One Direction
Time Warner Cable Arena
June 27, 2012
Screams pierced my eardrums as I gazed awestruck at an army of on-the-verge-of-tears tweens crowding Time Warner Cable Arena on Wednesday night. I suddenly felt like I had gone back in time. Surely the cause of such a decibel level nearly rendering me deaf was due to a sighting of Taylor Hanson or Justin Timberlake popping and locking with ‘N Sync, right?
Nope. It’s 2012 and all this commotion is for the newest boyband to roll off the assembly line – One Direction. Aside from the group members getting younger and younger (and, in this case, British), times really haven’t changed.
With what seemed like nearly identical infectious pop melodies, each One Direction song gave the boys a chance to sing a verse and hear the crowd scream their names. But the screams weren’t necessarily for the amazing vocals, but more likely for whichever singer the crowd members considered to be the “cute one.” Easy to understand, as each song they whipped out was about love: falling in love or crying over love. Pretty compelling stuff, and not changed in the slightest from the golden age.
Back in 1997, I was in the midst of one of the most thrilling times for boybands on MTV. Backstreet was back, Hanson was introducing the world to “MmmBop,” and ‘N Sync was giving me all the bubblegum pop my seven-year-old ears craved – with no strings attached.
Sigh. Those were the good old days. Oddly enough, the only one still going strong, and with some real musical merit, is Hanson. (OK, Justin Timberlake’s made a pretty smooth transition.) But while five adorable young lads choreographing moves to songs like “Bye Bye Bye” were considered to be hip back then, the Hanson brothers haven’t stood the test of time. Nor, thank God, have the trends they brought with them – most memorably the spiky hair gel and matching man suits.
Back then, I was wholeheartedly game, plastering my walls with posters ripped from Tiger Beat and printing out Internet pictures of my future husband, Zac Hanson. The times were filled with cheap, mass-produced pop, but as long as the vehicle it arrived in was in the form of cute teenage boys, I couldn’t have cared less.
One Direction isn’t bringing anything new to boyband pop. The group was put together by ex-American Idol judge Simon Cowell for his British equivalent, The X Factor. And One Direction follows a proud tradition: boyband members being hand-picked to make girls swoon (and to pick their parents’ pockets). However, it’s still surreal to see thousands of girls crying over the boys in One Direction as though they were The Beatles.
For me, the boyband days were over around high school, where newer, ‘cooler’ music awaited me. I’d left the pop boys of the past behind. And yet, here I stood, in a 2012 time warp, one among many, many, many, MANY screaming girls who were just now beginning their own boyband phase.
I saw girls with homemade shirts claiming their future boyband husbands – I did that.
Homemade signs with everything from marriage proposals to the generic “I love you” were waved like there was no tomorrow – I did that.
Throwing bras on the stage… Okay, my 7-year-old self never did that, but otherwise the scene was nearly identical to the boyband golden age I knew 15 years ago.
Things come full circle. The pandemonium that ensued when One Direction walked onstage is just like what happened when NSYNC appeared on TRL, or when the Backstreet Boys danced their way into arena spotlights every night. Heck, it was the same even when The Beatles and Stones hit the scene. Yes, this is nothing new.
The vehicle is always going to be different, but clearly boybands never die. They may be getting younger and younger (and, in the case of One Direction, less and less skilled; sorry girls, but ‘NSync could dance AND sing!), but boybands aren’t going to fizzle out anytime soon. So, you may as well go ahead and learn One Direction’s names – Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Harry Styles, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson.
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This article appears in Jun 27 – Jul 3, 2012.
Um, well according to JC himself in an article years ago, nsync pretaped their own background vocals so that they could sing and dance at the same time!! GASP! Say it isn’t so, but yes, they did. It was never more obvious than at the MTV awards show where they dance back and forth around those huge TV boxes. Not hard to sound “perfect” when there are 9 voices singing at the same time–assuming the soloist wasn’t singing to pretaped vocals too.
Are you serious? They aren’t bringing anything new? I’m sorry they don’t have choreographed dance routines, but it isn’t them. They aren’t trying to be something they’re not. They’re singers, and they’re good at that. Don’t think so? Ask Simon Cowell, the music mogul of our generation. They are the reason he wanted to bring XFactor to the States, to find more talent like them. And oh yes, WE TOTALLY LIKE THEM FOR THE LOOKS, that’s why we bought the album right? to listen to their faces? makes total and complete sense. I just suppose you wouldn’t know because you don’t know anything about them..
She probably couldn’t get sexytime with Harry like all the old ladies.
I think it is a good review, but people shouldn’t go crazy over who’s the best band ever! Everyone has their own opinion and everyone has different tastes in music! I’m a directioner myself, so I didn’t agree with all of this review, but we’re a different generation.
Kyra writes: “but we’re a different generation.”
You are wise beyond your years, Kyra. That’s exactly what it’s about.
In her enlightening, well-written review, Alison writes, “Sorry girls, but ‘NSync could dance AND sing!” But a writer from the generation before Alison could have written, “Sorry girl, but the New Kids on the Block could do [fill in the blank] better than ‘NSync.” And I could have written that the Jackson 5 could do [fill in the blank] better than the New Kids. And my older sister most certainly would have told me that the early Beatles could do [fill in the blank] much better than the Jackson 5.
And that’s what’s so wonderful about teenpop! Unlike the more pretentious writing us music critics sometimes do about more serious, adult-oriented rock or hip-hop, the feelings we have for teenpop are personal. The artists of our childhoods belong to us in a very specific, very special time and place — a time and place in our lives that mean the world to us.
Keep listening, Kyra!
People, this is an OPINION– just relax!
Wasting time and bandwidth on a band that the target audience of Creative Loafing will never listen to is the reason this “music section” is irrelevant and clueless. I mean….don’t you have have some shitty Mumford and Sons record to talk about or an interview with some terrible indie rock shreck that you deem important that you can post instead?
Psst, Mr. Williams — Go crawl back in your hole.