That would prove to be a fortuitous decision for all involved: The quintet came in third, but they were so popular that they were a shoe-in for a deal with Cowell’s Syco label. Instead of advancing them in the competition separately, he decided to form a new group called One Direction. In 2010, Simon Cowell saw potential in five teenage boys who auditioned as solo artists on The X-Factor. In honor of their continuing impact and dominance, here are the boy band heartthrobs’ pop confections worth screaming for.
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The main defining factor? The venues full of screaming fans - always young, mostly girls - who help turn a boy band into a cultural artifact worth admiring and singing along to even after their inevitable disbandment or “hiatus.”
But like any other form art, you know a boy band when you see one. Sometimes they are literally boys, sometimes they’re twentysomethings with boyish charm. Sometimes they sing words they’ve written themselves, sometimes they sing other people’s.
Sometimes they are total strangers, sometimes they have known each other since birth. Their existence is a pop constant but parameters have always been blurred: sometimes they dance and sometimes they don’t.
From the scripted TV shenanigans of the Monkees to the charming folkiness of One Direction, as long as there are junior high school notebooks to deface, there will be outfits providing pop spectacle in its purist, least filtered form.Īs music has evolved, so have boy bands. Irresistibly catchy, unapologetically inauthentic, sexy and they know it - the boy band is the most fabulously pre-fab of all musical outfits.