For The Love of Boy Bands

Rounding out music week is a little confession of mine....

I certainly have always had eclectic taste in music. I like a bit of everything from classic rock to rap. But since I was a little girl there has been one constant. Through every era of my life I have sought out and thoroughly enjoyed the boy band.

It started with my sister. She's nine years older than me so when I was a preschooler she was a teen. I wanted so badly to be like her and that desire had me sneaking into her closet during the day while she was at school so I could see all of her tiger beat posters. I also took the opportunity to listen to her cassette tapes.

Sweet hair!

This was the late 80's/early 90's so the biggest stand out was the group The New Kids On The Block. I was too young to see them as idols or sex symbols but I loved the music and dancing. Whenever I hear "The Right Stuff" to this day I have to break out the leg swings.

As I grew up I found my all time favorite (Like seriously, to the grave. To hell with the haters.)Hanson. If I had had the chance to see them in concert in their heyday I would've been the girl with tears streaming down her face ranting about how Taylor clearly made eye contact! I did get to see them once shortly after I graduated high school and it was magical to say the least.

Yeah, they grew up.

In high school it was Nsync who I was equally as obsessed with. I saw them three times in concert and owned every piece of Nsync related merchandise you can fathom. I sometimes get a little sick to my stomach when I think about how much money I might have right now if I hadn't spend it on all those dolls, posters, magazines, board games and CD singles. Isn't it sad that kids today will never know what it's like to buy a hard copy of a single!?

Damn, that still gets me!

As I went to college, I kept my love for boy bands on the down low so I could maintain some street cred. But I would still squeal with joy and crank up the radio any time "Bye Bye Bye" came on.

I reached adulthood and figured I would love boy bands with a kind of sweet nostalgic fondness. That was until I heard The Jonas Brothers. Let the love continue!! Just the other day I heard the new group One Direction and I couldn't help but fall for their sugary sound.

Be honest, if you were 15 you'd be dying right now.

It's always the same and that's why I'll always love it. A group of 3 to 5 (sometimes more, New Edition) guys in their teens or twenties (unless it's a reunion tour y'all!) with songs about falling in love, breaking up, dancing, who cares. Maybe they're brothers, maybe they are friends, maybe they were put together by a creepy record executive who smokes a cigar, we don't know. Maybe I love the harmony or the formula of it all. You know, there's the sweet one and the funny one and the bad boy....

For anyone who says boy bands are a joke, I want you to have a look at Ricky Martin's career or maybe Justin Timberlake's. Hell, I want you to take a real hard look at The Beatles and accept the fact that they are a boy band. They might be the greatest band of all time but they are also a part of the coolest club in town...the boy bands.

So let's hear it for some of my faves. Hanson, Nsync, NKOTB, Backstreet Boys, LFO, O-Town, Jonas Brothers, One Direction, New Edition, 98 Degrees, Bel Biv Devoe, The Monkees, The Jackson 5, The Beatles, The Bay City Rollers, Boyz II Men, Duran Duran, Menudo and because I'm all about the fiction 2ge+her.