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You're listening ad free on Amazon Music. Hey there Hit Parade listeners. What you're about to hear is Part one of this episode. Part two will arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month. Would you like to hear this episode all at once the day it drops? Sign up for Slate Plus. It supports not only this show, but all of Slate's acclaimed journalism and podcasts. Just go to slate.com hitparadeplus you'll get to hear every Hit Parade episode in full the day it arrives. Plus Hit Parade the Bridge, our bonus episodes with guest interviews, deeper dives on our episode topics, and pop chart trivia. Once again to join, that's slate.com hitparadeplus thanks and now please enjoy part one of this hit Parade episode.
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Yeah.
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Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate Magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfi, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One? Series on today's show 25 years ago, in April of 1999, a five boy, five man vocal group from Orlando, Florida debuted on Billboard's Hot 100 with what Would become their most famous song, a confection co written by Swedish pop mastermind Max Martin. All five members of the group had vocal showcases on the track, fulfilling the crushes of their most ardent fans. They called themselves the Backstreet Boys and Max Martin called this lyrically inscrutable ditty I want it that way. What way? That way. When music fans hear the term boy band, they probably think of this group and maybe even this song. Or they think of the Backstreet Boys Chief Millennial rivals another Orlando formed five man group called nsyn. But the history of the boy band not only predates the Backstreet Boys and NSync versions of the boy band archetype existed before any of those performers were born. Boy bands are at least as old as rock and roll itself. Through the 50s, 60s and 70s, a variety of toothsome, pinup worthy pop groups took periodic control of the charts, firing the fantasies of the young. Sometimes the groups were formed organically, sometimes prefabricated by producers. Some were even actual family bands.
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One Bad Apple don't spoil a whole bunch girls oh give it one more try before you give up.
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On by the 80s, the modern boy band took shape. An assembled group of usually five young men with cannily crafted material and shameless showmanship, dancing kinetically, dressing fashionably, preening and twinkling for the camera and the teen magazines and oh yeah. Singing. These crush worthy objects could be black, white, or even Latin. They invited you to choose your favorite member and learn their video choreography. Right into the 21st century. These cobbled together groups had the profiles of rock stars. We may have called them boy bands, but they carried themselves like rock bands. And by the 2000 and tens and 2000 and twenties, it was clear the future of the boy band may not even be in the West. Today on Hit Parade, we will try our best to define the ineffable qualities that make a band of boys a boy band. Hint, it's mostly determined by the girls. And we will celebrate this fizzy pop phenomenon that has produced decades of memorable chart hits, including a smash hit by an archetypal boy band that frequently tops polls of the greatest pop songs of all time. And that's where your Hit Parade marches today. The week ending January 31, 1970. When I Want yout Back by the Jackson 5 reached number one on Billboard's Hot 100. The Gary, Indiana brothers, first of four consecutive chart toppers as they became America's crush objects of the moment. Over half a century later, it's still the most acclaimed song ever recorded by a boy band. And make no mistake, it was a boy band song every bit as much as I Want it that Way or Dynamite all pop classics. Was it the youthful vocals, the precision dance moves, the songwriting, Svengalis behind the scenes, all that and more. So grab a cup of milk, everybody. Rock your body, make a heart with your hands and let out a TRL scream While we consider what made boy bands larger than life. Stick around. If we're going to discuss what makes an act a boy band, right off the top, there's a rather large elephant in the room we should address straight away. We're the Beatles, the most acclaimed, most hit generating band of all time. A boy band.
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Just call on me and I'll send it along with love from me to you.
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I imagine some of you are already scoffing at this idea. The Beatles wrote their own material, you're saying okay, but as we noted in last month's covers episode of Hit Parade, that wasn't universally true. And as we'll discuss later, several boy bands had songwriting members. The Beatles formed the band themselves. You might point out there wasn't some Svengali mastermind. True, but after they formed, the Beatles were directed by a manager, Brian Epstein, who told them what to wear and how to comport themselves on stage. And speaking of their on stage behavior, you might reasonably say the Beatles didn't do dance moves. There was no choreography. Fair enough. But what were those moptop head shakes, the yeah yeah yeahs, and those coordinated deep bows at the end of each song, but a kind of choreography? And about those songs, Paul McCartney admitted years later that he and John Lennon wrote their early hits to make girls sque wheel. Personal pronouns were their secret weapons. She loves you from me to you please please me PS I love you.
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Keep all my love forever P S I love you.
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Simply put, the media called the craze Beatlemania and nicknamed the group the Fab Four for a reason. Without question, the Beatles fandom, especially in the early years, was boy band style fandom. In her 2020 boy band history, Larger Than Life author and critic Maria Sherman says that the Beatles established the modern boy band paradigm. She points out that like later boy bands, both the Beatles and their fans, overwhelmingly young girls, were disparaged, especially during the first wave of Beatlemania. The Fab Four were marketed not just for their music, but as four wall poster personalities, and they were the vehicle for a generation's sexual awakening. The Beatles, Sherman writes, offered a framework that boy bands could build upon. I bring up the Beatles to expose some hard truths about our perceptions of boy bands. For one thing, there is no firm definition of a boy band. Even Sherman admits this in her book. There are boy bands that danced and some that did not. Boy bands that relied entirely on outside songwriters and those that wrote their own.
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This is an SOS.
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Boy bands assembled by managers, producers, or other industry architects, and quite a few that, like the Beatles, initially formed on their own. Bottom line. Boy bandness is in the eye and the ear of the beholder. The very term boy band has a murky history. Pop scholars date it to only the 1980s, based on an early interview with notorious boy band manager Lou Perlman, but it was likely arrived at organically. And the existence of boy bands predates the use of the term. The only thing boy bands have in common is rabid fandom by a young fan base. There are no firm borders that consign one act to boy band status and keep another group out. And speaking of borders, the other reason to trouble ourselves with the Beatles boy band question right up front is to exercise some demons, specifically some isms, sexism, racism, and a favorite term of music critics, rockism first, sexism or the value of boy bands fans.
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Ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles. Close your eyes.
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Those deafening screams hundreds of teenage girls at the Ed Sullivan show in February 1964 explain why the Beatles were disdained by reporters and critics at the time, one New Statesman commentator labeled Beatle fans quote, unquote, vacant faces. The dull, the idle, the failures. These are the same girl screams that more than 30 years later pierced the air outside the studios of MTV's Total Request Live. At the turn of the millennium and the height of boy band fever, those.
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Are the sights and sounds of Backstreet Main. Welcome to live mtv, the Backstreet Boys, live today here at our Times Square studio.
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My point is, boy bands are not valueless because young girls like them, or for that matter, if they have a devoted LGBTQ fan base. I'm with Harry Styles, who once told Rolling Stone, how can you say young girls don't get it? They kind of keep the world going. Teenage girl fans don't act too cool. They like you and they tell you unquote. Second point, racism or the erasure of boy band roots. By their own admission, the Beatles were looking to emulate their heroes, who were primarily black performers. The Fab Four were generally good about giving props to their forebears, But of course, the popularity of teen idols like the Beatles eclipsed that of the soul singers, doo wop troupes and girl groups they covered and imitated. This pattern persisted deep into the boy band era. When white vocal groups were emulating or even directly covering prior black performers, they enjoyed more stratospheric popularity. Arguably, as we'll discuss in a few moments, the archetypal boy bands were people of color. It's fine to enjoy boys, boy bands of all kinds. But keep in mind, like rock and roll itself, the boy band is at its core rooted in black culture, and it's easy for that archetype to be belittled or erased. Finally, and perhaps the most bedeviling ism for all, boy bands, rockism.
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Free come together right now over me.
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The reason few people call the Beatles a boy band today, indeed they mostly stopped calling them moptops or the Fab Four by the late 60s, was that they leaned into heavier rock, aged out of boyhood, and gained rock credibility. This was a natural progression, but the idea that rock bands are valuable and pop acts value less persisted for decades. We critics gave this bias a name, rockism, and it undermined the very premise of the boy band. Even when the music was great.
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The way that you flip your head gets me overwhelmed but when you smile at the ground it ain't hard to tell.
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So while this is the last I'll discuss the Beatles in this episode, think about them as we walk through boy band history. The Fab Four were not only a model of how a boy band could gain legitimacy. Sadly, they also showed that that legitimacy could be weaponized against later generations harmonizing young men. In other words, if it wasn't cool to call the Beatles garbage or disposable or fairies or worse in 1964, it's not cool to denigrate New edition NSYNC or One Direction or their fans in the decades that followed. Boy bands are a proud lineage. Now, to trace the history of the boy band, we have to go back well before Beatlemania. In her boy band history, author Maria Sherman takes it way back to the 19th century and the first recorded mania for a musician. Lisztomania centered on handsome and virtuosic Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, who reportedly sent female fans into a frenzy in the 1840s. It was seriously regarded as a medical condition. Women saved locks of Liszt's hair and even his used cigars. But Franz Liszt wasn't a singer, and while he did write for men's chorales as a performer he was a solo act. In the rock era generally, the first true boy band, as the term is understood today, was a doo wop group that literally called themselves the Teenagers. The ABCs of love was by Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers, who formed when the word teenager was still relatively new, new to the lexicon and their sound was unique, a cross of early doo wop harmonizing with rock and roll energy topped by youthful lyrics. They were a multiracial group co led by a Puerto Rican singer, songwriter Herman Santiago, and fronted by the gifted black vocalist Frankie Lyman, who before anybody thought to invent the term boy band was was singing on hit records when he was literally still a boy of 13 years old. The ABCs of love was one of Frankie Lyman and the teenager's half dozen R B hits, but the record that made them a number one on the R B chart and a number six hit on Billboard's pop charts in 1956 was the Immortal why Do Fools Fall in Love? Co written by Lyman and Santiago. The Teenager's career was short lived. Their hit making days were over by 1960, and Lyman himself, unable to cope with aging out of his boyhood fame, died of a drug overdose in 1968 at the age of 25. So Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers were both a proto boy band and a cautionary tale of the havoc such groups could wreak on their members. By the 60s, Motown had built a much sturdier model for harmonizing vocal groups. Though nobody would mistake them for boy bands, Motown's flagship male troops like Take The Temptations. And the four tops. Inspired generations of future boys boy bands with their close harmonies and their precision choreography. Hold that thought because Motown's actual boy bands were still to come. Meanwhile, in the wake of the Beatles, a team of producers in 1966 arguably invented the model for the prefabricated group. Like the later boy bands of the MTV era, this group was literally put together for the tube. First, the charts. Second.
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Take the last train o' clock Will I be waiting at the station?
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We talked about the Monkees in depth in our TV Tunes edition of Hit Parade. Manufactured by producers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider to capitalize on the Beatles success, the Monkees launched in millions of American living rooms on NBC and scored an instant 1966 number one with last train to Clarksville. As a group built to be marketed, the four Monkeys, Mickey Dolenz, Davy Jones, Mike Nesmith and Peter Torque helped entrench the boy band concept of pick your favorite group member. Even more overtly than John, Paul, George and Ringo had. The Monkees even provided a template for the self referential boy band song. This is decades before Hangin Tough or Backstreet's Back with the Monkees TV show's opening theme song.
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Say We Monkey Around. We're too busy singing to put anybody down.
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As generations of Monkees fans have pointed out. However, what started out prefab evolved into a genuine rock combo with hits that organically connected with the public. Massive smashes like the Hot 100 number one, I'm a believer, penned by singer songwriter Neil Diamond. And speaking of Believers, a number one that was a vocal showcase for the cute one in the Monkees. Their British member Davy Jones. Daydream Believer. The Monkeys fight to wrest control of their destiny from the producers who spawned them would echo in the stories of the millennial boy bands decades later. Around the time the Monkeys were commanding the charts from 1966 through 68, a group of actual brothers from Gary, Indiana were making their way through the talent show circuit in the Midwest. When they recorded for the independent local label Steeltown Records in 68, it was clear the Jackson brothers had talent. But nine year old Michael Jackson was the star.
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That's looking for.
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The Jacksons had been trying to get an audition at Motown in Detroit, but Motown founder Barry Gordy was resistant to signing a kid act. Eventually he was won over and the Jackson 5 signed to Motown. The Jackson brothers, including Jackie, Tito, Jermaine and Marlon backing up Michael could actually play. But leaving nothing to chance, Gordy assembled Motown players to back up the boys vocals and a crack team of songwriters that he called the corporation to write the group's first Motown single in late 1969. Needless to say, everyone hit it out of the park. I want you Back was more than an auspicious debut for a new pop act. Decades later, journalist Helen Brown called it, quote, arguably the greatest pop record of all time and certainly the fastest man made route to pure joy, unquote. Pitchfork magazine called its chorus quote, possibly the best chord progression in pop music history Story. In essence, I Want yout Back set a new standard for boy band music. It came out of a music machine Motown, with many cooks in the kitchen. But by showcasing Michael's vocals, all the brothers dance moves and their infectious energy, it made the band collectively a star. Motown fired up its promotional machine for the Jackson 5 as the brothers were emblazoned on buttons, lunchboxes and teen magazine covers. After I Want yout back topped the Hot 100 in early 1970, it was quickly followed by three more number ones, ABC, which simply interpolated the verse and chorus of I want you back and gave more of the brothers solo vocal lines. The love you save a riff on a long running public service message on safe driving. The life you save may be your own. In this one, Michael and Jermaine warn a fast moving girl to slow down. And capping off the streak, the comforting ballad I'll be there, which Michael Jackson later said was the song that showed audiences the Jackson 5 had potential beyond bubblegum pop. As we have noted in several episodes of Hit Parade, this streak of four number ones the Jackson 5 pulled off in 1970 was the most successful career launch in Hot 100 history to that date. The Jacksons would hold that record for more than two decades until Mariah Carey topped it with five number ones to launch her career in 1990 and 91. The Jackson 5 model would prove remarkably enduring across boy band history. A mix of giddy uptempo pop songs punctuated by tender ballads, all of them designed to whip up followers into a danceable frenzy or make them swoon. In the immediate wake of the Jackson 5 success, their sound was imitated by the Osmonds, another family band that had been toiling through the 60s, including frequent appearances on the Andy Williams show, originally a quartet from Ogden, Utah with barbershop style harmonies, the addition of younger brother Donny Osmond turned the osmonds into a five member boy band, and their 1971 single One Bad Apple was originally written with the Jackson 5 in mind. It's hard to miss One Bad Apple.
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Don'T spoil a whole bunch girls oh give it one more try before you.
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Give up on Love One Bad Apple not only topped the Hot 100 in February of 71, it blocked the actual Jackson 5's own single Mama's Pearl from reaching the top when Mama's Pearl peaked at number two behind the Osmonds. For that brief moment, the Jacksons and the Osmonds had a real life boy band chart rivalry. The Jacksons family family band approach was also emulated by groups like Canadian troupe the DeFranco family, whose career was literally bankrolled by the editor of Tiger beat magazine. The DeFrancos had their own would be Michael Jackson slash Donny osmond with the 13 year old Tony DeFranco. Their 1973 single Heartbeat It's a Love Beat reached number three. Three. For their part, the Osmonds didn't stay with the Jackson 5 sound for long. They moved in a more rock oriented direction with hits like 1972's down by the Lazy River. In fact, there were several attempts to market straight up rock bands as if they were boy bands, including the Sweet and the raspberries in the mid-70s. The most successful was Scottish fivesome the Bay City Rollers. Their 1975 single Saturday Night climaxed with a chanted spelling of the word Saturday that invited teens to cheer or stomp along glam rock style. Saturday Night topped the Hot 100 the first week of 1976 and kicked off a two year run of hits for the Bay City Rollers. By the end of the 70s, with disco commanding the charts, the boy band sound was out of fashion. Even the Jackson 5, who'd left Motown for a new label and renamed themselves simply the Jacksons were proffering a fully adult dance floor sound as on their 1979 number seven hit Shake youe Body down to the Ground, setting up Michael Jackson's soon to explode solo stardom. So the boy band model would have to be rebooted for the 80s and that original Jackson and 5 approach would prove remarkably durable. More in a Moment. Though they proved influential on a generation of 80s and 90s boy bands, new Edition were not prefabricated by a producer. In 1978 grade schoolers Bobby Brown, Ricky Bell and Michael Bivens began singing together in the Roxbury section of Boston. Eventually they recruited two more vocalists, Ralph Tresvant and Ronnie Devoe. The dynamic fivesome who punctuated their performances with hip hop style, popping and locking dance moves won a string of talent shows performing classics like the Jackson fives the love you save. And that's when a Svengali entered the picture. New Addition were discovered at a talent show by one of the judges, Maurice Starr, a former singer, a writer, producer and a budding impresario. Starr signed the group when they were only 13 to 15 years of age with the vision of making them into a new Jackson 5. True to his word, Starr launched the project with a track he co wrote himself that was like an 80s version of ABC. Candy Girl, led by the impossibly high vocals of Ralph Tresvant, was released on Maury Starr's own small Streetwise label and topped Billboard's R B chart in 1983, a major coup for an independent imprint. While still under Starr's auspices, New Edition scored two more black radio hits. A similarly uptempo record called Popcorn Love hit number 25, R B, And a yearning ballad, is this the End? Reached number eight. R B.
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Is this the end?
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But New Edition and Maurice Star quickly had a falling out over money, and the group was now a hot enough commodity that major labels were interested in. The five teenagers wriggled out of their reportedly rapacious contract with Starr and signed with MCA Records, which achieved something Starr had never managed, crossing over New Edition on the pop charts. In the fall of 1984, new edition dropped their self titled major label debut album, led off by the single Cool It Now. The group had credibly matured while remaining cuddly and teen friendly. And in case their army of new fans needed help picking a favorite member of New Edition on the song's rap break, Ralph Tresvant provided a handy roster. By the start of 1985, Cool it now reached number four on the Hot 100, New Edition's first ever top 40 pop hit, as well as number one on the R B B chart for the follow up. As further evidence of MCA's prioritization of new Edition, they got one of the hottest artist producers of the time to work with them, Ray Parker Jr. Who was just coming off his monster hit Ghostbusters. If there's something strange in your neighborhood.
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Who you gonna call?
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For New Edition, Parker wrote and produced Mr. Telephone Man, a classic please Mr. Postman style heartbreak Jam. Like Cool it now, it scaled Both the Hot 100 and R B charts, reaching number 12, pop number one R.
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B Mr. Telephone, this is something wrong with my life.
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New Edition were filling a major gap in boy band fandom in the mid-80s, at least among groups singing in English. Their only serious competition at the time was a famed Puerto Rican boy band who never had A permanent lineup New Edition might have started young, but they were not forced out of their boy band when they reached age 16. We discussed Menudo in our Latin pop episode of Hit Parade. The Spanish language juggernaut was launched in 1977 by producer Edgardo Diaz, who as a policy routinely replaced Menudo's members well before they reached adulthood. Menudo had already cycled through multiple lineups by 1984 when their songs started seeing some very modest airplay on U S radio stations. Capitalizing on this attention and a relative dearth of boy bands other than new edition, in 1984 Menudo tried recording in English. It helped that their then current lineup featured future megastar Ricky Martin. Then only 13. Hold Me managed a number 62 peak in 1985. But the Anglo crossover of Menudo never really took hold. So having the field largely to themselves, New Edition kept scoring hits. But as they aged, the hits got smaller. On the pop side, 1986's a little bit of Love Is All It Takes barely cracked the top 40 at number 38. After founding New Edition member Bobby Brown left the group for a solo career, New Edition replaced him with singer Johnny Gill and retooled as a new jack swing group under the guidance of producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Their 1988 single if it Isn't Love managed to crack the pop top 10. But new edition now rightly bore little resemblance to their boy band origins. Even before his ouster as New Editions manager Maurice Starr had an idea to create a rival boy band to New Edition. And this time the group would be made up of white performers. A bold gambit for a black manager. By the mid-80s, creating this rival group became Starr's sole focus and unlike New Edition, this would be fully his brainchild. He recruited five white boys from across Boston, including a pair of brothers from Dorchester, Donnie and Mark Wahlberg. Donnie stayed, but Mark left and he had them record R B leaning material. It took more than one album and a bunch of singles, but eventually Starr's proteges became huger than even he could have imagined. New Kids on the Block Donnie Wahlberg, Jordan Knight, John Knight, Danny wood and Joey McIntyre were the first multi platinum boy band, the yardstick for what teen pop groups would eventually become by the turn of the millennium. But it took years for them to take off. Maury's star at first tried promoting New Kids as an RB act and their 1986 debut was a flop on first release. Their follow up LP was looking like a dud too, until the bubble soul ballad Please Don't Go Girl caught on at a few radio stations and climbed to number 10 on the Hot 100 in 1988. The album it came from, Hangin Tough, released in the summer of 88, wound up spending more than two years on the charts and spun off a slew of top ten hits, including the number three dance hit you Got it, better known by its parenthetical the Right stuff, The plush ballad I'll be loving you Forever. New Kid's first number one hit, The light hip hop jam Hangin Tough, another number one, which was a self referential New Kids dance that updated the idea of the Monkees theme for a new generation.
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And if you try to keep us down, we're gonna come right back.
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And the pure pop of Covergirl, which reached number two in the fall of 89, more than a year after the Hangin Tough album launch. By the time New Kids on the Block were ready to release a follow up album, hangin tough was eight times platinum. Their 1986 debut had gone triple platinum. Belatedly, the group had sold hundreds of millions in merch, including lunchboxes and even dolls, and pre orders for their next album were at 2 million. But New Kid's falloff was remarkably swift. Step by step the title track to New Kids 1990 album top the Hot 100 for three weeks, but the album was number one for only one week and sold less than half as many copies as its predecessor. The group would score only two more top 20 singles before going on hiatus in 1994. By then, New Kids on the Block had fallen so far in perceived coolness that they were recording under the humbling acronym nkotb. In short, New Kids set both positive and negative boy band benchmarks. They exemplified the rapid half life of a blockbuster boy band, how a group that seems effortlessly trendy one year or two could become irredeemably cheesy as the boy band's fans mature. By the way, just as NKOTB were sliding off the charts, the Donnie Wahlberg's brother Mark, who decided not to become a New Kid, scored his own number one hit as the rapper Marky Mark. Boy bands can have some funky spin offs. The early 90s was another wilderness period for the boy band in the era of grunge and gangsta rap. After New Kids Fall off, the only multi platinum selling group that even resembled a boy band were an R B quartet that aged out of that identity almost immediately. Funnily enough, they were named after a new addition song, Boys to Men, a vocal quartet that formed at a Philadelphia high School in the late 80s not only named themselves after the 1988 New Edition song Boys, to mention, they were discovered by New Edition member Michael Bivens, who in 1990 had launched a New Edition spin off group, the more hip hop Forward Bel Biv DeVoe, My Girl.
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You know cuz in.
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Michael Bivens became Boy to Men's manager and got them signed to Motown, the legendary label that had incubated the Jackson 5. Truthfully, the most boy band moment in Boyz II Men's entire career was their debut single Motown Philly, a very meta, dramatically heightened tale of the group's formation. It took the self consciousness of the boy band archetype and kicked it up several notches. Even Michael Bivens had a cameo in the song. Motown Philly reached number three on the Hot 100 in the summer of 1991. The bigger reason Boyz II Men became important to boy band history, however, was what they inspired. Their singles were vocal showcases setting new benchmarks for harmony, singing and vocal arranging. Several future boy band members of the late 90s admitted they aspired to the vocal fireworks on Boys to Men singles like the late 1991 number two hit it's so Hard to say Goodbye to Yesterday.
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It's so Hard to say Goodbye to Yesterday.
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While Boys to Men were known early on for their dancing and stylish outfits Outfits. As their hits got bigger, they graduated into the premier soul group of their generation, calling them a boy band by the time of their chart topping weeper End of the road in 1992 already felt reductive. If I may invoke Something I said in our Brit pop episode of Hit Parade, you might say Boyz II Men were to boy bands in the 90s what Radiohead were to Brit pop. Important to the development of the form but also transcending the category entirely, Boys to Men simply weren't boys for long. Their emergence into manhood was built into their name. The fallow period for boy bands persisted into the middle of the decade. In 1994, the multiracial Los Angeles Quartet all for One momentarily became chart commanders when their R and B cover of the country ballad I swear spent 11 weeks at number one. All for One scored a handful of hits but were more boyish than Boy band. Like never inspiring the kind of pinup poster fandom of a new Edition or New kids. In the UK, the mid-90s was a fairly golden time for boy bands with such chart topping pop troops as East 17, Wet Wet Wet and most especially Take that who scored multiple British number ones. But in America, Take that only managed a single hit. Back for good, a UK number one reached number seven in America in 1995. But take that never touched the Hot 100 again. By 1996, former Milli Vanilli mastermind Frank Farian was even trying to switch spawn a Latin flavored boy band with a trio of American singers he called no Mercy. Their Europop flavored single where do youo Go was a major global hit in 1996, including number five on the Hot 100. But no Mercy had trouble following it up and didn't become major personalities. What finally brought back the boy band in the late 90s was a family trio that both defied boy band stereotype and yet were boldly, shamelessly pop. Like all good boy bands, they provoked rabid love and furious loathing. But that may just have been a misreading of their breakthrough hit, which on the surface sounded like nonsense. Hansen were three brothers from Tom Tulsa, Oklahoma guitarist Isaac Hansen, keyboardist Taylor Hansen and drummer Zach Hansen. All three also harmonized, with Taylor typically taking lead vocals. The brothers co wrote their big hit MBOP, which topped both the Hot 100 in the spring of 1997 and at year's end, the Village Voice. Paz and Jop critics poll as 1997's best single, even as some rock fans decried the song as drivel. Stereo Gum's Tom Bryan in his column the Number Ones called MBOP quote perhaps the finest example of bubblegum gibberish to come along during my lifetime. And it turns out that the rest of the MBOP is all weirdly wise life advice. Mmm Bop was so massive three weeks at number one off a quadruple platinum debut album that it is widely credited for spawning the teen pop and boy band renaissance of the late, late 90s. The Hansen brothers were briefly teen beat crush objects, but Hansen's big moment proved almost as difficult to follow up as those by all for One, Take that and no Mercy. Hansen's follow up hit, the 70s style rave up where's the Love? Peaked at number 27. As it turned out, the boy band breakthrough of 1997 was real, but it would not sound like Hanson. And as mmm Bop was tumbling down the Hot 100, another boy band single was rising and it sounded a lot more like the future. When We Come Back Backstreets Back when did they arrive? How did boy bands go from the sideshow to center stage of the millennial pop circus? And how did the 21st century redefine the boy band into something more varied, more international and more dynamite. Non Slate plus listeners will hear the rest of this episode in two weeks. For now, I hope you've been enjoying this episode of Hit Parade. Our show was written, edited and narrated by Chris Melanfi. That's me. My producer is Kevin Bendis. Derek John is Executive Producer of Narrative Podcasts and we had help from Joel Meyer. Alicia Montgomery is VP of Audio for Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Slate Culture feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. We'll see you for part two in a couple of weeks. Until then, keep on marching on the one. I'm Chris Melanfy.
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Sam.