Boy Bands: Gone........ for Now

JC Chasez new album blows big time, the boy bands are in decline, and there the cycle continues....boy bands followed by...exposure of real bands. great.

the difference is after this unrelenting and overextend cycle of fabricated boy band crap (98 degrees, backstreet, n'sync) the public is more wise to this stuff. and you know why? the industry pulled away the curtain to reveal how its all done:

from MSNBC:

Heightening this trend in recent years has been the explosion of reality television, which like a visit to the sausage factory, may be fascinating in the short term, but can kill one’s appetite for the product in the long run. While Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync at least made the effort to be perceived as authentic musicians, O-Town reveled in its artificiality as the formation of the group was chronicled in the ABC reality series “Making the Band” in 2000. Gleefully fabricated on-camera by former Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync manager Lou Pearlman, the process of assembly may have made for some interesting television, but its stark revelation also doomed the group to about zero artistic respect and a very short shelf life.

While it is centered on individual singers, “American Idol,” now in its third season, has also contributed to the public’s awareness of the nuts and bolts of the star-making machinery: industry-insider judges Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson and former pop star Paula Abdul critique the contestants and chat revealingly amongst themselves about song selection, image-shaping and non-musical elements such as stage presence and charisma. There is still magic in a performance that clicks, but we are all much more aware of where the magic came from, whether we choose to be or not.
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i can only hope it will be another 10 years before we seen them again. there are only so many bands, so much industry scouts and so much industry resources that can be used to find, promote and develop artists. its sad to think that all of this money and time was wasted on forgettable bands that won't stick with us for the long haul. where we can hold on to the music from the beatles, u2, rem, nin, led zeppelin, ac/dc, cream, etc.... we can't really believe that boy bands have contributed anything other than sugar coated shit that hasn't challenged or enriched us at all. in some ways this is a tragedy. while the industry could have been scouting and promoting a new zeppelin, they chose to look for the next bay city rollers.

if you don't know who the bay city rollers are, they were a huge (mega huge) boy band around the end of the seventies. they sold tonnes of albums, girls loved them and they were promptly forgotten five minutes later. queue decade of fun, but mostly irrelevant music. yikes. this isn't happening again, is it?