YMMV / Busted

• Americans Hate Tingle: Busted tried to break the American market in 2004, and did not succeed. The MTV UK documentary series America Or Busted captures the band's frustrations as they experience promotional events and interviews that fall through and disappointing concert turnouts. When MTV in America aired the series later that year, they added the video for "What I Go To School For" into their rotation, but it didn't catch on. Compare Busted's failure to catch on America to the relative success of BBMak, another British boy band who played their own instruments and wrote their own songs, and yet managed to have a couple stateside hits.
• Broken Base: Which is better, the McBusted version of "What Happened to Your Band?", or the rerecorded version Busted did for their 4th album?
• Covered Up: The Jonas Brothers versions of "Year 3000" and "What I Go to School For" are more well-known in America than Busted’s originals.
• Even Better Sequel: If their first album's what drew you to them, or if you were turned off by how it turned out, their second's even/much better. It's got more energy, better writing, and better production work than the first.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In 'Year 3000,' the band brag: "Everybody bought our seventh album/It had outsold Michael Jackson". Busted then split up after only releasing two albums. But they still have most of the millennium to make good on it.
    • Lampshaded by James on Twitter after it was officially announced that the band had returned.
  • "Year 3000" brags that the song itself "had gone multi-platinum". As of 2022, it's still regular Platinum.
  • It's really funny how Charlie ended up singing the parts in 'What Happened to Your Band' that are meant to be Audience Surrogate lines asking what happened to Busted considering he's the reason Busted broke up in the first place.
  • Harry Judd played the drummer in the video for 'Crashed the Wedding.' 10+ years later, he'd be drumming that and many other Busted songs for the McBusted tours.
• Narm: Their first album has some really painful songs that don't hold up that well. Their second holds up much better.
• Periphery Demographic: Those who discovered Charlie's Progressive Metal band Fightstar first. This is more common outside of the UK and Europe, where Busted wasn't as popular.
• Signature Song: "Year 3000" for their self-titled debut album; "Crashed the Wedding" for A Present for Everyone.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • McFly were considered to be Busted's successors, and were even nicknamed in the British Press as "Baby Busted" when they first hit the big time. Considering that Tom Fletcher was briefly in Busted, it makes sense.
  • Son Of Dork, a short-lived band founded by Bourne following the band’s breakup and whose music was very similar to Busted.
  • McBusted, the supergroup formed when Willis and Bourne collaborated with the members of McFly. Notably, the supergroup came to an end once Simpson reunited with the rest of Busted.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: "Shipwrecked in Atlantis" clearly took a lot of cues from blink-182's "The Rock Show".
• Unexpected Character:
  • Ok, who in the hell saw them being invited by The Jonas Brothers to this concert for Capital FM to perform 'Year 3000'?
  • The 2.0 Guest Features of their 2002-'03 hits features a lot of this. The Jonas Brothers, Simple Plan, James Arthur, All Time Low, Neck Deep, You Me At Six, Dashboard Confessional, The Vamps, Deaf Havana, Hanson, Charlotte Sands, McFly (although, maybe not given they're friends & McBusted happened), Bowling for Soup, and Wheatus.
• Values Dissonance:
  • "What I Go To School For" is from the perspective of a student crushing on a teacher. The video displays Ms Mackenzie flirting with each of the boys, including spanking Matt with a ruler and running through the field with Charlie while they're both in their underwear. The song's lyrics also have the teacher falling in love with the student and them becoming a couple. While actually illegal in the UK, the 2000s still portrayed teacher-student romance as more scandalously risqué than essentially an adult taking advantage of a minor (when the teacher was female anyway). The song also lightheartedly devotes the second verse to the boy waiting until Ms Mackenzie's boyfriend is "out of town" and sneaking over to her house to spy on her, then climbing a tree to get a glimpse of her in her underwear. The former would be classed as stalking, and the latter as sexual harassment.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The music video for "Crashed The Wedding" has some pretty impressive green screen and multiple angle camera work for a mid-2000s British music video. It's all presented as one shot with a roaming camera, the guys all play at least 5-6 characters each, they interact with some of them each, and there's no obvious chroma keying, or anything. There's some obvious places where they clearly change camera shots, or cover up where two characters played by one of the band members interact, but it's all done really well. One might wonder how long it took to shoot and edit and how they accomplished it.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Busted enjoyed a lot of popularity with children and tweens, getting featured on the Disney Channel and recording a remake of Cruella De Vil from 101 Dalmatians for Disneymania 2. However, lyrics involved ogling a teacher's ass and spying on her in her underwear ("What I Go to School For") or masturbating ("Air Hostess").

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