Boy Band - Television Tropes & Idioms

The Backstreet Boys

You thought that boy bands were dead and gone
But just like cancer and AIDs we're still going strong
Ten million tween girls and old perverts can't be wrong!

— The Key of Awesome, a One Direction parody

A very specific kind of five-man vocal group. Typically, you're in a Boy Band if you began recording while still in your teens; if you and your bandmates are all extremely pretty; if few, if any of you, play instruments; if your boss is a large and often intimidating man; if you can't get any respect from the Serious Music Critics; if you have a hard time crossing over to an adult audience; and especially if the girls can't get enough of you. Can generate a Periphery Hatedom when a boy band is popular enough.

You definitely were in a Boy Band if, years and years after the fact, your fandom looks back on your early albums as an embarrassing phase, Guilty Pleasure, So Bad, It's Good, or (if it's old enough) Camp.

Some of the tropes and musical stylings typical to Boy Bands started with The Beatles, The Monkees, The Jackson Five, and several other groups of the era. Technically they could be considered Boy Bands as well, but when most people hear "Boy Band" they tend to think of the late-80's - late-90's bands listed below. The term is generally reserved for groups which are assembled by a record company or other entity, whereas most bands form organically (although there are exceptions, in both directions).

At least one wag has suggested that the real original Boy Band was Alvin and the Chipmunks, both for the popularity among pre-teens and the squeaky music sound of both the real and cartoon bands.

Most Boy Bands follow a particular Five-Man Band archetype, established by New Edition and New Kids on the Block, that differs from the traditional one used on this wiki. Whether or not they can actually sing matters little — that's what Auto Tune is for. It is as follows:

One Direction

The Heartthrob / Sweet One: The unofficial Face of the Band, and the one who was put there to draw the Squee of millions of adoring teenage girls (at least, the most Squee). Most likely a former model. Is most likely to appear shirtless on the posters and in photo shoots. He is also the one most likely to have a successful solo career once the group disbands. If the band gets a movie, count on him to be the protagonist.
The Bad Boy / Rebel: The one with a rougher edge to him. He's the one wearing the black shirt and jeans or leather jacket in those videos where they're not all wearing matching clothes. If he's really edgy, he may also have a tattoo. Put in to cater to those girls who want bad boys.
The Cute One: A second heartthrob. Less sexually threatening than the Sweet One, and often meant as a foil to the Bad Boy.
The Older Brother: A cool, reassuring figure that the girls can relate to.
The Shy One: Nerdier than the rest of the band. He's cast because Nerds Are Sexy. May come off as wondering what the hell he's doing in the band in the first place.

In the examples below, you'll notice very few black R&B groups are included such as Jodeci or Blackstreet^note, despite having similar appeal. This is because they generally don't fit the mold of a boy band: they're more likely to form among themselves, less likely to follow the Five Man Band archetype as explained above, and are more likely to have rougher edges (Parental Advisory stickers are not unheard of), making them slightly more appealing to males.

Although they are not very famous outside Asia, Japan has been creating boy bands since The Seventies. The most notable boy band factory is Johnny's Jimusho, which currently manages about fifteen boy bands. Today Johnny's bands dominate the charts, with SMAP and Arashi topping pretty much constantly. Dramas that famous boyband members star in pretty much always do well, and you will see members of popular boybands on TV variety shows quite a lot. The boyband machine is so well-oiled in Japan that many of the tropes applied in the West don't function - boybands have large adult followings (usually middle-aged women) and men seem to be able to handle it, if not love it - you WILL sing A-RA-SHI many times in karaoke in mixed company, just because everybody knows it.

Lately, Korea has been getting on the action too with bands like DBSK, 2PM, SHI Nee, B 2 ST, U-KISS, Super Junior, etc.

Boy bands are a major source of Real Person Fic (a subgenre called bandslash), where you basically have one of two types: Female OC woos band member, or the band members woo each other. In Japan the majority of RPF Doujinshi are bandslash.

Most boy bands tend to last around five years before members are released from their contracts (or they simply expire) because something else has come along. Depending on the success of their subsequent individual projects, many re-form 15-30 years after their heyday to cash in on their now-nostalgic original fandom - this phase can last decades (The Beach Boys still play to sellout crowds of mostly middle-aged fans). Expect at least one Replacement Goldfish for a member who's become a sucessful solo artist/died young/has a non-entertainment career they don't want to walk away from for the time necessary to record an album and go on tour.

The Girl Group is the Distaff Counterpart.

Some Boy Bands of Note (in rough chronological order)

The Monkees: The Ur Example. Better than they had to be, but still the result of a calculated marketing effort aimed squarely at Beatles fans' younger siblings. They do get credit for rebelling against their puppetmasters and achieving a degree of creative autonomy typically not seen in the boy bands of today.
New Edition: Remembered mostly nowadays for being Bobby Brown's old band, but they established the typical R&B-lite musical style used by boy bands ever since. They were all teenagers, all cute and wholesome (despite being from gritty Roxbury, MA), and had the all-important Large Intimidating Boss.
Menudo: Best known nowadays to non-Latin people as "Ricky Martin's Old Band" (it was much more popular in Latin America). Notable because they combined this with a rotating cast; when you turned sixteen, grew facial hair, or underwent a voice change, you were fired.
New Kids on the Block.
Hikaru Genji was the biggest boyband managed by Johnny's from the mid eighties to mid nineties, and still have a bit of a retro fandom inside Japan.
Take That: Not the trope, but Robbie Williams' old band.
East 17 were marketed as "The Rolling Stones to Take That's The Beatles", with a tougher sound influenced by hip-hop. However, they were outlasted by Take That and are best known today for their biggest hit (and first ballad) "Stay Another Day".
Boyz II Men: Took NKOTB's place in the early-to-mid 90's, but had a more traditional R&B sound. Directly influenced many of the bands listed below.
Color Me Badd: Similar to the aforementioned Take That/East 17 example, this group was more or less the "edgier" alternative to Boyz II Men. While they were less successful, they performed a similar-sounding New Jack Swing stlye and incorporating some rapped interludes.
The Backstreet Boys: Notable for being the first of the 90's Boy Bands to throw off previously mentioned large, intimidating boss.
N Sync: Stood in the shadow of Backstreet Boys during the former's height of popularity, although they had one #1 Billboard single with "It's Gonna Be Me". Ironically, Justin Timberlake's solo career has been more popular and critically loved than anything BSB or N Sync ever did.
Boyzone: Irish boy band who took over from Take That after their split and were hugely successful in the UK. Stephen Gately of the group was the first member of a really successful boy band to come out as gay.
Westlife: Irish group founded by the same manager as Boyzone, Louis Walsh. Also co-managed by Simon Cowell. Took over from Boyzone as top UK boy band as they started to decline. Credited by non-fans with helping to end the 1990s UK boy band boom by being so sentimental and lacking in musical or lyrical edge or sexuality that they seemed to be designed more for the over-sixty demographic than the under-sixteen.
5ive: Another late 90s boy band, but British. Known for being slightly edgier than a standard boy band with funk, rap and rock influences in their music.
98 Degrees: Notable for having four members rather than the more typical five, for being Nick Lachey's old band, and for being discovered by their label instead of assembled by it. They originally had a pure R&B sound before Executive Meddling repurposed them as a boy band.
SMAP is the Japanese boyband that pretty much owns Japan. There was a time when Kimura Takuya, the lead singer, was said to be wanted by every woman in Japan. Just don't call them over the hill now.
Blue: early 2000s British boy band with stronger than usual R&B influences and a multi-racial line-up. Particularly notorious for member Lee Ryan's initial reaction to a journalist when asked about 9/11 ("Who gives a fuck about New York when elephants are being killed?").
This was tried a few times even in Country Music:
- South 65 made it to two albums but never had a hit. Lance Leslie later joined the Red Dirt band Rio Grand, but soon left it.
- Marshall Dyllon broke up after one album, although Jessie Littleton later recorded two solo albums as Gran Bel Fisher.
- Rascal Flatts was more successful in the "country boy band" motif: their debut album had them singing light, breezy up-tempos that were obviously influenced by the boy band sound. From the second album onward, two of the members began playing instruments (lead singer Gary LeVox doesn't play anything) and abandoning their boy band influences for more mainstream country-pop.
McFly (named after the character from Back to the Future), an early 2000 band, fitted the mould. They were considered a "sister"-group to the band Busted that, while a boy band, only had three members (one member was the older brother, the shy one and the cute one combined).
LFO - A Power Trio, though they weren't even half as popular as 98 Degrees. However, they did get the all-important Joey McIntyre Elder Boy Band Statesman Seal of Approval; he had them as openers for some of his solo shows. (LFO supposedly stands for "Lyte Funky Ones".)
BBMak was a British Power Trio that broke a few of the Boy Band rules: Besides the afformentioned three members every single one was a classically trained musician, none of them danced, and besides playing all of their own music (and writing a good deal themselves) they often incorporated unlikely instruments such as Bagpipes, Recorders/Tin Whistles and even a Hurdy Gurdy.
O-Town might be seen as the beginning of the end of the U.S. Boy Band craze. While they did have a few hit songs to their name, they were put together on the reality show Making The Band, which shined a light on all the criticism of Boy Bands, especially the cry of being "generic." It was hard to argue that they were formulaic since you literally saw the group being put together by a group of record executives.
Dong Bang Shin Ki is a Korean boyband that was vastly popular in Asia. They're especially popular in Japan, and have recorded four albums in Japanese. They even did one of the openings for One Piece! Recently they split up over money and contract issues, though three of the members that split off from their parent company are still going strong.
The World Apart◊.
The 3 T◊ (Michael Jackson's nephews)
Arashi is what Johhny's Entertainment came up with when they realized SMAP would one day grow old, and are generally positioned at number 2 on the charts after SMAP. They are everywhere in Japan and cannot be avoided.
The Jonas Brothers: Notable for possibly having two TV shows soon (one's a reality show, another is a Disney Channel show). Notable also for making the fans of the above-listed Boy Bands feel very old. (Name a Jonas Brother. We'll wait.)
- Leave it to The Onion to take this one on.
- While it's pretty clear why some people would classify them as a boy band, they don't really fit the above criteria considering they are brothers (not formed by a label) and play several instruments, plus they are more like a boy-band-ish version of a typical pop rock band anyway.
Celtic Thunder is essentially Public Television's answer to the Boy Band — too bad they're about a decade too late. Basically, they took five incredibly attractive Irish guys who could sing and range in age from about 15 to 40 in order to attract as many women as possible. Though not as well-known or well-merchandised as some of the examples above, they have a big international following.
Rockapella was a college a capella group that was signed on to a PBS game show in order to cash in on the popularity f boys bands. The show was called Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego.
Big Time Rush: Known as a current day version of the Monkees and Sony Music and Nickelodeon's answer to the Jonas Brothers (and later, to Allstar Weekend). They are often credited for reviving the boy band for The New Tens and for making One Direction possible, for better and for worse.
SHI Nee is a Korean band that debuted in 2008, sliding into the R&B/pop genre. They've started something of a fashion trend with their style of tight pants, boots, and colourful jackets.
Super Junior, from Korea, is known for having a grand total of fifteen members (it depends on whether you ask the purists or those who are willing to accept the Chinese sub-members). Since debuting in 2005, they have broken records and pioneered a unit system for K-pop groups, in which members of the band were put together in smaller sub-groups catering to different fanbases.
Mindless Behavior is a boy band. Fairly different from most on the list, in that they are all black, sing R&B / Hip Hop, and there's only 4 of them. They started out opening for acts like Janet Jackson before releasing "Mrs. Right" in 2011.
One Direction, The current sensation nowadays. They are the newest boy band to come out of England. They were 5 separate boys auditioning for The X Factor until Simon Cowell put them together in a band. Though they finished third, they now have a very successful album that, when it debuted in the States, went straight to #1 (they were the first British band to ever have their first album debut at number 1 in the US) and massive amounts of fangirls on both sides of The Pond. Their popularity is comparable to, likely greater than, that of Justin Bieber.
Todd in the Shadows: See? They're talking about you! You have "things"! That's what they love about you: your "things." But a close second is your attributes.
British-Irish group The Wanted have been around for the few years; after initial success in their native UK, they're starting to enjoy Stateside success as well, thanks in part to their hit "Glad You Came" and new management in the form of Scooter Braun. Despite (or perhaps because of) marketing to a generally older audience, they are often overshadowed by the X Factor powered One Direction (In the UK, they're very successful, but in the US, they have virtually no fanbase to support them.)
JLS, from England; like One Direction, they rose to popularity after their season of The X Factor. Much like 98 Degrees, though, they formed independently and initially auditioned for X Factor together. They never made any impact in the United States.
Triple 8, described as "Britain's answer to N*Sync" though they formed in 2003 when the Boy Band craze was fading away. They had two successful singles "Knockout" and "Give Me A Reason" before abruptly parting ways with the label and leaving their album unreleased. Member, Iain James, however, would become a major British songwriter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_James who would write Fantastic UK number 1 songs "Read All About It" by Professor Green featuring Emeli Sande and "Wings" by heroic Girl Group Little Mix, and... erm, Azerbijani Eurovision winner Running Scared by Ell and Nikki? Yes he write all those!
D☆DATE, a Japanese Boy Band formed from members of the D-Boys acting troupe, is quite possibly the only place where you can find a Kamen Rider and an Ultraman singing with a Super Sentai villain. (And a couple of other guys.)

Boy Band Parodies

The South Park gang form the band FingerBang in the episode "Something You Can Do With Your Finger". Lampshades the Five-Man Band aspect and archetypes.
Party Posse featured the well-known heart-throbs Bart Simpson, Millhouse Van Houten, Nelson Muntz, and Ralph Wiggum.
- And N Sync appeared in a cameo to parody themselves.
  - And somehow gained The Matrix powers.
Hilariously mocked by blink-182 in the video for "All The Small Things". It's well worth noting that many established Boy Band fans missed the point entirely. The guys were vocally alarmed to see a surge in attendance by squealing teenaged girls at their concerts. They didn't mind, of course. They just hoped the fangirls were at least aware that they were also responsible for songs like this (Not Safe for Work).
MTV's Made-for-TV Movie 2ge+ her was an Affectionate Parody of Boy Bands and their formation. It even spawned several TRL-popular singles. A TV series based on the movie soon followed, as well as other singles. Sadly, it was quickly canceled after the death of one of the core members, which caused many a "Funny Aneurysm" Moment as his disease was written into the story — as a gag.
Unsurprisingly, Professional Wrestling got in on the act. WCW faction Three Count, consisting of Shannon Moore, Shane Helms and Evan Karagias, were a parody boy band. They even had a variation of the large, intimidating boss in enforcer/#1 fan Tank Abbot.
Japanese Professional Wrestling promotion Toryumon X tried this. They cast Taiji Ishimori as a pop idol and identical twin brothers Shu and Kei Sato as his backup singers. Then they pushed the trio as the top faces of the promotion, even going so far as to have them actually release an album. Fans didn't take to them.
- The funny part? Their rivals were "Los Salseros Japoneses" — a salsa band. And they DID become popular, with the Salseros gimmick outlasting the promotion itself.
The Replacements had Todd, Sheldon and the rest of the Boy's Choir become "Boy's Rock" when he replaced his choirmaster with a Large Intimidiating Boss in an episode fairly similar to the South Park and The Simpsons examples.
Se�or Senior Snr. and Se�or Senior Jnr. kidnapped a group like this in Kim Possible. They'd outlived their popularity (which lasted about a week) until the kidnapping put them back on top.
Totally Spies! had an episode where a washed up boy band kidnapped a "hip" boy band and stole their faces.
Angel Moxie has one uses as part of Candi Shugari's (a powerful demon who mixes cute with evil) plot to eliminate Alex, Riley and Tristan.
David Letterman had a parody of boy bands on with the fictitious act Fresh Step.
Conan O'Brien also had a fake parody band, Dudez-A-Plenti.
The Middleman has an episode in which a boy band turns out to consist of aliens trying to get back to their home galaxy. The Middleman has apparently read this page, because he identifies all of them by role.
The musical Altar Boyz! is an Affectionate Parody of boy bands and Christian Rock.
Early in Schlock Mercenary, Tagon's Toughs are hired to guard the "New Sync Boys" — who turn out to be the holographic creation of a single AI owned by the record company, who ends up "defecting" to the mercenary company. "Ennesby" is still a main cast member.
The Josie and the Pussycats movie featured a boy band called Dujour. To make fun of the effeminate nature of many boy bands, their hit single was called "Backdoor Lover". When they find out that their record label is putting Subliminal Advertising into their music, their manager (who isn't a big burly dude, but is instead an evil Alan Cumming) tries to have them killed by causing their plane to crash. They survive, having managed to safely land the plane on their own... only to find that they had landed in the parking lot of an arena hosting a Metallica concert.
Kamen Rider Den-O created one out of the series People in Rubber Suits to sing the Do It Yourself Theme Tune. No, seriously.
Grand Theft Auto III and its prequel, Grand Theft Auto Liberty City Stories feature fictional boy bands on the Lips 106 radio station with hilarious names.
In (of all things) Arthur, boy band Binky is not real... sort of. In concerts, holograms are used in concerts, somehow, without anyone noticing at all. Which kind of begs the question — who does the singing? (Though, by the sound of the only example of their music in the show, which consists of "wheeowheoowheeo" repeated over and over, it could be Yoko Ono.)
- One word: Vocaloid
Mitch Benn's Boy Band song: Twenty minutes have gone by/since I met these other guys/and we've already had a hit/and you're listening to it/and I'm sure you think it sh-/ould be number one already
Br�tal Legend starts off with Eddie Riggs as a roadie for Kabbage Boy, a Second Wave of American Tween Melodic Rap Metalcore band that sounds like Linkin Park mixed with The Jonas Brothers. Needless to say, Eddie is far from pleased with this gig.
"I can fix anything. Except THAT."
Xbox snowboard game Amped 3 had an Excuse Plot that included one snowboarder joining a French-themed boy band called Mengae a Brahs. Their hit, Bling 4 U, has a Subliminal Seduction twist.
Internet parodist David Lehre's fictitious boy band Heat Street, featuring songs such as "Girl, Touch My Weiner."
Sons of Provo, which takes the Boy Band idea(using just three, instead) and mixes it with the most humorously ironic thing possible: the Latter-Day Saint lifestyle. "Evercleen", as they called themselves, managed to lampoon several things in both worlds. Well worth seeing, if only for the strange fascination of the idea of an LDS "boy band"—or any other religious-pop act.
- Kinda like the Jonas Brothers?
The crew of The Chaser's War On Everything dressed up as a parody of boy band and did a live song. The song started out normally with dancing and ~~singing~~ lipsyncing at a nice and steady pace. Then the music skips on a few words and starts to rewind and start over, then proceeding to speed up and slow down randomly. Forcing the "boy band" to improvise quickly and beautifully.
The Korean Drama You Are Beautiful, while not a parody, is basically about a made-up boyband.
The Midnight Beast, the heavily Auto Tuned UK comedy Power Trio, are in their own words "Just Another Boy Band"
Amongst their mockery of pop culture in the late 90's and early 2000's, Jack In The Box had a fake boy band called "The Meaty Cheesy Boys" sing the praises of their Ultimate Cheeseburger. If you're curious (and goodness knows, why wouldn't you be), you can find the OFFICIAL SITE!!! here.
In the Celebrity Manhunt episode of TDA/TDWT, Justin, Trent, Cody, and Harold make up a boy-band called "The Drama Brothers". Of course, a lot of tropes are played, such as the band splitting in that same episode. The boys also reunited in the first TDWT Aftermath, under the suggestion of Blaineley.
In Hot Chip's video for "I Feel Better", directed by Peter Serafinowicz, a bunch of Uncanny Valley prettyboys called Kyng, Mar'Vaine, Octavian and Popeye are attacked by a floating man with the Fan Nickname "Cancer Jesus", as well as a Scary Black Man with Eye Beams.
In Jon Lajoie's "Pop Song" he sort of parodies this (though it's mostly a parody of Justin Bieber).
An episode of King of the Hill has Bobby becoming a fan of a boy band, which Hank supports after hearing their supposedly clean, Christian act. Then he accompanies Bobby to a concert and is horrified to discover it's actually Lyrical Dissonance as their act is highly sexualized.
The American Dad episode "Can I Be Frank (With You)" thoroughly explores this through a twelve-person boyband named Boys-12; specifically, they show how similar they can be through covering every imaginable boyband characteristic:
B1: "Fat boy!"; B2: "Bad boy!"; B3: "Japanese!"; B4: "My sister died."; B5: "I'm sweet!"; B6: "I can sing!"; B7 "Gorgeous!"; B8: "I'm B8, I've got the penis of a man!"; B9: "My parents got divorced."; B10: "Hypoglycemic!"; B11: "I'm grumpy."; B12: "I'm sleepy!"
Law & Order: UK: DS Brooks' corrupt ex-partner cites the numerous favors that he did to cover him during his drinking days, then blasts him for "letting your boy-band partner come after me", (referring to DS Matt Devlin), apparently feeling that all this should have warranted Brooks turning a blind eye to his involvement in criminal activities.
Less a parody, more an affectionate homage: Season 3 of Glee saw a classic boyband routine performed in the choir room. Interestingly, the sequence involved some revision of the typical boyband tropes; though the lineup included a Heartthrob (Sam), a Bad Boy (Puck), an Older Brother (Mike), a Cute One (Kurt) and a Shy One (Artie), the leader of the group was definitely Artie - partly because the song was a step in his courtship of Sugar Motta, and partly as a reference to Kevin Mc Hale's boyband career.
- Also in season one episode "Acafellas", Will's all male a'cappella group has boy band elements.
Philippine gag show Bubble Gang has come up with two. The first is the Sex Balls (a parody of the Sex Bomb Girls), who made parodies of novelty songs and theme songs from TV shows. The second is D'Wonder Boys, a parody of K-pop boy bands, fawned over by fangirls who squeal at the smallest things and completely repetitive lyrics.
Two of Horrible Histories' trademark music videos full-on parody this genre: 'The Four Georges', who sit under moody spotlights to sing "Born 2 Rule" (and identify themselves as the sad one, the bad one, the mad one, and the fat one), and 'The Few', a group of slickly-choreographed WWII RAF pilots who specifically spoof Take That.
The Australian comedy film Boytown is about a boy band of the same name from the 80s who, in the 2000s, decide to reform as middle-aged men. Their songs are geared towards the demographic who were teenage girls in the 80s, so their new album has titles like "Picking The Kids Up From School", "Cellulite Lady" and "Dishpan Hands".
The UK series Star Stories contains an episode wherein boy-band West Life appear and identify as "the fat one", "the thin one", "the one losing his hair", "the cute one", and "the secretly gay one".
Parodied in Shirokuma Cafe with the Yama Arashi, which is a mockery of Arashi. Except they're porcupines.
Phineas And Ferb has the Paisley Sideburn Brothers, a pretty obvious nod to fellow Disney Channel-associates The Jonas Brothers.
Friendship Is Witchcraft has BBBFF, a band which Francis Sparkle is a member of. It's a pretty obvious parody of NSYNC, like how the band's name is an acronym of the members' own names (Ben, Ben, Ben, Francis, and Francis).