(a DM from my friend Rainee. The autobiography or memoir still hasn't been written but maybe someday I can recycle the title for it.)
I was born in 1985, a year of multiple pop cultural touchstones: Back to the Future and The Breakfast Club, Whitney Houston's debut album, Super Mario Bros., and the births of my much more famous contemporaries Michael Phelps and Raven-Symone (with whom I share a birthday). That same year also marked the first time that the term boy band made its way into print media.
It only feels right, then, that the decade that followed could only be described as Peak Boy Band. From New Kids on the Block and Boyz II Men at the beginning to the peak of the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC at the end. I'm not saying that I feel this some sort of origin story for me and my fascination both with the concept of a boy band and the actual groups, but let's be real: it is. Why else would I be putting this out there?
Hi. I’m Candice, and I love boy bands.
I love them so much that I willingly read about my adoration of the biggest selling boy band of all time in front of a live audience and was okay with it being recorded for posterity. I love them so much that I paid for a month's trial of Stitcher to binge listen to the podcast Waiting for Impact, which is about the ill-fated group Sudden Impact, who appear for a moment in Boyz II Men's "Motownphilly". I tried hosting a podcast called New Girls on the Pod with my friend Kelly, who I met at a Backstreet Boys concert in 2013. I love boy bands so much that right now, I am drafting a romance novel about the budding relationship between the Cute One of a group and the photographer who spent her teen years absolutely enamoured with him.
I'm not an academic, so while this newsletter may dabble in analysis, it's strictly coming from the POV of someone with a BA in Broadcast Communications and isn't really using it, loves video essays and longform articles and essays, and just wants to hyperfocus on smaller aspects of a subgenre/subcategory of pop music. When doing publicity for her 2020 book Larger Than Life, Maria Sherman expressed surprise that there hadn't already been a book written about the impact of boy bands on society, so, in the grand tradition of no niche existing, she (and I) decided to take care of such a thing.
That's part of my mission statement, and so is the answer to the question of why boy bands?
It's been something I've wondered about myself, even when I was neck deep in my own fandom haze. I think it goes back to a foundational piece of my childhood. I grew up listening to the R&B that my mom loved, stuff from the 1960s through the '80s; and my favorites even as an elementary schooler were love songs from vocal harmony groups like The Temptations, The Commodores, and Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes. At that same time, in the early '90s, my older cousins who were more like brothers would play Boyz II Men's Cooleyhighharmony on their boombox while we rode around in the back of my mom's blue station wagon. The years went on and other groups (All 4 One, Dru Hill, among others) came on the scene. By the time that we got to 1997/98 when BSB was starting to pick up traction in the States, I was well on the way to appreciating any slow jams about true love or bangers that could bring you and your friends to the dance floor.
And, well, I've always appreciated cute guys who say sweet things. I'm a sucker for that, which is part of the allure and appeal of a boy band. I understood even as a teen that it was marketing, but that part—the coordination, the styling, the polish—that intrigued me almost as much as the men and the music. How did record labels do it, especially because by and large our society so rarely caters specifically to the interests and desires of young women?
So, welcome to To All the Boy Bands I Loved Before! Whether you're ARMY or a Directioner, a Blockhead or an OG Beatlemanic, there will (I hope) be something here that you'll enjoy or can learn from. The first official issue will be coming soon, and after that new ones will come every other week. Please feel free to tell your friends about me.