Boy Bands and the Performance of Pop Masculinity

Georgina Gregory

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138647312
• eBook ISBN: 9780429648458
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Boy Bands and the Performance of Pop Masculinity provides a history of the boy band from the Beatles to One Direction, placing the modern male pop group within the wider context of twentieth- and twenty-first-century popular music and culture. Offering the first extended look at pop masculinity as exhibited by boy bands, this volume links the evolving expressions of gender and sexuality in the boy band to wider economic and social changes that have resulted in new ways of representing what it is to be a man.

The popularity of boy bands is unquestionable, and their contributions to popular music are significant, yet they have attracted relatively little study. This book fills that gap with chapters exploring the challenges of defining the boy band phenomenon, its origins and history from the 1940s to the present, the role of management and marketing, the performance of gender and sexuality, and the nature of fandom and fan agency. Throughout, the author illuminates the ways in which identity politics influence the production and consumption of pop music and shows how the mainstream pop of boy bands can both reinforce and subvert gender and class hierarchies.

1

Definitions

What Constitutes a Boy Band?

Although the term is frequently invoked and used with some confidence, what exactly constitutes a boy band is contestable.¹ Do the groups represent a distinct genre of popular music replete with recognizable conventions and codes, or is their existence defined by and dependent on a set of inconsistently applied discourses? We might categorize certain groups as being boy bands without considering why other seemingly similar ensembles are labelled differently.² Opinions clearly differ, in that one person’s boy band might well be deemed another’s pop/rock or R&B ensemble – so, depending on who is defining them, at different times the Beatles, the Jackson 5, the Bay City Rollers, the Four Tops, NKOTB, Take That, Bros, Hanson and Busted could all fit the descriptor (Benjamin et al., 2015). The aforementioned groups clearly differ in terms of the genres they represent and in the skillsets of their respective members.³ Hence, before any meaningful discussion can take place, the defining terms need some further interrogation. This exercise not only attempts to explain why certain groups are categorized as boy bands, it also provides some insights as to why the label influences critical reception of the artists concerned.

Descriptors play an important function in the management of music consumption and critique by presenting a useful shortcut to style, presentation and content. Within this seemingly benign etymological context there are none of the negative connotations implied in the consolidation of hierarchies of taste. Here addition of ‘boy’ to the word ‘band’ turns the prefix into a tool, activating discursive ammunition to enforce the superiority of one type of music over another. In this way, agents, subjects, producers and consumers are all positioned and the discourses function as a conduit through which power is exercised. In John Shepherd’s words: “there are discourses constructed around concrete musical practices” and “those discourses group such practices into categories that render the music amenable to various forms of social, political and economic control” (Shepherd, 1993: 49). By way of illustration, the following reflections illustrate how Billboard magazine positions the groups.

Boy bands make safe music aimed at young, naive girls, and adults often assume that this music is not worth critical analysis. Teens love them, and most other people dismiss them. If there ever was a type of formulaic music, these boys – often cobbled together in a perfect-people factory, their high cheekbones and chiselled jawlines at pristine ratios – would be the ones making it.

(Sherman, 2015)

In this context, the boy band becomes a convenient receptacle for disparaging judgements on everything from the moribund character of mass culture to the demise of true musicianship. Conjuring up images of the talentless alumni of reality television shows, the label invokes well-worn tropes defining mainstream pop as disposable, mass-produced trash. In the process, binaries of ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy’, ‘authentic’ versus ‘inauthentic’ music are activated, as Mark Duffett explains.

Recent critical commentaries suggest that four discourses – youth, exploitation, gender, and fandom – interlock to determine how writers discuss the [boy band] genre. Collectively their result is a relative stasis in critical commentary that helps to allay wider anxieties about the idea that, in a capitalist society, any of us can actively and pleasurably engage with a musical genre led by its own marketing.

(Duffett, 2012: 185)

Dictionary Definitions

If we turn to dictionary definitions to unravel the nuances of meaning, they are a helpful point of departure, even if only to highlight a lack of consensus in interpretations of the constituent terms ‘boy’ and ‘band’. For example, Collins English Dictionary is unhelpfully vague in that its definition of “an all-male vocal pop group created to appeal to a young audience” (Thomas, 2016) would fit any number of music groups from the 1950s to the present day. The lack of precision means that critically acclaimed auteurs like Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, the Four Seasons and the Beach Boys could be placed alongside abject ensembles such as Westlife, Bros or Jedward.⁴ The catch-all descriptor is less than helpful partly because it rests on the assumption there is agreement as to what constitutes ‘pop’ music in the first place. Here the writer illustrates the potential pitfalls in attempting to marshal cultural texts into specific categories, particularly when that means invoking notions of a universally shared definition. Rick Altman elaborates:

Because genres are taken to be ‘out there’, existing independently of observers, genre theorists have generally sought to describe and define what they believe to be already existing genres rather than create their own interpretative categories, however applicable or useful.

(Altman, 1999: 11)

Pop itself is regularly divided discursively into ‘mainstream’ and more highly regarded versions of the genre, a distinction hinted at in Merriam Webster Dictionary, which offers the caveat of a gendered fan base by proposing a boy band is, “a small ensemble of males in their teens or twenties who play pop songs geared especially to a young female audience” (Merriam Webster, 2018). As in other areas of culture, patterns of consumption are seen to “depend on and reproduce particular gender identities, entrench [and] reconfigure traditional gender categories” (Griffin, 2015, 71). By assigning the music to this particular audience, we are guided towards the conclusion that the groups belong in the mainstream solely because teen girls enjoy them.

Aligning boy bands to the feminine sphere also supports longstanding debates on the debased nature of female consumption. Following Rousseau’s pronouncement that, “girls love everything visual, mirrors, jewels, cloth”, female consumerism is generally presented as frivolous or degraded (Jones, 1996: 28). From the nineteenth century onwards, cultural anxieties concerning the spread of unhealthy forms of consumerism portrayed women as the primary culprits. Ignoring male fans or older adult females reinforces the view that boy bands are only enjoyed by teen girls, thereby tapping into a “high/low hierarchy … based around notions of the fickleness, superficiality, and aesthetic bankruptcy of the material forms that girls’ desires take in popular culture” (Wald, 2002: 1).

The Cambridge Dictionary implies that the artists concerned do not play instruments, referring to the archetypal boy band as “a pop music group made up of young men who sing and dance” (Cambridge Dictionary, 2018) – a perception endorsed by Jennifer Moos (2013) who states that “band members usually [do] not play any musical instruments”. This commonly held view ignores the fact that some of the artists are capable musicians who, for whatever reason, do not display their technical prowess on stage or in the studio.⁵ Furthermore an impartial observer might point out that singing in harmony while dancing in unison somewhat precludes the additional task of playing a musical instrument.⁶ Suggesting that the groups only sing and dance invokes a failure to master external musical instruments, thereby implying a lack of serious musicianship.⁷ The deficit is used as ammunition in Facebook hate pages targeting boy bands, where one ‘anti-fan’ describes the groups as “over-rated, pointless, and talentless manufactured young, insincere, probably gay men” (Duffett, 2012: 186).

Tara Brabazon is the only scholar to flag up choral singing as a central characteristic, referring to the groups as “young men singing in harmony” (Brabazon, 2011: 218).⁸ She is right to draw attention to the practice because choral singing remains quite an important defining element in the presentation of the groups. The close harmonizing of the Beatles, for example, contrasted sharply with the more guttural blues styling of fellow artists such as the Rolling Stones, Them and the Animals – leading to a distinction in pop- versus rock-oriented groups towards the end of the 1960s. Most observers would have no difficulty in seeing the Beatles as a prototype for bands like Take That and One Direction, but it is hard to imagine the Rolling Stones fulfilling the label’s prerequisites.

It could also be argued that dancing distinguishes pop vocal bands from peers, as quite a few classic examples from the postwar era were major exponents. Among others, the Osmonds, Take That, East 17, the Backstreet Boys, Boyzone and the Jackson 5 incorporated dance routines into their acts. Furthermore, only a limited number of rock musicians are recognized as dancers, even though dancing does constitutes an embodied form of musicianship.⁹ Mick Jagger is an acclaimed exponent, although few of his peers have mastered the skill or dare to submit themselves to a similar degree of onstage objectification. In the words of one seasoned jazz player: “There is a strange phenomenon in the world of musical arts, and that is the mysterious inability for musicians to move their bodies in a graceful manner in response to music” (Eve, 2014). However, the authentication of jazz or rock does not depend upon dancefloor capabilities, therefore dancing is dismissed as irrelevant in value judgements and seldom discussed in the scholarly literature on popular music.

The discourses of authenticity are raised by Brabazon’s contention that “artifice is part of the [boy band] project” (Brabazon, 2011: 218), a position echoed by Moos who suggests the groups are “artificially made” and “put together in highly elaborated selection processes” (Moos, 2014). Both writers invoke the common critique that instead of evolving organically they are assembled by businessmen for purely commercial purposes. The idea that art and commerce cannot co-exist was a pillar of modernist thinking, used in popular music circles to elevate uncommercial texts and practices from the mass-produced ‘dross’. Assembling pop groups for the sole purpose of generating profit is a practice that can be traced back to the formation of the Monkees in the mid-1960s, but from the 1990s the openness of the casting process and increasingly aggressive marketing led to use of the term ‘boy band’.

Perceptions of inherent inferiority arising from the casting process should be challenged. Alumni of ‘constructed’ groups frequently go on to exhibit authentic talent, even achieving critical acclaim – the post-boy band careers of Justin Timberlake and Robbie Williams illustrate this. In addition to winning a coveted Grammy, Timberlake has received Emmy Awards for his music and television performances, as well as an Academy Award nomination. During his solo career Robbie Williams has sold over 75 million records so far, an achievement that places him among the top-selling artists of all time (Beech, 2016). He has also received more Brit and ECHO awards than any other artist, in addition to his Ivor Novello and BAMBI awards. These collective achievements indicate that mainstream pop idols may possess significant levels of authentic talent yet it is only acknowledged when they work in an autonomous capacity.

Youth and Good Looks

The shallow lure of the visual is not used to judge the merits of authentic auteurs; however, journalist Penny Truong describes boy bands as, “composed of young men, marketed based on their looks, explicitly for young women – tweens – in particular” (Truong, 2012). Inevitably aesthetic judgements are going to be subjective, but the definition clearly affirms the centrality of good looks within the culture surrounding pop. Indeed it could be argued that physical attractiveness helps to differentiate pop groups from their rock peers, many of whom are less than handsome while others are frankly ugly.¹⁰ It is not a prerequisite for classic rock frontmen to be good-looking, even though a few are. The genre is much more tolerant than pop of imperfections, accepting individuals who can be deemed rugged, craggy or wasted. The appearance of co-musicians is also deemed relatively unimportant as their primary role is to support the acknowledged leader musically. Furthermore, while rock singers need to be charismatic, they do not necessarily need to wear fashionable clothing – on the contrary they may wilfully reject such signifiers or any obvious collusion with image consultants. In pop, physical appearance and fashion consciousness have more currency and a premium is placed on looking good and being fashionable. For these reasons “When performing live on stage and in their music videos” choreography is accompanied by “frequent changes of clothing” (Moos, 2014: 229). Presenting the boys as models rather than musicians emphasizes their function as fashion brand ambassadors, thereby diminishing claims to musicianship.

The emphasis on youth structures media representations of the bands, presumably because the average age of new recruits is low and probably younger than recruits in other genres. The results of a study (Hickey, 2014) show that in 32 boy bands of the 1990s the median age of 132 band members at the point of recruitment was 19. Some of the groups took on children as young as seven as recruits.¹¹ In a society where youth signifies a lack of access to resources, and where teenagers “have little real economic or political power” (Milner, 2015: 4) the fact that they are barely out of school automatically defines the artists as relatively powerless. Hence, they may...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Definitions: What Constitutes a Boy Band?
• 2 From Barbershop to Mainstream Pop
• 3 Constructing the Product
• 4 Marketing and Promotion
• 5 Weapons of Mass Seduction: Performing Pop Masculinity
• 6 Fandom, Texts and Practices
• 7 Breaking Up, Making Up and Moving On
• Bibliography
• Index