content, while the rest is not? RRAAWWWGGH! HULK... SMASH! Or something....
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Calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean...
Backstreet's Back - Backstreet Boys - 1997 (Jive)
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Okay, now I've had a cup of tea and a lie down, let's start the review. Taking, as I intend, the European, or “proper” release of Backstreet's Back, the second album from the Backstreet Boys, it opens with the title track, which everyone knows: loud, dancy, pounding rhythms and a rather annoyingly catchy tune that ended up being their first big hit, at least in the US. Subtitled (or indeed prefixed) “Everybody”, it's well known and became their signature song, unsurprisingly. It's followed by another big hit, “As Long As You Love Me”, a sort of semi-ballad, and it's not puke-inducing, though I've heard a lot better. More handclaps, some okay piano - well, come on, be fair: some pretty good piano - and a relatively decent lyric, if a little simplistic and vacuous, but let's be honest here: we're not expecting any deep themes or subject matter from these guys are we? Songs about dancing, love, girls, nights out: these are going to be the main fodder for their music, and I guess that's fair enough. Play to your strengths is, after all, good advice in just about any situation.

Nice bit of guitar in “All I Have to Give”, which seems to be yet another ballad, and again, this is no surprise. BSB would carve out a career based around a mixture of slushy love songs and dance routines. This song, as it turns out, was written by Full Force, the first time the boys would turn to an established band to write a song for them. Serious dance beats and Art-of-Noise-style synth on “That's the Way I Like it”, with some half-decent keyboard melodies, then we're back to ballads for “10,000 Promises”, which I grudgingly admit is not too bad. To be fair, when BSB do ballads they generally do them well, and they became one of the cornerstones, not only of their success, but that of every boyband that followed. Think about it: if you're a fan, how many of your favourite songs by your favourite boyband can you name that aren't ballads? There's another one on the way in “Like a Child”, and yeah, again, it's quite nice, digital piano and guitar meshing nicely with some understated percussion, and the voices are almost soothing. Oh my God! Am I becoming a fan? Am I … am I.... CHANGING?

No, let there be no panic! Normal service is restored with “Hey Mr. DJ (Keep Playing That Song)”, another sub-dance filler with really (and I mean really) annoying synth-pops running through it. Get me out of here, now! Their first cover song comes with PM Dawn's rather nice “Set Adrift on Memory Bliss”, which, even with the annoying raps I can quite enjoy. To a point. Another first, the first song written by a member of the band, “That's What She Said” is not a bad effort from Brian Littrell, who writes the song solo. Another ballad, yes, but then what do you expect? Gotta give the guy credit: none of the others put themselves out on a limb creatively like this, and he does quite well. Nice arrangement too, with some violin and cello, soft percussion and acoustic guitar.

Of course it can't last, and “If You Want it to Be Good Girl (Get Yourself a Bad Boy)”, possibly the longest title for a track I've seen since Meat Loaf's “Good Girls Go to Heaven (Bad Girls Go Everywhere)” lives up to the limited, banal promise of its title, another dancy, peurile, macho piece of nonsense. It's left to the rather lovely “If I Don't Have You” to end things in style, with a slow, soul ballad that recalls their “I'll Never Break Your Heart” from the debut album, but is a very decent closer.

The whole US/European thing has bugged the hell out of me, but I think after this they kissed and made up, and all the albums from here on in were released in the same format with basically the same track listing. I certainly hope so, as I can't go through this again!

TRACK LISTING

1. Everybody (Backstreet's Back)
2. As Long as You Love Me
3. All I Have to Give
4. That's the Way I Like it
5. 10,000 Promises
6. Like a Child
7. Hey Mr. DJ (Keep Playin' This Song)
8. Set Adrift on Memory Bliss
9. That's What She Said
10. If You Want it to Be Good Girl (Get Yourself a Bad Boy)
11. If I Don't Have You

I always thought of a boy band as a group of men who look like boys who couldn't play any instruments.

My sister was a New Kids worshipper. I share a birthday with Donnie. Bla. Only two good things came from that group - Weird Al's The White Stuff (Oh Oh REE Oh), and Band of Brothers.

I heard Hangin' tough TOO many f'n times.

It's seldom I go for three album releases in a row, especially when the band in question has a lot more to choose from: I like to cherry-pick from their catalogue, to get a good idea of how/if they've developed as a band, or if their debut, for instance, differs very widely from their latest, or last album. I like to see what, if any, influences have found their way into their music over the years and if they've experimented or tried other things at all.

But the first three albums from Backstreet Boys all seem to be very much tied in with their sudden success, so I'm going to have to review them all. After this there's only one other I'm going to be able to stomach, so we'll try and take one from later in their career. Right now, it's on to album number three, and the one that broke them wide open commercially, on both sides of the Atlantic.

Millennium - Backstreet Boys - 1999 (Jive)
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Although only seen as the second BSB album in the US, this was in fact their third release, and with the twenty-first century charging up behind them like an unstoppable locomotive, perhaps the title was well chosen. Perhaps it would, retrospectively, also refer to the millions of units the album would shift. At any rate, it opens with “Larger than Life”, with some annoying synth sounds, laughter and a dancy uptempo number to carry on where “Backstreet's Back” left off (in terms of opening tracks), with Brian Littrell again trying his hand at writing, though this time with two of the established writers, Max Martin and Kristian Lundin. Hard to see his input into this song, as it's pretty generic, but probably went down well with the fans. It's one of those many “empowering” songs BSB and other boybands would flood their albums with, telling their fans basically that they could control their own destiny, which is a bit ironic as the fans were basically being told what to like by the band and their label.

Their biggest ever single is next, and there's no place for Littrell in “I Want it That Way”, a mid-paced ballad with those damnable handclaps back again! It's pretty insipid, but then you can say that of a lot of BSB's work, indeed a lot of Westlife, Take That and any other boyband you care to name. The boys seem to have changed their “bad boy” image for this album, pictured on the album sleeve in immaculate white outfits, as if they're some sort of angels or ministers of some order. The songs reflect this new image too, with none of the “rock the house”/”Where's the party” type that populated the first two albums, and more love songs and restrained themes.

“Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely” is another ballad, and indeed another hit single, which perfectly suits their admittedly excellent close-harmony singing, some nice Spanish guitar giving the tune a bit of class, and I'm glad to say that for once the players get credited this time round, though in fairness there are so many guitarists it's hard to know who's playing on what. Good that they get credit though, as they certainly deserve it. Producer and songwriter par excellence Robert John “Mutt” Lange lends his expertise to “It's Got to Be You”, earning my undying enmity for squandering his considerable talents on such a throwaway piece of cr.. well, it's pretty formulaic, is what I'm saying.

Beautiful piano intro to “I Need You Tonight” helps me to push the ugly memory of the previous track to the back of my mind, and it's another lovely ballad, and well sung it has to be said, while there are two songs whose title begins with the word “don't” to follow, the first being “Don't Want You Back”, another dancefloor filler, with some hard percussion and some funky guitar, nice stride piano, a song which tries hard but fails to be a rocker, then “Don't Wanna Lose You Now” is not a cover of the Gloria Estefan ballad, though it is again a ballad. Littrell and Max Martin collaborate again, for the second time on this album and the third effort by the BSB singer, on “The One”, which starts in a balladic vein but quickly becomes what I think I'm going to have to term a “dancer” for the rest of these reviews. Not too bad for him, it made it to be released as a single. In fairness, it has a certain rock, or at least AOR edge to it, making it less annoying than previous uptempo songs from these guys, and with a little polish and a few more guitars it could even work for the likes of Bryan Adams or Richard Marx. Maybe.

Not to be outdone by his fellow Backstreet Boy, Kevin Richardson (doesn't he play for Sunderland? No? No, you're right, that's Kieran. Oh well...) tries his own hand at songwriting when he contributes to “Back to Your Heart”, which as you might expect is another slushy ballad, with some really nice acoustic guitar and the always-waiting digital piano backed by some solid keyboards and in fairness some quite effective vocal harmonies. Again, for a first effort it's not at all bad, even if he didn't strike out on his own like Littrell did. Another ballad (yeah, get used to it), “Spanish Eyes” is certainly a title that's been used before, but for what it is it does its job, with some tasteful guitar and castanets, not surprisingly, a nice orchestral arrangement filling out the melody. Not too bad at all.

And the ballads keep coming, in a veritable tsunami of slush and sugar, a wall of digital piano and acoustic guitar and soft percussion. “No-one Else Comes Close” is, again, a nice little tune, but the problem with having so many ballads on an album is that the really good ones start to merge with the not so good, and it's hard to remember a good track: by now it's all sort of blended into one pulpy, sugary mass surrounded by close-harmony singing and handclaps. And undeterred by this, we finish on yet another ballad, a final stab at writing for Brian Littrell, on “The Perfect Fan”. Don't think they're talking about the kind you use to keep yourself cool, either.

As I said, there's a definite change of direction for Backstreet Boys on this album. Perhaps realising that they were making it big, and about to make it bigger, they ditched the “bad boy/rebel” image and reinvented themselves (or were reinvented) as clean-cut, pure and safe, the kind of band a teenage girl's mother would approve of her daughter being into. The music backs this up, with no hard-edged or risky songs, no real references to things like partying all night or “getting a bad boy”. In ways, on this album it would appear that Backstreet Boys grew up, possibly becoming Backstreet Men...

TRACK LISTING

1. Larger than Life
2. I Want it That Way
3. Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely
4. It's Gotta Be You
5. I Need You Tonight
6. Don't Want You Back
7. Don't Wanna Lose You Now
8. The One
9. Back to Your Heart
10. Spanish Eyes
11. No-one Else Comes Close
12. The Perfect Fan

And so we leap all the way forward to 2007, where their sixth album would be the first not to feature Kevin Richardson, who had left to pursue other interests (no, not to join Sunderland Football Club! I already made it clear that was Kieran!) but would temporarily rejoin the band in 2011, with a possibility of the move being made permanent, as he was never replaced. The album features a lot more songs penned by the boys, and is minus the participation of longtime songwriters Max Martin and Kristian Lundin.

Unbreakable - Backstreet Boys - 2009 (Jive)
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It opens, interestingly, with less than a minute of acapella singing, which goes under the (admittedly imaginative) title of “Intro”, then kicks into “Everything but Mine”, a dancer with a pretty high tempo, and the first time I've heard them use my least favourite music tool ever, the vocoder. Why can't people just sing in their own voices? What? Yes I know ELO used them but that was a totally different thing. How was it different? Um, well, uh – oh! Look at that very interesting thing over there! Anyway, it's got a hard enough edge to it, almost veering this side of rock, though not quite. The handclaps are there again, but the guitars are harder, the drumming a little more powerful. As inevitable as the sunrise or revelations of a politician's expenses scandal, the first ballad comes in the shape of “Inconsolable”, though in fairness it kicks up a little within about a minute and becomes a kind of mid-paced track, with a little nod to Bruce Hornsby, particularly in the piano work.

So the first ballad proper then is “Something that I Already Know”, or is it? It also ramps up pretty soon after starting (hey, I don't know these songs! Don't blame me!) with something like a Kelly Clarkson sound, and I have to admit this album is less dance/pop and more towards the pop/rock side of things. I still wouldn't listen to it in a fit, of course, but of the four I've reviewed now, this is far and away the one I'd be least embarrassed to be discovered listening to, which is about the best compliment I can pay the Backstreet Boys.

I must admit, I never thought I'd say this about a BSB album, but, like, where are the ballads? Well, “Helpless When She Smiles” sounds like it may fit the bill, though I'm getting a little wary of these songs that start slow and then suddenly, for want of a better phrase and I'm aware it's a contradiction in terms, rock out. But this one seems to be a true ballad. Nice bit of electric guitar just there, and a very pleasant piano melody running through the song.

It's a hard thing for an old rocker to admit, but you know, some of the ballads on these albums could possibly end up finding their way onto one of my playlists in the future. Shh! Just don't tell anyone ok? I have a reputation to maintain! Dammit, I've always liked a good slow song, and I must admit these guys have all but cornered the market there. “Any Other Way” is not a ballad, a more upbeat, uptempo track with a sort of ABBA-like keyboard hook (or could be strings possibly), then the first (other than the opener) song the guys collaborate on is next. “One in a Million” sounds like it may be heading back in the direction of the original albums, too many damn handclaps and those vocoders again. Grr! They try again with “Panic”, but it's more of the same really, with the addition of a quasi-reggae beat. Not winning any friends round here, guys!

Perhaps they'd be better to leave the songwriting to the professionals, as “You Can Let Go”, with its semi-country melody, nice acoustic guitar and violins is much better, and they have no input into that, nor indeed into “Trouble is”, which with its again country-style guitar and rhythms balances back out the good with the bad. Nice bit of rock guitar in there too, tinging the song with a certain AOR feeling. Yeah, far better. Stick to singing guys, and leave the writing to those who make a living from it. Harsh? Maybe, but two bad songs in a row tells its own story.

There's some guest writing from one of the members of our next boyband to be reviewed, as JC Chasez from Nsync helps pen "Treat Me Right", but despite (or perhaps because of) his input, the quality level dips sharply for this song, then screams right back up to the summit for “Love Will Keep You Up All Night”, a beautiful piano ballad which benefits from the lack of their sticky fingers on the writing. The boys are also kept away from “Unmistakable”, another nice acoustic ballad that unfortunately suffers from vocoder* overload and handclap fever, and I would say the writers managed to make a mess of this without the Backstreet Boys getting involved, though as I listen to it it does start to get a little better, and I'll revise my original impression of this. It's actually quite good: while not in the same league as “You Can Let Go” or indeed “Helpless When She Smiles”, it's a decent enough song.

The lads are back then to finish things off with “Unsuspecting Sunday Afternoon”, a sort of acoustic coda and followup to the opener, some nice orchestral arrangements adding to the song and filling it out nicely, bringing the album to a pretty powerful and ultimately satisfying conclusion.

Like I say, of the four of the Backstreet Boys', so far, seven albums this is the one that I've hated reviewing the least. It betrays a leaning towards a certain harder, almost rockier sound, and though they'll always be the band teenage (and older) girls (and probably boys too, can't be that sexist) dance to, they do seem to be growing up, from their change of image on 1999's Millennium to this album (though I haven't listened to the ones in between), and their music seems to be growing with them. Whether they wish to shake the boyband tag or not I don't know, but on this album they manage to come quite close.

TRACK LISTING

1. Intro
2. Everything But Mine
3. Inconsolable
4. Something that I Already Know
5. Helpless When She Smiles
6. Any Other Way
7. One in a Million
8. Panic
9. You Can Let Go
10. Trouble is
11. Treat Me Right
12. Love Will Keep You Up All Night
13. Unmistakable
14. Unsuspecting Sunday Afternoon

* You know, that could be the thrice-cursed hellish pop music feature known as autotune. I'm not au fait in these things. Very annoying either way.

So that's the Backstreet Boys well and truly catalogued, and as I switch off the viewer and power down my laptop for the night, I think about the impression this band has made on me as my footsteps echo loudly on the flagstones of the archive. The curator waves almost absent-mindedly to me: I've been here for the last week or so, going through the wealth of information on Backstreet Boys, watching videos, interviews, live performances and of course listening to their music and researching their career.

I always hated them, like I hate all boybands. Well, not hate really: there's little I truly hate. But I've cursed and reviled them for the insidious way they've taken over the charts and the image they've presented to the world of what a band should - or should not - be. But despite myself, the more I listen to and learn about these boybands, the less I dislike them. I'm never going to be a fan, that's for sure, but at least now I know the stories behind them, and it makes it a little easier to perhaps understand them, which was after all my intention when I began this series, what seems a lifetime ago now.

Back at the hotel, I thumb my mobile and tell Max I'll need him to drive me tomorrow. My research here in Chicotania is over, and it's time to move on to New Southland, to start learning about that other big American boyband, Nsync. I can hardly wait, but I do wonder if my opinion of them will change in the same way it's (kind of) changed regarding the Backstreet Boys? Well, tomorrow we'll start out on our journey and I'll have a chance to find out. For now, at this moment, exhausted and my brain exploding with facts, figures and dancing boys, there's only one thing I need, and that's sleep.

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Refreshed and with a somewhat clearer head, I rise at 7am the next day, to the sound of the telephone ringing as the front desk informs me my taxi has arrived. Finishing my packing and paying my bill, I head outside to meet Max, who is now sporting a just-started beard, and looks like some sort of Mexican revolutionary! We're soon underway; the trip to our next destination will be an overnight one, and we're scheduled to arrive at New Southland at approximately 10am the next day. Adhering to the laws of the land, Max will of course be resting during the almost twenty-hour drive, so we may in fact be later arriving at our destination than expected, but it's best not to fall foul of the police around here, or indeed anywhere.

The next subject for my article is Nsync, who I read as we drive got their name when the mother of one of the members noted how in synch(ronisation) their voices were. There's also something about the last letter of each of the bandmembers' first names spelling out the band name, but I tend to put less stock in that. Now, to do this right, there should be an apostrophe in front of the "n", but, you know, **** that. In contrast to the Backstreet Boys, Nsync seem not to have started out by auditioning for a competition, American Idol style, but with the clear intention of starting up a band, at least as far as founder member Chris Kirkpatrick was concerned. He met with our old friend, jailbird Lou Pearlman, who helped him put the band together and financed it.

Surprisingly perhaps, it seems Nsync hit the scene at about the same time as their genre-mates, Backstreet Boys, with only one year in between each's debut album. Pearlman was obviously getting greedy, or indeed greedier. Perhaps he was already anticipating the boys' discovery of the millions he had been ripping off from them, and was looking for fresh meat. Either way, Nsync ended up with their initial lineup as:

Chris Kirkpatrick
Joey Fatone
JC Chasez
Justin Timberlake
Jason Gallasso

though the last was replaced before the release of their debut by Lance Bass, who remained with the band. Timberlake, who would become the most successful and well-known of the band, going on to have a huge solo career and get into the movie business too, was discovered at, of all places, the Mickey Mouse Club, as indeed was his mate Chasez.

Like the previous boyband featured, it was Germany that first took to and broke Nsync commercially, and it was on the German BMG label that their debut, again self-titled, was released, though later RCA, who took them on, had them record some new, “more airplay-friendly” tracks for the album, dumping some of the ones from the original German release. Oh, those Americans! They sure make the life of a reviewer tough! Unlike Backstreet though, this album features a few cover versions, but again Full Force write one of the songs.

As we drive through the night I slap on the headphones and listen to some of my own music, to prepare me for the endurance test ahead. True, listening to the music of the BSB was not as horrible as I thought it would be (in fairness, I'd rather listen to them than to Venom!) but it's still not my kind of music, and it's difficult to be impartial about it. But that's my job, that's why I'm here and that's what I intend to do.

I'm awoken by the sound of the car door shutting, and realise we've arrived at our halfway point, where we will rest before continuing on, thus satisfying the authorities. It's a small guest house we have stopped outside, and I'm in something of a fog, not entirely sure what time it is as we enter and are shown to our rooms. Max bids me good night and reminds me we need to rise early - he mentions 4am - in order to avoid the early morning traffic and make best speed to New Southland. I mumble something in reply and close the door, falling into bed. It seems my head has only hit the pillow when there's a rapping at my door, and I stumble towards it, wondering who the hell is knocking at this time of the night, to find it's Max, annoyingly refreshed-looking and eager for the off. I stare. Surely it's not four already? But it is, and soon we're back on the road.

I blink the sleep out of my eyes, let out an expansive yawn and wonder how it is that my driver remains so alert after what only seems a few hours of sleep? Still, that's his job, I reason, and return to my research.
https://i.postimg.cc/P5tCrpk0/boybandland3ag.jpg
When I next look up I'm surprised to see that we're passing another of those Lou Pearlman statues, signalling that we're entering New Southland, and the first thing that hits me is how similar, indeed identical this looks to the place I have just recently left. Is this a sign? Am I to find that the music of Nsync is going to be a carbon copy of that of the Backstreet Boys? While I stand pondering this I become aware that Max is extending his hand in farewell, and so I grasp it and, saying goodbye to Max I head towards my room in the hotel before making my way down to the library to assess the music and career of one of America's oldest “classic” boybands.

Nsync - Nsync - 1998 (RCA) (UK Edition)
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Bloody boybands! Or, more correctly, bloody record labels! I've had to make a decision to get at least one of the releases of this, Nsync's debut album, and have gone with the UK version which was released one year after the German version, in 1998. Probably won't make that much difference, but it definitely adds stress to my already tough burden in writing this article. Anyway, this, their first album opens with “Tearing Up My Heart”, which is an okay pop song, a little more classy than the early uptempo Backstreet Boys material, though still with that annoying dancy beat, and this continues with “I Just Wanna Be With You”, which is the Full Force number for this band, but no huge surprises yet with a generic pop/dance number, a little more restrained than the opener, yes, but not that much different really. So little, in fact, that I've just left the room and come back to hear the third track, “Here We Go” has started, and it took me a moment to realise it was a new track! Generic, with a capital G.

The first ballad comes with “For the Girl Who Has Everything”, and it's okay but I have to say it's not a patch on some of the better ballads the Backstreet Boys have recorded (never thought I'd say that!), in fact mostly it's quite boring. A little better is “God Must Have Spent a Little More Time On You”, but it's flat and lacking the sort of emotion I've heard from the BSB, very much inferior to their music. Not impressed so far - oh, big surprise! Yeah, but I thought the same would be true of the Backstreeters, and yet here I am complimenting them, at least in comparison to Nsync. “You Got it” goes back to the tried-and-trusted dance songs, which I guess at least gives the boys a chance to work on their choreography, but otherwise it's pretty empty.

“I Need Love” confuses by starting out like a ballad, then the thumpy-thumpy drum machine beats cut in and the tempo goes up, and it becomes a fast popster/dancer, with those house-style squealy keyboards running through it. Yeah, I guess it's not too bad, at that. Synthpop stabbing chords, little guitar to speak of, but again very little in the way of emotion. Nsync come across to me as a band who were purely in this to make money, and didn't care too much about their music or the message it got across. Could be wrong, of course, but so far (about halfway through the album) this is the impression I'm getting: the music doesn't really seem to matter.

The same trick is pulled off with “I Want You Back”, slow ballad-style opening then it kicks into another uptempo dancer, though not as high-energy as the previous. One of the two covers on the album, they do a reasonable job with David Gates' timeless “Everything I Own”, even if they do sort of rush through it a little. But it's not a terrible job. Nice orchestral arrangement at least, but it's fairly devoid of the emotion in the original by Bread. It's followed by a ballad, and “I Drive Myself Crazy” (which could be my anthem for this project!) is probably about the best I've heard from them up to now: nice understated acoustic guitar, bloody handclaps again (!) and some decent vocal harmonies. Nice. But it's back to the dance nonsense then for “Crazy for You”, before we're into the second cover, another timeless classic, Christopher Cross's elegant “Sailing”.

Well, okay, there's a really nice acapella intro with some sparkling keyboards and then a nice acoustic guitar which stays true to the basic spirit of the original. It gets a little lost along the way though, as the various voices all vie to throw in their two penn'orth and it ends up being something of a mess, which is a pity as it started so well. And we're left with the annoying “Giddy Up” to close the first Nsync album, and leave me feeling distinctly unimpressed.

Not to keep harping back to the BSB, but though their debut didn't impress me much either, I have to say it was (back)streets ahead of this. Were you to tie me to a chair, strap explosive to me and force me to choose between the two, at this point there would be no contest at all.

TRACK LISTING

1. Tearin' Up My Heart
2. I Just Wanna Be With You
3. Here We Go
4. For the Girl Who Has Everything
5. God Must Have Spent a Little More Time On You
6. You Got it
7. I Need Love
8. I Want You Back
9. Everything I Own
10. Thinking of You (I Drive Myself Crazy)
11. Crazy for You
12. Sailing
13. Giddy Up

Also during 1998 Nsync released a Christmas album, but I have no intention of subjecting either myself or my readers to such a monstrosity, and it will be quite rightly passed over. It would, however, be the last album the boys would record on the RCA label, as shortly after the completion of their debut album, our good friend Lou Pearlman was in trouble again (well, strictly speaking for the first time, as BSB would not sue him for another few years yet, but we've already discussed that battle, so now here we are again) as Nsync accused him of ripping them off and taking half of their earnings, when he was originally only entitled to one-sixth. A legal battle ensued, and after settling out of court with the band Pearlman and Nsync went their separate ways, the boys leaving RCA and signing to Jive Records, becoming labelmates to Backstreet Boys, who had been with them all through their career.

It took them two more years (given the legal proceedings, this is perhaps understandable) to release their second proper album, but by now they were a recognised and popular commodity, and had no problem shifting the units. In fact, the album has gone down in history as the most pre-ordered on Amazon. Thought you might like to know that.

No Strings Attached - Nsync - 2000 (Jive)
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With a lot less ballads than the debut, this was supposed to be Nsync's step into the “big world” of rhythm and blues and pop, leaving behind, to some extent, the teenpop and dance numbers, but it opens with a generic dance song, apparently a stab at Pearlman and his management team, the not-so-subtly titled “Bye Bye Bye”, and I see no real change in direction here, though in fairness it's only the first track: give the album a chance! Well, it's a little slower and less frenzied than a lot of their faster dance numbers off the debut, while “It's Gonna be Me” is about the same, though it starts fairly uptempo. A preponderance of synths and drum machines is definitely evident.

“Space Cowboy” has a lot of house/hip-hop style rhythms, with a guest vocal from Lisa “Left eye” Lopez (?) and it's very annoying, real club stuff. It's obvious that the only one who's dipping his toe in the songwriting pool at this time is JC Chasez, who you may remember contributed a song to the Backstreet Boys' debut album - or at least co-wrote it - and here he has a stab at three of the tracks, though Justin Timberlake is involved in one. That said, this is one of the three Chasez works on, so perhaps not so great an accolade? There's not a lot you can say, or indeed expect, from a song called “Just Got Paid”, and you get what you, ahem, pay for: a generic dance number with a kind of repeating rap saying (how original!) “Money Money Money”. Next!

Perhaps they were reading my mind, (er, in the future, yeah...) but the next track is called “It Makes me Ill”, and though I'm sure it's not meant to be taken that way, yeah, it does. More generic dance. How much more of this can I stand? Annoying popping keyboards, decent piano but that's about it. Can the great Richard Marx save me? Well, it seems that yes, he can. Penned by the writer of such legendary ballads as “Right Here Waiting” and “Children of the Night”, there's a world of difference between the rest of the album (thus far) and “This I Promise You”, a tender, perfectly-crafted ballad that absolutely goes down as the best I've heard from Nsync so far, though admittedly that doesn't say much. But if there's a standout on this album, then this is it.

The title track is another on which JC Chasez exhibits his songwriting “talent”, but it's not for me, and I'm just seeing - with a very few exceptions, well, one - a constant stream of faceless dance pap going past in an unremarkable, almost unrecognisable wave. At least there's some vaguely interesting hard rock guitar in this, for a short time, but then “Digital Get Down” brings it all back down to the lowest common denominator again, blasted vocoders! It's a worrying sentiment expressed in the next song, though thankfully time proved them wrong, as “I'll Never Stop” is more faceless pap, generic dance beats, close-harmony singing with more vocoders, drum machines, you have the picture by now. “Bringin' da Noise” doesn't do anything to improve my mood either, and I really can't see where the so-called “transition” from dance to r&b is here: this sounds pretty much the same as the material on the debut. At least BSB tried to change their sound, and with Millennium, mostly succeeded.

One more chance for things to improve, maybe, with another powerhouse songwriter getting involved, this time the mighty Diane Warren, who contributes “That's When I'll Stop Loving You”, a slow, soulful ballad which just oozes class which, as ever, tells. Justin Timberlake's effort comes with “I'll be Good for You”, with a sort of seventies soul/motown vibe, lots of heavy synth, snappy bass, not too bad really. And a pretty bad album ends rather well with “I Thought She Knew”, an acapella ballad which certainly showcases the boys' vocal talent and timing.

As far as a huge departure from their original sound goes, I really don't see it. There are, admittedly, less ballads and they call in some pretty big hitters in terms of songwriting, but for me this is a case of same old same old. Of course, that was what the fans back then wanted, and the album sold in its millions. Never underestimate the buying power of teenage girls!

TRACK LISTING

1. Bye Bye Bye
2. It's Gonna be Me
3. Space Cowboy
4. Just Got Paid
5. It Makes Me Ill
6. This I Promise You
7. No Strings Attached
8. Digital Get Down
9. Bringin' da Noise
10. That's When I'll Stop Loving You
11. I'll be Good for You
12. I Thought She Knew

Their third, and as it turned out, final album was released the next year, featuring a lot more input from the band, with Chasez and Timberlake stepping up their contribution to the songwriting, and even helping produce the album. It was another millions-seller, and spawned a huge tour.

Celebrity - Nsync - 2001 (Jive)
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More and more vocoders, god-damn them! (To be fair(ish), I think I've learned since that this is in fact the bane of the proper singer, thrice-cursed Autotune) “Pop” starts the final Nsync album off more or less in the same vein as the previous, and again it's been hailed as having much more of a hip-hop influence, but as I'm not all that familiar with that genre I can't really say. There are certainly a lot of synth, synth-bass and sampled vocals in use in at least this track, a dancer with funk elements, and what may be I believe what the kids these days call “scratching”? ;) The title track has a little more of a swagger to it, and the lyric seems to tackle the problem of being liked/loved just because you're famous - aw, the poor darlings! It's got a Paula Abdul/Janet Jackson vibe to it, more scratching and bubbly synth with programmed drum patterns. Both of these tracks feature writing input from Justin Timberlake - make of that what you will. Personally, I don't think it's a great advertisement for his songwriting talent. Featuring some videogame sounds in the intro, “The Game is Over” (see what they did there?) is nothing that much different, and the videogame samples, which continue through the track, get very annoying. I'm waiting for a ballad, as they're the only way I can properly comment on Nsync, whose music otherwise seems all very generic and formulaic.

Timberlake has his hand again in the writing of “Girlfriend”, their last ever single and one that got into the very highest echelons in both the US and UK charts, narrowly missing the number one spot in the latter. It's more mid-pace dance stuff though, and nothing particularly different from anything that has gone before. “The Two of Us” is JC Chasez's second attempt at songwriting on the album, his first being a collaboration on “The Game is Over”, and here again he teams up with Alex Greggs and Brad Daymond, and the result, to be honest, is not that much better. Pass.

Not getting much love from this album so far, and I haven't even heard one ballad. But hold on: here's some lovely cello introduction to “Gone”, with a nice little soft acoustic guitar, and it seems like we may have our first ballad after all. With Timberlake again involved in the writing, this is a lot better, but we are now halfway through the album, so it'll take a lot to turn this around. Still, this is a good start to build upon. Unfortunately, “Tell Me, Tell Me Baby” shatters that hope, with a return to generic pop/dance, and the intentionally supposed-to-be-funny false start is not at all, just comes across (to me) as smug and annoying. Particularly when the song is absolutely nothing to write home about.

A nice sentiment, as far as I'm concerned, “Up Against the Wall” has me casting about for my gun, but I can't find it. Shame. ;) The absolute genericity of this album of pap has my ire rising by the minute (and my ire really needs to stay on the ground, you know): there's nothing special about it, and again I have to compare Nsync to the Backstreet Boys, with the latter coming up trumps in every case. This album, and this band, epitomise and confirm all I despise about boybands. The lazy, careless songwriting, the willingness to exploit a formula to the nth degree, the lack of any interest in progressing their music or even improving it. Nsync, it would appear, were happy to put out the same rubbish over three albums, and the public ate it all up and asked for more. Thankfully, there was none.

“See Right Through You” is basically nothing more than a crude excuse for me to laugh at the band again and agree that yes, I do, then there's finally some relief in “Selfish”, the second ballad, and it's miles better than what passes for music on the vast majority of this album. It's nicely constructed, with a soul feel and some tasteful digital piano, some nice breathy synthesisers, and in fairness I have to give some sort of plaudits to Chasez, as he's involved in the writing of this, probably the only other decent track on the album. It of course doesn't last, and we're back to dancing with “Just Don't Tell Me That”, beeping keyboards and drum machines with sampled synth blasts: yeah, we've (YAWN!) heard it all before, guys, too many times.

The legendary Stevie Wonder does his best to pull things back onto some sort of even keel and the album struggles to finish on a high note as he plays harmonica on “Something Like You”, which thankfully is another ballad, and very nice, almost Stevie-like in its melody, and something of a triumph for Timberlake, who co-writes it. We close though on “Do Your Thing”, which is a bright, poppy, and annoying dance tune, and is unfortunately the last thing you're humming (if you're humming) when the album is over.

No, I don't see any signs of progression here: nothing that makes me think these guys could have gone on to change the music they were playing, stretch beyond the limited examples here, and in two other albums. Maybe they didn't want to. They'd made their money, they'd conquered the world. Why buck the winning formula by trying something else? Maybe I just don't understand the boyband ethic, and maybe I never will. All I can say is I'm glad there were only three albums from Nsync that I had to review, but it was three too many.

TRACKLISTING

1. Pop
2. Celebrity
3. The Game is Over
4. Two of Us
5. Gone
6. Girlfriend
7. Tell Me, Tell Me Baby
8. Up Against the Wall
9. See Right Through You
10. Selfish
11. Just Don't Tell Me That
12. Something Like You
13. Do Your Thing

Although they announced after this album that they were going on hiatus, ie taking a break, Nsync have never managed to get back together (awww!) since the departure of Justin Timberlake, who has of course carved himself out a very successful solo career, first in music and now in film, and with his heavy schedule it seems unlikely we'll be seeing any new material from the band in the foreseeable future.

I personally won't be losing any sleep over that.

Max picks me up at the library and drives me back to my hotel, where we shake hands and wish each other well. Tomorrow I board the train which will take me on a three-day journey south, to the region known as Tak'Thatten, where I will begin my research on probably the biggest and most successful boyband to come out of the United Kingdom, Take That. Max has been a great guide and will always be a friend, but the journey is far out of his legal jurisdiction, and anyway would cost me a fortune!

On the way south I will have plenty of time to ruminate upon what I have learned thus far, and compose my thoughts for the second part of this review. For now, I reiterate my findings that the music I encountered when listening to the Backstreet Boys' catalogue beats that of Nsync into a cocked hat.

If I had a cocked hat...

https://i.postimg.cc/R0jGPLnN/boybandland3afb.jpg
It's been a long journey (though comfortable; the railway line here knows this journey is long and can be ardurous, so they go out of their way to make it as pleasant for you as they can - assuming you can pay, of course) south through Greater Boybandland, and as we've travelled I've occasionally looked up from my research and noted with disapproval the many shanty towns dotted along the route, where guitarists, keyboard players and other session men who have fallen down on their luck eke out a meagre living, perhaps busking in the street for coins, or desperately trying to cash in on long-faded glories. “Hey, I used to play with Boyz II Men” or “I taught the guys from Nsync all they know” are familiar claims around these parts, my guide tells me, and similarly disbelieved, ignored or simply not cared about. Most of these session musicians can lay claim to having played, either on stage or in recording sessions, at least once, with often more than one successful boyband, but it's a familiar story and no-one is impressed, more interested in trying to stay above the poverty line, while some vainly write songs (and often good ones) that nobody here will listen to. Were this a rock town, sure, they could make it big, but all across GBBL, from north to south and from east to west the story is the same: unless you can sing and harmonise and dance, and unless you look and sound pretty, nobody cares.

The guttering lights of each successive shanty town are soon left behind in the dust though. This train does not stop at any of them: there is no need. For anyone who has been lucky enough to have had their services procured by a boyband and is travelling my way, it's a fifty-mile or more trek to the nearest rail station, where shiny new plastic train tickets (one-way only: it's an expensive trip) are clutched in hand like bars of gold, quite literally the lucky musicians' ticket to the big time.

I reflect on the unfairness of it all. There is great talent here, but nobody will give them a chance. Unlike the streets of, say, Chicago, where though the blues are king they'll listen to any music, give anyone a chance, here in GBBL you HAVE to be boyband material to be even listened to. In my time here I've heard guitar solos that would make your hair curl, listened to aspiring rock singers that would make Coverdale or Bon Jovi green with envy, and heard people do things with keyboard, sax and violin that I would not have believed possible. Anywhere else, they would be well on the way to fame and stardom, but not here. Here, the boyband is king, and there is no room for any other type of music.

As day turns to night and the train ploughs on like an arrow into the gathering darkness, I notice that the landscape is changing subtly. The large, clustered skyscrapers I encountered in the north of the country, both in Chicotania and later in New Southland, gradually drop away, being replaced by lower, less cluttered buildings that spread out across the approaching skyline. Hills and meadows are lusher, somehow; greener and more rolling, and there's a certain something in the air that I can't quite put my finger on. Tired, blinking my eyes against the night, I give up trying to figure it out and turn in.

On rising the next morning I notice that cattle begin to appear along the route: sheep and cows mostly, with a few red and green tractors barely visible, chugging along as they till the fields. The sky here, too, is somehow bluer and clearer, fresher, not so smog-choked as was the case further north. As the train hurtles past a small town (village really, it's only a few shops and pubs and houses, with a church and what looks like a cemetery at the far end, almost invisible) I hear a sound I haven't heard for what seems like, and probably is, months now: church bells.

And then it hits me what's different about the landscape here. There's no other word for it, and it explains and indeed ties in with what's happening. The countryside has become more English. We have left behind the Americanised north, with its boybands from Florida and are heading south, into what must be the heartland of the English side of GBBL, where I will encounter bands like Take That and Boyzone. The landscape is changing accordingly, and there is, to quote the old poem, “a little (large) piece of England” that takes up the southern half of this country.

https://i.postimg.cc/NMqwvTrz/pageopen135a.jpg

By the time we reach our destination it's clear that they have, to reverse the quote, builded England in Jerusalem's green and pleasant land. Tak'Thatten is a microcosm of English culture, a sterotypical one to be sure, with people passing by in bowler hats and with umbrellas tucked under their arms or being used as walking sticks, grey tube trains carrying people around the realm, while black taxi cabs honk and jostle for position on overcrowded roads overlooked by huge neon signs promising everything from a cure for headaches to holidays in the sun at rock-bottom prices. There's even a facsimile of Big Ben towering over a mockup of the Houses of Parliament. The sense of mimicry and the tawdriness of it all mirrors what to my mind epitomises boybands, and I shake my head, hailing a black cab to take me to my hotel.

Not long afterwards I'm down in the local archive, reading about and sampling my next target in this article, the most successful British boyband ever, Take That. Again formed by an impresario, this time Nigel Martin-Smith, I believe I may be kinder to these English boys that I have been to their US counterparts, and predecessors. This is mostly due to the fact that I discover that, unlike their cousins across the water (or indeed due north) Take That wrote all their own material. This is quite a revelation to me, as I've come, over the course of the two parts (so far) of this article to expect that the boyband in question is little more than a tool for the producer/manager/promoter, and that he always seems to exercise the tightest of control over his charges, usually making sure writers are drafted in to pen their hit singles, and most of the tracks on their albums. Occasionally, the boys will be allowed write, or participate in the writing of, a few tracks, but by and large these are in the minority.

Take That appear to be different, with all of their material initially written by group founder Gary Barlow, a process that continues right up to the present day. This by itself is enough to make me sit up and take notice, although the fact that they were, ultimately, another manufactured group, created to take advantage of and capitalise upon the success of bands like New Kids on the Block, is disappointing. Bands should grow organically, not be cultivated in a test tube, and they should be primarily concerned with the quality of their music, not satisfying a particular demographic. But, such is the world of the boyband. Perhaps Take That were able to break the rigid, constricting, strangling mould a little. We shall find out.

But first, who exactly are Take That? Well, they were formed by, as you've already heard above, Gary Barlow, and you surely need no introduction to one Robbie Williams, but who make up the rest? Well the full band membership is as below:

Gary Barlow
Robbie Williams
Howard Donald
Jason Orange
Mark Owen

Of the above, only Barlow does anything other than sing; in addition to being the main songwriter for the band, he is also an accomplished pianist. So let's see if their music is anything different, as we sample their first album.

Take That and Party - Take That - 1992 (BMG)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._and_party.jpg

To be honest, it starts off more like a jazz or soul track than a dance one, which I have to say is encouraging. “I Found Heaven” is apparently universally hated by the band, so that would give me hope that there is much better to be found on the album, as I quite like this. Boppy, uptempo with a lot of jazz and absolutely no synth stabs or, so far as I can hear, drum machines. Quite catchy, and indeed was a hit single for them, but one of the very few not written or co-written by Gary Barlow. One of seven of his solo efforts on the album is up next, but “Once You've Tasted Love” is, in my opinion, far inferior to the opener, with a lot more emphasis on dance rhythms and something akin to the dreaded SAW (Stock/Aitken/Waterman) drumbeat that permeated everything they put out in the eighties, from Rick Astley to Kylie.

Their cover of Tavares' “It Only Takes a Minute” is well removed from the original, almost unrecognisable, very in that Nsync/Backstreet Boys vein, with twiddly, sparkling keyboards and that annoying drumbeat again, another fast dancer, which has my heart sinking. I thought these guys were going to be different, stand out from the pack? Then, all of a sudden, to quote the title of their second album, everything changes with “A Million Love Songs”. Another solo Barlow effort, this finally showcases what an incredible burgeoning talent was there, with a sweet, beautiful ballad that somehow manages to stay just the right side of saccharin and doesn't stick between your teeth. Treading a careful line between formulaic ballad and proper love classic, the track falls easily on the side of the latter, and was to become one of Take That's best known and loved songs, and with good reason.

From the beautiful piano - played by Barlow himself, affording him another string to his bow, unlike the boybands we've looked at up to now - and sax opening to the motown-style rhythm, the excellent backing vocals, the tender sentiments familiar to any struggling songwriter as he tries to write a song to the woman he loves, to the breakout sax ending, it has everything. Add to that the fact that Barlow was only fifteen when he wrote this, and you have a song that has been, rightly, voted in some circles as the best ballad of all time. It really is that good, and if there's a turning point in this album, and in my view of Take That, this has to be it.

It's the first of three consecutive Barlow solo offerings, the second of which, “Satisfied”, is a dancy number but not too bad, certainly nothing like the pap we endured listening to Nsync. It's light and breezy, a little throwaway, but then, they can't all be classics like “A Million Love Songs”, can they? The third in this triumvirate is in fact another beautiful ballad, and like many - almost all - boybands, Take That would build their career on such ballads, and they would form the bedrock of their music. “I Can Make it” is nowhere near as good as “A Million Love Songs”, but it's a good ballad, showing again what an emerging writing talent Gary Barlow was at that time.

On the next two, he collaborates with other writers, and it shows. “Do What U Like” is a house/trance-influenced boppy uptempo number, sounding more than a little like Wham! It's not surprising that when released as the lead single from the album it utterly failed to chart. “Promises” is not much better, kind of the same sort of thing, then we have another one where Gary goes solo, and it's another superb ballad. “Why Can't I Wake Up with You” features again lovely piano and sweeping synthesiser lines, with a simple, understated vocal and some nice sax parts. He's involved in the last three tracks too, two of which he pens solo again, with “Never Want to Let You Go” being a mid-paced, almost reggae-style track, with some soul influences in the melody, while “Give Good Feeling” (terrible use of the English language boys!) opens on a breathy choral synth, but quickly morphs into another high-energy (I refuse to use the acronym) dance tune, though there are some good ideas in there, and it's not too generic.

I hated their version of Barry Manilow's classic “Could it Be Magic”, and that position will never change. Although it was a huge breakout hit for them, the song was changed from a tender, passionate and often faltering love song, sometimes unsure and then getting more powerful and dramatic as the piano lends Barry courage and strength and conviction. Take That turned it into a dance number, robbing it of all its emotion, tension and pathos, and reducing it to the level of something to shake one's booty to. I've always hated them for that, and even should this article end up with my having a greater appreciation of their work, that will always be between us, like a love affair that has been forgiven, but never forgotten, always in the background, waiting to be used/accused, ammunition for any future argument.

The album ends on the title track. Whether it would have been better to have ended on Manilow's mangled classic or this I don't know, but I would hate both of them probably equally. As an example of what the band were, or stood for, or were capable of, this is not it. It's a throwaway, easy ending to what is in essence not that bad an album, that doesn't leave me dreading listening to more of their output.

But a better closer would have helped.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Found Heaven
2. Once You've Tasted Love
3. It Only Takes a Minute
4. A Million Love Songs
5. Satisfied
6. I Can Make it
7. Do What U Like
8. Promises
9. Why Can't I Wake Up with You
10. Never Want to Let You Go
11. Give Good Feeling
12. Could it Be Magic?
13. Take That and Party

Only a year later and they were back with their second album, which would prove to be their breakout one, hitting the number one spot on its release. With songs written almost exclusively by Gary Barlow, it brought Take That to the attention of mainstream music buyers and made them a household name, and one of the most popular, if not the most popular pop band in the UK, a mantle they would retain till the late nineties.The ttle of their sophamore album reflects this.

Everything Changes - Take That - 1993 (BMG)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ng_Changes.jpg

Opening this time with the title track, a soul/disco effort in the mould of bands like Earth, Wind and Fire and the Spinners, it's a mid-paced dancy number with sparkly keyboards (except in ballads, keyboards always tend to sparkle when used in boyband music!) and a nice little bass line, certainly a dancefloor filler, but it was the Gary Barlow-penned “Pray” that gave them their first UK number one, a feat they would repeat three more times with this album. Despite its ballad-like title, it's another mid-paced dancer, though a little slower than the title track, and again retaining the motown/seventies disco keyboard melodies.

“Wasting My Time” has a sort of jazz/calypso feel to it, with lots of brass and bongo-like percussion, with a hint of cabaret and just a little shot of Phil Collins to it, then they reignite Dan Hartman's disco classic “Relight My Fire”. Never liked this, and Take That don't make me like it any better, but I guess it's a decent version, then the first Barlow ballad comes with “Love Ain't Here Anymore”, slow and swinging with very soul-style vocals, and no doubt the cigarette lighters were out in force when this was played live.

Borrowing a tiny little phrase from Madonna's “Borderline”, I find “If This is Love” a little generic, nothing terribly great to write home about, and perhaps it's telling that it's one of only two on the album into which Barlow has no songwriting input. “Whatever You Do to Me” is a big, brash, ballsy soul rocker, lots of brass and guitar, and works very well. It's followed by “Meaning of Love”, which again sounds like it should be a ballad and again isn't, though it is a Barlow song. Sub-disco tripe, I have to say, very disappointing. There's another outing then for “Why Can't I Wake Up with You?”, though it's given a real kick up the arse and turned into an uptempo popper, which personally I think neither works nor was necessary.

“You Are the One” opens with strings-like keyboards, then goes into another fairly low quality disco song, quite throwaway I have to say, but all is forgiven with the arrival of another fine ballad, the Barlow-penned “Another Crack in My Heart”. Or is it? No, scratch that: it's not quite a ballad, and it's nowhere near as good as we know he can write, but at least it's better than the awful “Broken Your Heart”, another dancy piece of nonsense. Sigh. At least it has a nice keyboard solo. The album closes strongly with one more solo Barlow effort, the lovely ballad “Babe”, but in general I like this album less than the debut, which I have to admit is not something I expected to happen.

TRACK LISTING

1. Everything Changes
2. Pray
3. Wasting My Time
4. Relight My Fire
5. Love Ain't Here Anymore
6. If This is Love
7. Whatever You Do to Me
8. Meaning of Love
9. Why Can't I Wake Up with You?
10. You Are the One
11. Another Crack in My Heart
12. Broken Your Heart
13. Babe

Take That became a four-piece after their third album, when Robbie Williams was faced with an ultimatum by the band: kick the drugs and drink or get out of the band. He chose the latter, and few would have believed that he would stage a huge personal comeback and go on to become one of the highest-grossing solo acts ever, becoming a household name in his own right and a huge star. That, of course, was once he got into rehab and sorted himself out.

The boys, meanwhile, continued on without him, and so it makes sense that we then look at their first album sans Robbie, although to be honest I don't see him as having made a huge contribution to the band while with them: he didn't write any of the songs, he sung some but other than that he didn't look to be the kind of creative force Gary Barlow was, which makes it all the more surprising that Gary's later solo career bombed - in comparison - while Robbie's took off like a rocket. And the proof was then seen that, although he had not written any songs for or with Take That, Mister Williams was a dab hand at the old art of penning tunes.

With some help, of course.

Beautiful World - Take That - 2006 (Polydor)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...orld_cover.png
Although Robbie Williams features on the previous album, 1995's Nobody Else, he left/was dumped for the tour and did not feature on this album in any capacity. In fact, it would be another four years before he would reunite with the band, though of course by then he had already carved himself a career of his own and become pretty much a superstar, so he wasn't exactly sitting on his hands! Beautiful World was released eleven years after the split, and on a new label.

In a major shift in policy, songwriting credits were now given as “Take That”, rather than to Barlow or whoever was writing, but we can probably assume that he was still doing the lion's share of the songwriting. This album is also the first on which every band member sings lead vocals at least once, and indeed the first time Take That used an orchestra in their arrangements.

Right away, there's a HUGE change, with “Reach Out” closer to AOR than even pop, never mind dance, This is VERY encouraging! Really sounds like Take That have come of age, and I don't even feel embarrassed listening to this with the volume up loud. What a difference! Total pop/rock sensibility on this track, and you really have to remind yourself that this is the same band that put out such, in comparison, rubbish as “Do What U Like”, “Give Good Feeling” and “Meaning of Love”. Not so much a seachange as an oceanchange! Am I getting ahead of myself, overexcited for no reason? Will this quality persist throughout the album, or is this a one-off?

Well, “Patience” is a lovely little acoustic ballad that bears all the hallmarks of a Gary Barlow-penned tune, with some really nice strings sections from the London Session Orchestra, and indeed it was a huge hit single, and certainly keeps the top quality of this album up, while the title track, one of two to feature Howard Donald on lead vocals, is another revelation. I honestly can't express adequately my amazement at how good, so far, this album is, but more, how different it is to at least the first two. It's certainly knocking me down with a feather!

I can't at this point find anything bad to say. The songs are incredibly well-crafted, the vocal performances are perfect, the instrumentation is mature and well-arranged. Gone are the squeaky keyboards, the thump-thump-thump! rhythm, the annoying dance beats, the vocoder-aided vocals, and the aggravating bubblegum pop themes that damned many of Take That's early songs. I said earlier that Backstreet Boys grew up with their third album Millennium, but in comparison to the literal transformation of Take That on this album they're still just messing around. This is, quite simply put, amazing.

Even if there are a few bad tracks later on, I'll be able to forgive them and allow much latitude, so good has the album been so far. And yet, no, “Hold On” is another excellent track, lovely acoustic guitar and the orchestra providing great backup to a song which could happily share the stage with any rock song I know. Featuring one of three lead vocal performances from Mark Owen, it's proving they can all sing when the spotlight is on them, that there are no passengers here. Sorry for all the superlatives, but I am literally (not literally, obviously) floored by how this album has turned out. I in no way expected this, never in a million years. This album could turn me into a fan! I'm quite serious!

I think it's fair to credit John Shanks with at least some of the plaudits, as he co-writes half of the tracks here with the band, and I wonder how much of Gary Barlow is in these songs? A lot, I would think. There's still nothing bad I can (or, at this point, want to) say about this album, as the standouts just keep coming, with “Like I Never Loved You at All” another acoustic ballad with beautiful orchestral arrangement, and a passionate and powerful vocal from Gary. There's a real sense of maturity, of growing, learning and developing running through this album, almost as if Take That have done their time as teen idols, and now want to be taken as serious musicians. With this album, they're achieving that without any trouble at all.

Even when the tempo hits up a bit and I fear a dance track, “Shine” is really more a Beatles/Robbie Williams hybrid - yeah, I've heard this is an ad, that's why it sounds familiar. Very happy, very upbeat and just a joy to listen to. It's Mark back on vocals, then Gary's back for “I'd Wait for Life”, a tender piano ballad like his best work from the first two albums with the added power of the London Session Orchestra behind him adding punch, and emotion to a song already strong enough to, I'm sure, elicit an approving handshake from the master of the piano ballad, Barry Manilow, and all must surely be forgiven for the murder of “Could it be magic”, years earlier.

I'll tell you how good this album is. On every other one that I've reviewed for the boyband articles, right back to the beginning when I checked out New Edition, I quickly began a process of listening to about half of each track and jumping forward to the next, due to time constraints yes, but mostly because I didn't like what I was hearing, or knew how it was going and didn't look like changing. On this album I've not touched the forward key once, and I'm actually enjoying this so much that when the review process has completed and I have this uploaded, I honestly think - no, I know - I will listen to this again for pure pleasure. And I never, ever thought I'd say that about a boyband album. During the course of the reviews I've liked a few ballads, mostly from BSB, and was (am) going to sneak them into some playlists, but until now I had not come across a boyband album I would listen to through in its entireity if I didn't have to. Now, I most certainly will.

“Ain't No Sense in Love” is another emotional half-ballad, and it's true that the addition of the orchestra has given a majesty and gravitas to the songs on this album, but they can't take full credit. The songs are, to a track, excellent; there are no fillers, there is no (so far!) dancefloor rubbish, and I could not be happier with this album, nor more surprised by it. Mark is back for his swansong with “What You Believe in”, great acapella intro and sensitive acoustic guitar in a superb ballad, introspective and extremely emotional, almost a sense of the great Roger Waters in the song - who could have predicted that august name would be used in a review of a Take That album? Also a sense of ELO about it, especially in the chorus.

Look, this is the surprise of the year so far for me, and the most pleasant too. Not one single bad track so far, not even a weak one, none that I can say well it's okay, the rest are good so we can forgive that one. Every song is holding its own, every song is special, every song is excellent. Unbelievable. Beautiful strings ending, then the last vocal from Howard Donald takes “Mancunian Way” as the album heads towards its conclusion, and I'm actually sorry: I could keep listening to music like this for hours. More Beatles-like vibes in this song, more great guitar and piano, and although Howard would not be my favourite vocalist, (I feel he was much better on the title track), he does a decent enough job here. More ELO-style influences right at the end, and someone's child I must assume takes the last few words. Cute.

A folk tune on a Take That album? Well, at this stage I'm ready to believe anything, and Jason Orange's one and only lead vocal really suits “Wooden Boat”, taking the evolution of the band to its fullest degree. Play this to someone and don't tell them who it is, you can be sure they won't have a clue. Technically the last track on the album, there's a “hidden track” if you wait (and whereas before I would have groaned and avoided such a thing, I'm eager to hear more now), with “Butterfly” coming in over one minute after “Wooden Boat” has ended. It's another acoustic ballad, I'm glad to say, and features Gary on vocals, wrapping things up in fine style.

Not one single bad track. Let me repeat that: not one single bad track. Not even a weak or so-so one. The songs in fact on this album are all so good that I really can't pick a standout, and would say they're all standouts. Add in the wonderful “Rule the World”, which we all know from the film Stardust and its huge success in the charts, a track which was not included on the original CD and is not on my copy, and you have not only the most complete, successful and enjoyable Take That album, but the very best example of a boyband transcending their origins and breaking out of the constricting bonds that held them for a decade, and like the butterfly in the closer, struggling from the coccoon and spreading their wings, taking to the sky joyfully, a beautiful and totally new and different creature altogether.

TRACK LISTING

1. Reach Out
2. Patience
3. Beautiful World
4. Hold On
5. Like I Never Loved You at All
6. Shine
7. I'd Wait for Life
8. Ain't No Sense in Love
9. What You Believe in
10. Mancunian way
11. Wooden Boat
12. Butterfly (hidden track)

After this, well, this epiphany, this revelation, I feel the need to quickly run outside the echoing halls of the archive, out into the morning sunshine and jump up and down, punching my fists in the air and shouting “YESSS!” People look at me askance, but I don't care. This is the motherlode, this is what I had hoped to discover by plunging into the murky world of boyband music, the pearl among the swine, the rose among the thorns. This gives me hope. Hard on the heels of that hope though is the fear that perhaps this is a one-off, that after this Take That went back to their old format, and that this album would have to stand as the only example of what they could truly achieve once the chains were off.

I really hope that's not the case, but in any event we will find out, as the last album to be reviewed is their, as it were, comeback album, wherein they reunited with Robbie Williams. Once I calm down and wipe this big silly grin off my face, I'll be diving into that.

Okay, I'm ready now. Back to the archive I go, with a spring in my step that has not been evident for several months now, not since I began this journey.

After fifteen years and two albums as a four-piece, Take That were reunited with original band member Robbie Williams in 2010. Robbie had of course gone on to his own superstardom, having hit albums and singles, and selling out huge venues, but in 2010 he returned to the fold, to where it all began, and the album that resulted was the first to feature the original five-man lineup since 1995.

Progress - Take That - 2010 (Polydor)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ress_cover.png

It opens encouragingly, with a nice atmospheric synth, then the familiar voice of Robbie Williams starts the vocal on “The Flood”, and really he's never sounded better. Gary joins him as the song, er, progresses, and to be honest it's great, a real follow-on from the last album above I listened to, even though there was one in between I didn't review. I would agree with many critics though that although this (and possibly others on the album) is a great track, it has much more of Robbie's own solo feel on it than that of the band. But I'm not complaining.

Lovely strings from the London Studio Orchestra this time, and there's again a great sense of maturity about this song, hard to believe it comes from the same stable as Everything Changes et al. I don't know how much Robbie was involved in the writing on this album, but as I say, this track has his signature stamped all over it. “SOS” starts off with some frenetic piano then breaks into a bass-driven pop/rock song that even owes a little to the Clash, would you believe? This features Mark Owen duetting this time with Robbie, and although it has disco/dance overtones, it's nothing like some of their earlier dance material; very urgent, passionate and frantic.

Howard Donald joins Robbie and Gary for “Wait”, the first ballad on the album, again given extra weight (sorry) and meaning thanks to the orchestra. Oh wait, no it's not. Started off that way, but then drum machines and synth kicks in and it's more a funk/dance shuffle, again quite a Robbie Williams type song. In a way, it's a pity he rejoined, as it's now hard to figure out if Take That are continuing the evolution begun on Beautiful World, and changing their sound, or if they're just becoming a sort of backing band for Robbie, who it seems was not that involved or to the fore prior to his departure. But now he seems all over this, with the first three tracks at least featuring his distinctive vocal, so it's difficult to separate his own solo work from that of the band.

Indeed, he sings or duets on more than half of the tracks on this album, soloing on one, but the next one doesn't feature him, although the title is the same as one off one of his albums. The vocal on “Kidz” is taken by Gary and Mark, with a sort of bassy synth line driving the song in a sort of half-rock vein, then Robbie is back, with Gary, for “Pretty Things”, with an almost “With or Without You” keyboard opening melody, a downbeat tune with Erasure-style synth and bass. The contrasting vocals of both of the guys work very well on this track, and they stay together for “Happy Now”, another mostly low-key track with a nice line in synth and some moody percussion, vocals very understated, almost mumbled until the chorus cuts in about a minute into the song when it picks up in tempo and indeed mood, getting more upbeat and happy, some good guitar licks helping the song along, with a nice piano ending.

Robbie's last vocal performance on the album is solo, when he takes “Undergound Machine”, going all Laurie Anderson, with a big striding bass and guitar, quite rocky and very Robbie Williams. The remaining four tracks are all solo efforts, with the first up being Mark Owen, who sings “What Do You Want from e?” He seems to have an unfortunate lisp, which only becomes apparent when he sings without backup, but he does okay. The song is all right too, a sort of mid-pacer with some decent guitar and some effective strings, while “Affirmation” is Howard Donald's only solo appearance, with an almost “Chopsticks” piano intro, then busy synth and wheezing drum machines as the song picks up, becoming a fast almost-rocker. At least there is little in the way of true dance music here.

Gary takes the mike for the last (official) track, “Eight Letters”, gentle acoustic guitar opening and the closest the album comes to having a ballad, which is a pity, because though this is a good song I would have preferred a proper ballad just to round things off. There is another track, a “hidden” one, so perhaps “Flowerbed”, voiced by Jason Orange in his only solo performance, may provide it? Well it's only thirty seconds in, and proves worth waiting for, Jason's voice heavily distorted through a vocoder it would seem, very atmospheric until he starts singing without distortion. It's a nice little song, not a ballad but a good ending, even though “Eight Letters” makes a very decent closer anyway.

It's not the revelation Beautiful World was, but at least Progress doesn't go back to the vacuous dance tunes of the early albums, and it's another step along the road to musical maturity on this journey Take That have embarked upon since then. As an album, it would not be my favourite from this band, but it's certainly a close second. Does the return of Robbie add a lot to it? Yes, but in ways explained above it also takes from the appreciation of Take That, and I just wonder how much of their own material is in this album, and how different, if any, would it have been without him?

TRACKLISTING

1. The Flood
2. SOS
3. Wait
4. Kidz
5. Pretty Things
6. Happy Now
7. Underground Machine
8. What Do You Want from Me?
9. Affirmation
10. Eight Letters (includes “hidden track” “Flowerbed”)

I came here to Tak'Thatten, to the British side of Greater Boybandland, in the hope I might find something different. Initially, I was disappointed, but as I ploughed on through the albums of Take That I began to sense something else, something greater than just a boyband. Okay, not on the first album but by the second there were signs, and then of course once I reviewed Beautiful World it was a total surprise, and a pleasant one. I've grown now to see Take That as more a band than a group, or even a collection of singers, something that I would not say of any of the other boybands I've reviewed.

So this trip, long and tiring though it was, has not been a waste of time. In the sleepy hills and villages of England (or at least, what passes for a very stereotyped England here) I've finally found music I can appreciate, and a band who are willing to push beyond the tight boundaries placed upon them by virtue of their chosen genre.

Now it's a busride northeast, to see if my own countrymen can have as much and as favourable an effect on me as have my cousins from over the water. Tomorrow I travel to the land of Boyzeire, to research the first Irish boyband, but not the last; a band which, in turn, gave birth to a much larger and more successful one.

Are you going to continue this thread?

I am. I'll get right on it. :thumb:

Thanks.
There are more boy bands are you going to do everyone from the 90s at least. Like: east 17, five, 911, blue, a1.

It seems every boyband (even the one accepted as the first) were formed in order to emulate the success of their predecessor(s) and to be the “new [insert boyband name here]”, and so it was with Ireland's first boyband, Boyzone. Formed by Irish manager and producer Louis Walsh, they were to be the answer to Take That, and were put together out of auditions of hundreds of singers over the period 1993-1994. Though there were changes to personnel, the final and “classic” lineup was as follows:
Ronan Keating
Shane Lynch
Stephen Gately
Mikey Graham
Keith Duffy

Boyzone would go on to be one of the biggest selling bands in Irish history, until the arrival of their heirs, Westlife, who would blow all previous records out of the water. As I look out the grimy windows of the rattling bus making its way a hundred miles or so northeast to Boyzeire, I note that once again the landscape is changing. Seems to be something to do with climate control and high-definition graphics, but whereas it was sunny but a little foggy when we left Tak'Thatten, the sky has now completely clouded over and the rain is beginning to slant down as we head towards our next destination. Ah, Irish weather indeed! I almost feel at home!

Three seats down, two small men dressed entirely in green and with white beards shift in their places uncomfortably, perhaps aware of their size compared to the other passengers. One scratches the side of his nose and tilts his emerald top hat back a little, while the other hefts a heavy shilellagh and eyes the other occupants of the bus meaningfully, then extracts a pouch of tobacco, a pipe and tamps the material into the bowl. As he prepares to light it though, the bus driver announces in a tannoy address not directed specifically but meant for only him: GREEN STAR BUS LINES WOULD LIKE TO REMIND PASSENGERS THAT SMOKING OF ANY KIND IS FORBIDDEN ON THEIR SERVICES. THANK YOU.

The little man snarls at no-one in particular, stows the pipe and fishes out an ipod, whose buds he jams angrily into his ears, wincing, then leans back as the tinny sounds of Irish reels and jigs attempts to escape from his headphones, his black brogues tapping out the rhythm as he closes his eyes.

I shake my head at the idea of stereotyping, and note as the dawn gives way to the morning that the sky has now acquired a greenish hue. There are a lot more cows and sheep in the fields, and more than once we pass a slowly ambling gypsy caravan, brightly painted and going the opposite way, its driver hunched over the reins, face almost totally obscured by scarves, out of which a dirty trail of grey smoke curls into the morning air. Evidently, smoking IS allowed on gypsy wagons, I note.

After a while looking out the window, and with nothing else remarkable to see, I turn my attention back to the two little green men, and notice that the one listening to the ipod is flinching and grimacing as if not enjoying what he's hearing. I tap him on the shoulder and ask him what he's listening to. He tells me it's Irish trad (or traditional) music: “Ceilis (kay-lees) and shite.” He looks very glum, and I ask does he enjoy that sort of music, in answer to which he shakes his head sadly. “Hate the feckin' stuff!” he says with feeling. “Still, ye've gotta listen to it. Part o' the job, y'see.” I enquire further and he enlightens me that he and his friend are both employed in Boyzeire as performing leprechauns. I smile that such things do not exist, and he favours me with a withering glance.

“Sure I know that, and you know that!” he snaps, having by now thumbed the pause button on his ipod, an action that has brought an expression of momentary relief to his craggy features. “But THEY don't, do they?” I ask who “they” are, and he grates “Feckin' tourists. They come here, expectin' to see a version of Ireland of the Welcomes, y'know, land of saints'n'scholars, an' all that? Doesn't exist, of course, but try tellin' THEM that! Me an' Freddie here (he indicates his companion needlessly) are employed at one o' the big ho-tels (he says the word hotel in two syllables, with the emphasis on the first) an' the money is grand, but ye got to know the music. They want ya to dance, an' sing, an' then they try to trap ye to get yer bag o' gold.”

I ask if he really has a bag of gold, to which he snarls “Now, don't ye think, lad, that 'twere the case I'd be sittin' on this heap o' rust, headin' for another six months o' humiliatin', demeanin' work? Have to work, lad, to keep body an' soul together, ye know? So we have to learn all this stuff by heart ---” Suddenly he pops out his earbuds, throws them at me and thumbs the play button, upon which I am assailed by the sounds of Tommy Makem and Liam Clancy singing about Gallipoli.

“Bloody skiddily-idle!” he says with feeling. “I'd rather be listenin' to Blue Oyster Cult, ye know? But there ain't much call for “Don't fear the reaper” (rahter unfortunately, his thick Irish brogue pronounces it "don't fair the raper"!) where we're goin', lessen it's played on tin whistle, harp and bodhran! Gah! Bloody tourists!” I hastily hand the “leprechaun” back his player and shake my head, returning to my seat. Perhaps I have not so bad a job after all!

The gentle swaying rhythm of the bus as it rocks along the road coupled with the humidity and the almost hypnotic patter of the rain on the windows lulls me into sleep, and I'm suddenly aware of someone shaking me. I look up into the bushy face of the “leprechaun” I had spoken to, what seems only minutes but must surely be hours ago. He grins. “End o' the line, bucko! Welcome to the land of the green!” As he makes his way to the door, lugging some flight cases in which surely must be his musical instruments, the tools of his trade, his companion already ahead of him and dragging similarly heavy cases, he tips his wide-brimmed hat and looks back with eyes that I swear sparkle.

“If'n ye get a chance while ye're here”, he says, “drop in to the Bertie Inn. Ask for Shamus, I'll see ye right for a Guinness.” He scowls, a cloud passing over his furrowed brow. “Course, it's not me real name, but ye've got ta play t' the gallery, don't ye? Slan leat!” And with that Irish word of farewell he's gone, almost vanishing like a real leprechaun. I reluctantly pull my stuff together and struggle out of my seat, the last to disembark from the bus.
https://i.postimg.cc/6Q4TnkPk/boybandland3ae1.jpg
It's pouring rain (of course) and I hurry to the bus station, from where I catch a taxi to my hotel. All the way there the driver swears he knows Bono, and in fact had a tryout for U2 when he was younger. He also claims that he played for Shamrock Rovers but a leg injury cut short his career, and he's apparently also good friends with our president, Michael D. Higgins. I do my best to ignore him, some non-committal sounds and I busy myself with my laptop. It's not even switched on, but he doesn't need to know that.

Once at the hotel I check in, sort out my stuff and head to the nearest restaurant as I'm starving, then it's down to the library once again for another ten-hour shift. I read that the parents of Boyzone frontman Ronan Keating initially discouraged their son from joining the band, as he had a promising career as an athlete, and they believed he was throwing away a college education and a real chance to make something of himself for a pipedream. Wonder how they feel now?
https://i.postimg.cc/HLfG8RGP/pageopen144a.jpg
Louis Walsh, of course, became famous as one of the resident judges on the X-Factor, and later went on to create and manage Westlife. Walsh retained tight control over Boyzone, almost like a domineering father, an attitude that would lead to a split between them later on in their career. I am, however, heartened to see that there is no huge statue of the impresario standing on a boyband as in the American part of this country: we Irish, even here, are less ostentatious. There are people we'll erect statues to --- James Joyce, Daniel O'Connell, Phil Lynott --- but Louis Walsh? Do me a favour!


Boyzone worked the club and pub circuit all over Northern Ireland during 1994, scoring an Irish hit with a cover of “Working my way back to you”, before they were eventually signed to Polygram and released their first album near the end of that year.

Said and done --- Boyzone --- 1994 (Polygram)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...aidanddone.jpg

With early contributions to the songwriting by members of the band, the album opens with “Together”, a generic dancer with some nice keyboards and the boppy dancebeat that characterised Take That's first two, and most/all of Backstreet Boys and Nsync's material, but then there's a nice ballad in the shape of “Coming home now”, with an early attempt at a slow rap. Very soul-oriented, this is the first track on the album written by all the members of the band, though Ronan Keating did contribute to the opener. It's not bad, but for a ballad a little generic, kind of BSB in its style. Some nice vocal harmonies, but then you'd expect that, wouldn't you?

Their first cover then, the Osmonds' “Love me for a reason”, proved to be their breakthrough hit, smashing open the charts and making them a hot commodity not only in their native Ireland, but in the UK and Europe too. Another soul-style ballad follows, “Oh Carol” with another, far superior one in “When all is said and done”, this being another one written by the lads. Lovely Spanish guitar in this, and some nice piano. After three consecutive ballads, this is followed by a more uptempo track, another one written by the band, but “So good” is not quite that: it's okay, but a little weak and limp, returning to the empty dance rhythms plundered and used so much by boybands before, and after, Boyzone.

A sort of mid-paced soul ballad/popper then in “Can't stop me”, before “I'll be there” lifts the quality slightly with another mid-pacer, but better than the previous track. The big piano ballad is “Key to my life”, which scored them another top three hit, followed by another mid-paced half ballad written by composer Andy Hill, “If you were mine”, then they cover Sutherland Brothers and Quiver's “The arms of Mary”. Not a bad version, but it's a little hard to mess up. Bit too slow for my tastes. “Believe in me” is the last original on the album, a sort of pop half-ballad and the album closes with yet another cover version, which provided them yet another hit, Cat Stevens' timeless “Father and son”.

For a debut it's not bad, but draws too much on the style and influences of other boybands who have gone before them. There are also, to my mind, too many cover versions (three in all), but in their defence Boyzone started out writing a lot of their own material, similar to Take That, and so had a better chance of retaining some sort of control over what they put out.

TRACKLISTING

1. Together
2. Coming home now
3. Love me for a reason
4. Oh Carol
5. When all is said and done
6. So good
7. Can't stop me
8. I'll be there
9. Key to my life
10. If you were mine
11. Arms of Mary
12. Believe in me
13. Father and son

After the success of their debut album, Boyzone were now an established commodity, and any ideas that an Irish act could not follow the success of their UK and US counterparts was forever dispelled when they had their first number one single with a cover of the Bee Gee's “Words”, followed by another single just barely missing the top spot and charting at number 2, with Tracy Chapman's “Baby can I hold you”. After that, Boyzone performed live at the Eurovision and later Ronan Keating received an Ivor Novello prize for songwriting. The boys from the green stuff had arrived!

A different beat --- Boyzone --- 1996 (Polydor)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...e_album%29.jpg

With a beautiful strings opening and nice backing vocals, “Paradise” opens the album with typical boyband sugar bombast, with Ronan now established as the band's main vocalist and frontman. It's a decent opener, somewhat more mature than the material on the debut, and features songwriting by some of the band, including Keating, who would become the band's main songwriter in addition to being their singer. The title track starts off on African/tribal beats, rather incongruously joined by a reedy vocal from perhaps Stephen Gately, hard to know as I don't really recognise any of the others. It acquires a kind of “Lion King” feel as it goes along, basically a ballad form with some hard drums, nice synth and some typically African-style instruments like maybe marimbas or something similar. Quite moving, actually.

Two covers follow, first is the “world anthem” called “Melting Pot”, which is all very well and good, but I don't really want to live in a world of multicoloured people! Following this is Michael Jackson's ode to a rat. Yeah, it's “Ben”, and it's as insipid as it was when Jackson sang it as a kid. Weirdly, whoever takes the vocal sounds very like the late King of Pop...

A real digital piano ballad follows, but I don't really find anything special about “Don't stop looking for love” --- could be sung by anyone from George Benson to Whitney Houston. Very generic. A little better is “Isn't it a wonder”, another single, another hit, a soul ballad before they launch into the big hit, their cover of Robin, Barry and Maurice's “Words”, which secured them their first number one record. It's good, but they take liberties with the verses I don't like, and I'm a fan of the original. “It's time” then comes across as a sort of reggae-lite song, bright and breezy with lively piano, while “Games of love” is more uptempo and dancy, but still listenable.

“Strong enough” is sort of their “Everybody (Backstreet's Back)”, a hard, funky dancer with handclap beats and stabbing synth, then “Heaven knows” is a nice little semi-acoustic ballad with soul overtones, pretty seventies but updated to the nineties. “Crying in the night” is a proper ballad though, with acoustic guitar and strings, then “Give a little” is a house/techno dance number that really just rips off early Take That, and the album ends on a cover of a classic traditional tune, the moody and atmospheric “She moves through the fair”. Arranged by Irish piano supremo Phil Coulter, it's bold, imaginative and with a very definite celtic air as oileann pipes and heavy drums set the tone, unfortunately when Ronan comes in he sounds distinctly ordinary, kind of ruining the atmos. For a proper version, check All About Eve's debut self-titled album. The arrangement is stunning though, and had it been an instrumental I would have given it a thumbs up no problem. Of course, had it been, it would be unlikely to have been on a Boyzone album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bX_L6odViI
So, no huge surprises then for their second album, but in fairness this has been the case for every boyband we have reviewed here. It always seems to take at least their third album before they come of age, as it were (although in the case of Nsync I'm not convinced that ever happened), so as Boyzone only released, to date, the four albums, I'm going to review them all here, and we'll see how they developed, if at all, as a band as the years and albums unfolded.

TRACKLISTING

1. Paradise
2. A different beat
3. Melting pot
4. Ben
5. Don't stop looking for love
6. Isn't it a wonder
7. Words
8. It's time
9. Games of love
10. Strong enough
11. Heaven knows
12. Crying in the night
13. Give a little
14. She moves through the fair

Thank You & Goodnight (2018) was their last album. please do a review.

BZ20 (2013) & From Dublin to Detroit (2014) don't do the albums because they are not good.

Nah sorry, this is a done deal. Written originally in 2012, at which point that album had not been released. I've done four of Boyzones' and that's all you get. And here are the last two.

The longest Boyzone album to date, clocking in just short of seventy minutes and containing fifteen tracks, Where We Belong was released in 1998 and again shot straight to the top of the Irish charts, getting to number one in the UK too. It contained a track which would become their biggest-selling single, as well as another cover version which would forever be identified with them.

Where We Belong --- Boyzone --- 1998 (Polydor)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...rewebelong.jpg

There's often a sense of seventies soul to Boyzone's music that tends not always to be the same case with other boybands, and so it is with the opener to this, their third album, and indeed “Picture of you” won Ronan Keating an Ivor Novello and was featured in the Rowan Atkinson movie Bean (well, the second one anyway). It's a boppy, uptempo, cheerful song with a lot of brass, and a good opener. It's followed by the cover version of Tracy Chapman's “Baby can I hold you”, which would give them yet another hit single, reaching number two in the UK and Ireland, and forever consigning Tracy's original to the mists of history, at least in the minds of the younger generation, who by now no doubt thought that Boyzone wrote “Father and son” and “Words”.

A mid-paced half-ballad is up next, and “All that I need” is harmless enough, certainly lacking the emotion or class of a Take That song, but also eschewing the bubblegum pop/dance of Nsync. There's a funkiness about “Must have been high” (possibly controversial, given Ireland's strict catholic outlook on such matters) then the first proper ballad in “And I”, with some gentle digital piano and acoustic guitar. One thing that has always annoyed me about Ronan Keating is the “twang” he puts into his voice, as if he were singing in Nashville. Whether it's affected or genuine I don't know, but I haven't heard of any Dubliner having such an accent, and it's pretty infuriating.

Another ballad in “That's how love goes”, and yet another in “Where did you go”, then a nice idea in “I'm learning (Part 1)”, which although even another ballad (that's four in a row so far) is bookended later by part 2, and is a nice slow introspective song. Things finally pick up for “One kiss at a time”, a soul/jazz pop dancer reminscent of that soul revivalist, Phil Collins. Nothing particularly special, but it does provide welcome respite from Keating's somewhat whining crooning on the multi-ballads that have taken up the last twelve minutes or so.

It's short-lived though, as we're back with the ballads for the admittedly quite good “While the world is going crazy”, and things remain slow and laidback for what is essentially the title track, the acoustic guitar-driven “This is where I belong”. Tempo rises slightly for “Will be yours”, but it's still quite balladic in its structure, kind of similar in structure to the title track off their previous album, with some nice backing vocals, then a nice relaxed guitar intro to “Good conversation”, very restrained, nice and easy. And things stay that way for “You flew away”, making at this point eight ballads, out of a total of fifteen tracks, and that's not including “Baby can I hold you”.

Oddly, their biggest hit single, and the only one to gain any purchase for the band in the US, was not on the original UK version of the album, but everyone knows “No matter what”, and in fact you can add that to the total of ballads if you like. It's not on my copy, so the closing track then is “I'm learning (Part II)”, a nice little piano ballad to end what is almost an album of ballads, certainly they're in the majority. Out of a total of 68 minutes and 35 seconds, the combined ballads (including Chapman's song) make up 40 minutes and change: that's a lot of slow songs! And that doesn't include “No matter what”.

TRACKLISTING

1. Picture of you
2. Baby can I hold you
3. All that I need
4. Must have been high
5. And I
6. That's how love goes
7. Where did you go
8. I'm learning (Part 1)
9. One kiss at a time
10. While the world is going crazy
11. This is where I belong
12. Will be yours
13. Good conversation
14. You flew away
15. I'm learning (Part 2)

There would then elapse twelve years before the next, and so far, final album from Boyzone. During that time Stephen Gately would “come out”, revealing that he was gay, and then die from natural causes in 2009. Before that, Boyzone decided to break up, or as the Americans say, enter into hiatus. Keating embarked on a rather successful solo career, that indeed proved to make him at any rate better known in the USA than Boyzone ever were, with the success of his single “When you say nothing at all”, especially when it was featured in the movie Notting Hill. Kieran Duffy became well-known on TV for his role in the TV soap Coronation Street, while Gately took to acting on stage, and also writing children's books.

In 2000, Boyzone played what was to be their final gig in Dublin, and seven years later reunited for a tour, but it would be another three years before their fourth album would be released. The album sleeve features the four remaining members of Boyzone, but is dedicated to their late fifth member, Stephen Gately, and his voice can be heard posthumously on the opener and also on the track “Stronger”.

Brother --- Boyzone --- 2010 (Universal)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._-_Brother.jpg

Featuring for the first time no input whatever to the songwriting from any of the band, most interesting nothing from Ronan Keating, this stands as, so far, the last Boyzone album. A slew of pop songwriters were drafted in, a different writer it seems for every track on the album. The result is, finally, a more adult-oriented album, tipping more towards the scale of soft rock than pop or dance, and allowing Boyzone to finally grow up.

In a nice and fitting touch, the album is opened and closed by the last tracks on which Gately sings, the opener being “Gave it all away”, a nice emotional ballad which has less of the sugar-sweet themes of previous Boyzone songs and more the mature sound of Robbie Williams or Take That. It goes into a sort of reggae beat halfway through, which confuses me a little: can't see the point of that at all. Nice song to open the album though. Gately doesn't sing solo on it though, as Ronan Keating soon comes in in his usual role as main vocalist.

There's a real sense of AOR about “Love is a hurricane” (although Keating had previously argued that it was a rollercoaster, on his debut solo album...), with a nice bright bouncy piano line, and you would begin to wonder if Brother could be Boyzone's Beautiful World? The only difference here would be that whereas Take That refined their songwriting to craft some excellent tracks and a wonderful album, the change here has to be down to the many different songwriters used, so can it be said, if such a seachange is seen by the time the album ends, that Boyzone orchestrated the change?

High quality continues in “Ruby”, a half-ballad with nice rolling percussion, and I notice only now that again I haven't reached for the forward button, unlike the three previous Boyzone efforts, which were certainly skipped through as I got a flavour of each track. This certainly bodes well, but can it last? We'll see. “Too late for hallelujah” veers a little into venerated U2 territory, with a great rhythm section adding a real sense of tension and drama to the song, and I must say Ronan Keating is in probably the finest voice he's been. Probably the best compliment you could pay Boyzone on this album (so far) is that were you to hear any of these songs on the radio you would be surprised to realise who was singing them, as they do not in any way sound like the usual fare Boyzone have plied up to now.

Sounding very Robbie Williams, the delicate ballad “Separate cars” does nothing to change my belief that this is going to be a far different Boyzone album to any of the previous three. About a minute in, it kicks into life and the old soul influences come back to bear, but with a lot of maturity now. Perhaps the shock at the loss of their friend and bandmate has shaken them out of complacency, shown them how lucky they are to be where they are, or perhaps they've all just grown since their last outing, I don't know, but this is a far more mature album than anything they've put out. There's real emotion and power in “Separate cars”, and even Keating seems to have eschewed the country lisp in his voice that he practiced up to now, sounding much more natural.

It's a pity that they couldn't have pulled off this transformation with their own songs, as some of the lyrics here seem to point directly to the loss of Stephen Gately, as in “One more song”, when Keating sings ”When you left/ You took the melody with you” and ”When I'm down/ I look up to the sky.” It's a nice mid-paced pop tune, as Ronan sings ”I would give anything/ Just to hear you sing again.” Very touching, but it would have carried more weight if they had at least been involved in the writing. “Right here waiting”, despite the title, is not a cover of the Richard Marx classic ballad --- in fact, there look to be no covers on this album, another first for Boyzone --- but is rather an anthemic mid-pacer with a nice line in guitar, while “Nothing without you” starts off with tender piano, a song which really showcases Ronan's voice with a Hornsbyesque track that gets going again about a minute in and really starts to, er, rock.

Piano also features heavily in “Till the sun goes down”, a half-ballad with rocky overtones, and as I more or less suspected, I've not come across one bad track yet. AND I've been listening to every track all the way through. There are only three left, so it's exceptionally unlikely I'll encounter one that makes me want to skip through it, as I move on to “Time”, which sets its stall out from the off, with jingly guitar and dull, thumping drums, another U2-inspired groove that probably set stadiums alight wherever they went on their tour.

Boyzone try their hand at gospel for “Let your wall fall down”, with deep, heavy church organ and a full choir. Hallelujah, indeed! The album closes then, fittingly, with the final words from Stephen Gately on “Stronger”, delicate acoustic guitar and piano backing a fragile little ballad, a poignant and moving end to what has stood for two years as Boyzone's final album.

Like Take That before them, I believe Boyzone pulled off the extremely difficult task of reinventing themselves on this album, made the harder considering they had to face life and their public with the loss of one of their members. Although Take That did it independently, as mentioned above, and Boyzone had to hand over songwriting duties to professionals to change their sound, and their perception outside their fanbase, I commend them for this huge change of direction and on making “Brother” their most adult and accessible album to date. If they wanted (as I'm sure they did) to create a fitting tribute to the late Stephen Gately, they succeeded without question, and in fine style too.

TRACKLISTING

1. Gave it all away
2. Love is a hurricane
3. Ruby
4. Too late for hallelujah
5. Separate cars
6. Right here waiting
7. One more song
8. Nothing without you
9. Till the sun goes down
10. Time
11. Let your wall fall down
12. Stronger

I stretch and rub my eyes, glancing at the big clock on the library wall which reveals it's now 4am. I shut off my laptop and unplug it from the socket, sliding it back into its case, the sounds of acoustic guitar and digital piano still echoing in my ears. Tomorrow (well, today really) I'll be leaving Greater Boybandland, my mission here complete, and travelling to the furthest reaches of this country, where I'll research the modern boybands and see what, if any, lessons are to be learned from what I've experienced here.

I'm alone as I leave the library, but for the curator, who barely looks my way, obviously recognising me as someone who is not into boyband music, and therefore hardly worth her notice. I suppress a scowl at the slight prejudice, but it's a virulent disease that runs rampant all across this land from north to south and from coast to coast, and I've learned to accept and deal with it.

As I make my way back to my hotel I reflect on what I've learned. Whereas in Early Boybandland all I really found was that boybands (early American ones, at least) played watered-down pop, soul and dance music that had little or nothing to say, and was fairly formulaic and generic, here in GBBL I've learned, mostly down here in the south, that boybands can change, that they can break beyond the rigid musical boundaries they find themselves in, that they can try other things and that, given the right impetus and decent songs they can start to regard themselves as “proper” bands, or more to the point perhaps, be regarded by other than their fans as proper musicians.

I've already noted that I have been impressed by two boyband albums, both of whom come from my side of the Atlantic, and it gives me hope. When, in preparation for this series of articles, several months ago, I went searching torrents for Nsync, Backstreet Boys, Boyzone and Westlife, and other boybands, I felt kind of dirty having them on my hard drive, and had absolutely no doubt that, once the article was written and published, I would summarily delete them from my computer, never wishing to listen to them again. However, I'm as surprised as anyone to admit that there are one or two albums I will be keeping, and listening to just for pleasure.

I suppose in the final analysis this series has proven, or is proving, that you can never take anything for granted, judge nothing at face value, and that in this wonderful and varied world of music, there's always some new surprise waiting for you, if you have the courage to look for it and allow it to affect you. In the end, close-mindedness is the enemy of all music: just because you don't like ---- or haven't heard, but have formed an instant and uninformed opinion about --- certain music, does not mean that there isn't something there, waiting to be discovered, waiting to inform and educate you, and perhaps open a small door into a much wider world of music, a door you would never previously have chosen, or dared, to walk through.

I've titled this section “Stranger in a strange land”, and treated it as allegorical to a sea voyage, a journey of exploration and discovery, and like most explorers, I find I'll be coming back with more than a few little treasures and mementoes, and a better understanding of something about which I was largely ignorant, and uncaring, before I set off. I'm not becoming anything close to a fan of boyband music, but I can begin to see something of merit in some of it. This traveller is starting to feel less of a stranger in these lands.

Squinting blearily up at the night sky as I make my way back to my hotel, I wonder if it's too late to catch Shaymus at the Bertie Inn? ;)

THE END.
BUT TROLLHEART WILL RETURN IN THE SUMMER, IN THE THIRD AND FINAL PART OF THIS SERIES.