Many years back when West Life was still popular, I have not heard of the term ‘boy band”. May be that term has not been coined yet in my younger days. Well so I began listening to West Life and came across that term when people remarked, “West Life? Yee! Boy band.” I didn’t know what people around me were trying to get at when they exclaimed, “Boy Band!”

Now that I’ve gained more exposure to these so-called boy bands (and girl bands too), I am beginning to understand what people were trying to hit at when they exclaimed, “Boy Bands!” In Taiwan, music companies are mass producing boy bands and girl bands tastelessly to generate as much income as they could from ignorant public, particularly the youth and I am noticing the atrocities of these boy bands and girl bands.

Let’s begin with ranting about boy bands and the agenda behind the formation of boy (bad) bands. First and foremost, the agenda is to bring in as much revenue as possible. To bring in the money, you have to appeal to the market and apparently, the targeted market is the ignorant teenage girls who are insanely attracted to bad boys.

Look Matters More Than Talent

Sometime it seems that music companies are picking up bad boys from every back alley to form dozens of boy bands to appeal to stupid teenage girls. So what’s the formula for boy bands? A little earlier, they still pick supposedly ‘handsome’ guys with long hair styled like Korean actor Bae Yong Joon as appeared in the Korean drama, “Winter Sonata”. Typical examples are Taiwan’s “F4” and “5566”.

At least those stupid girls out there think that they are handsome even though they are certainly not Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt. Measuring by Asian’s benchmark for Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, it would be Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Chow Yun Fatt. But now I’ve been seeing worse than I used to see. I think that the producers have decided that since they are not handsome, might as well come up front and look just like what they are – BAD BOYS.

Boy Bands That Cannot Sing Nor Dance

The next part of the formula is the dance. One thing that is blatantly obvious besides the look (which is not good looking) is – they cannot dance. Obviously they do not have the foundation of dancing. All they ever know about dancing is possibly dancing in clubs and discotheques where you simply swing your hips and arms around.

The flexibility, agility and dexterity of the legs are certainly not there. Just about the most disgusting thing that I have seen on TV about these boy bands are their sleeveless costumes where they exhibit their arm pit hair while they raise and swing their arms supposedly dancing.

Now when they had to perform overseas on TV, they were required to sing in English for a particular item with another performer. Obviously they couldn’t speak English, much less sing in English. Those words that came out of their mouths were atrocious. Next, it was not singing but croaking. The croaking was out of tune, off key, off beat, bad vocal and anything that could go wrong went wrong.

That brings us to the most essential part of the formula – singing. Well, can they sing? That’s why it is easier to have a group than have a single person. Hopefully out of a few, one or two can sing while the others pretend to sing. What if all can’t sing? Thanks to technology. Decades ago, we call it studio work. Nowadays, there are more advance technology, you have the computer and it can do wonders. Just watch out for live performance and you’ll know how ‘well’ they can sing.

Another way out of that is a little old trick. Get somebody else to sing in the background. Those on stage can just open their mouth to pretend that they are singing. After all it is well accepted that you cannot sing properly if you are dancing. The microphones won’t attach securely to the ‘singers’ if there are too much body movement plus the dancers will be panting. Even so, some years back a popular Taiwanese boy band F4 was accused of having other people do their singing.

With all these atrocities demonstrated, yet the boy bands still rake in money. Is this an insult to the public’s intelligence and taste or is it a revelation of what the public is really made up of?

The following 2 videos from You Tube list down the many songs the Taiwanese boy band Energy copied from the Korean boy bands.

Of course I understand that it is perfectly legal for them to do so. The music company will take care of the legal issues. However, it shows how haphazard and convenient it is to throw in a few bad boys to form a boy band without a creative team behind it.

A note to the readers: This article is transferred from my other blog to this current blog for consolidation. So the information you read here may be a little outdated. In the near future, I will post an article that is more relevant.