BYE BYE BYE Boybands
I was in a newsroom when I discovered BTS. I was shadowing a journalist – a serious journalist – who asked me a question – a serious question: “Are you an ARMY?”
“…what?” I whispered back. Given my location, I was suddenly conscious that the following information might not be privy to everyone.
“A BTS fan?” Confusion remained very stuck to my face – which, I suppose, answered her. “Honey,” she glowed, “let me change your world.”
And she did. Although I would not consider myself an ARMY, there is something primally magnetic about the Korean band’s flare; the ear-worm melodies, brotherly banter, finely-crafted aesthetics and exquisite choreography – their stage presence is so full and electric that I still struggle to hold back a guilty girlish ‘humhmmm.’
But this is an expected symptom of boyband fanaticism. Since the 60s, when Beatlemania infected the world with sold-out stadiums and screaming young girls, we have put boybands on a particularly high pedestal – actually more like a poster-painted shrine covered in hand-drawn hearts. This phenomenon went on to peak the 80s, 90s, and 2000s with music charts constantly being replenished by boyband hits. New Kids on the Bock, Take That, Westlife, Backstreet Boys, Boys II Men, New Edition are only mentions of Billboard’s top favourites and many of these songs are staples unconsciously coded into our music library.
“You are… my fire…” Dear reader, I’m sure you know the rest.
These OGs bled into 5 Seconds of Summer, the Jonas Brothers, and of course One Direction. Despite decades of the genre, the song messages have remained the same: love. Love sucks. Love is great. Love is a pain in the ass.
Why? Why is society so spellbound by groups of harmonising mainstream youngsters who only produce updated versions of the same damn music? To answer the question (and to my misfortune), I have to share a rather embarrassing anecdote. You see, my mother raised me on cassettes of Westlife, Backstreet Boys, Michael Learns to Rock and Il Divo. By 10, I knew the lyrics to Coast to Coast without having any idea of who I singing along to. In my defence, “My Love” is one of the few songs I’ve ever heard that sounds like freedom. Anyway my affinities for these groups were purely based on the music they produced. I had no posters, no albums covers, I honestly didn’t even know the names of these bands.
So while I was exploring my love at first sound, I was also having real-life boy trouble. There was this brunette boy in my second-grade class who had been sending me notes about my “coot pig tales” and how he hoped he could sit with me at recess. The issue was, his best friend was a bit of a bully and didn’t like that we were spending time together.
Around the same time, the primary school announced it would be holding a talent competition. Both my best friend and I were eager to compete and sailed right through to the finals with a high-energy dance routine. We spent hours and hours choreographing and perfecting each kick, kick, kick-ball-change, switch. In matching sparkly black and gold outfits, we rock ‘n rolled to Celine Dion’s cover of “I Drove All Night” and blew the audience away. It was adorable.
Who did we compete against? My brunette crush. Who won? He did, with a lip-sync routine to “I Lay My Love on You.” It was a routine very similar to Westlife’s music video: a couple of smoulders here and there, awkward hand gestures considered to be dancing and arbitrary walkabouts across an ill-placed stage. But the audience loved him! Because who doesn’t want to see a young boy maturely express his heart’s desires through romantic love songs! The saddest part to this pre-pubescent drama? After seeing him perform, my infatuation for him trebled – only because I knew the words to his song.
By exploiting the habits of the female gaze, we objectify the youthfulness of male singers and encourage the performance of a hyper-masculinity. Between the ages of 10 and 13, girls are looking for an accessible outlet to make sense of emotional desires, and label reps are very aware of this. We can see this in how women are represented in music videos between the 90s and 2000s. Whether she is the “It” girl in the music video or an extra, the feminine role is passive, observing, adoring of her male lover. While the masculine role, on the other hand, has only to decide how he takes control of the relationship – even if he is only 12.
This mania is what has fuelled the exploitation of the boyband image. The international hype over lean, beautiful lads grooms young boys into taking control of their sexuality, teaching them that inner fulfilment and purpose is found only when they’re drowning in girl-drama.
This is why K-pop (and bands like BTS) are pioneering the future of pop music. The next time you’re flicking through YouTube, pull up BTS’ “MIC Drop (Steve Aoki Remix)”, and then – straight after – *NSYNC’s “POP.” Comparably, the songs deal with each band’s respective success, with similar “haters gonna hate” undertones. Yet, the stark difference is that *NSYNC’s version contains women draping their hands down each member’s body as though success is synonymous with the multitudes of women pining after them. While in “MIC Drop” there are no women at all. In fact, I am yet to see a female in any of BTS’s videos used as an emblem of devoted love. The sensational seven’s soft masculine aesthetic problematises the conquering macho man narrative. In fact, it was only when K-pop really routed itself in the music scene that literature became critical of the consequences of boyband heteronormative masculinity. We have started to realise how this affect forced girl groups to perform their own sexuality to obtain half an ounce of their counterparts’ success, and particularly how women have been under-represented in both the recording booth and behind the sound board because of their gender.
BTS have been nominated for the pop duo/group performance award at this year’s Grammy’s. The acknowledgement of their talent by the Recording Academy is long-overdue. However, it does show that even fans are no longer abiding by stereotypical boyband rhetoric, and that we want to see the music industry take an active role in socio-political progress. Personally, even though I still drop everything and grab an air mic when “I Want It That Way” starts playing, I’m grateful that the boyband supernovas of the late 20th century have dissipated into solo stars. It means space for new playlists from a reinvented boyband generation of original beats, fresh harmonies and heart-throbbing style. My inner ten-year-old self awaits eagerly for BTS’s future projects, to see how they will continue to challenge the Recording Academy, and for more fiery music videos, to watch them “light. it. up. like dynamite – Whoa-ooh.”
Written by Dan Champ
In March, I moved to London with the intention of kicking off a career in journalism; however Covid happened. Now I am an Online English teacher who travels vicariously through my students.