From September 23rd, Australia will be whipped up into frenzy when the world’s biggest boy band, One Direction, arrive for their extensive national tour. The British five-piece, who have recently picked up a VMA for their latest single, “Best Song Ever” and currently are celebrating and promoting the release of This Is Us, the first One Direction movie/documentary to be released across the globe. Many continue to criticise the band for their manufactured beginnings, whilst record sales and global popularity of the band only grows stronger.
Having been in the spotlight since Simon Cowell groomed them into the money-making, fan-swooning pop machine they’ve gone on to become, the creation of One Direction brought the allure of the ‘boy band’ truly back to the forefront of popular music. Justin Bieber was quickly thrown aside when the younger teen female demographic were given the option of not one, but five boys ready to sing and serenade them. And while the ‘Beliebers’ have stayed strong in the face of recent slights against their idol and in one particular case, a direct spit to the face, the ‘Directioners’ seem to have extended their reach on a larger level, pulling in fans way beyond the primary to high school realm.
So, what is it about Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Liam Payne that has girls and women spending ridiculous amounts of time online, scouring for any update possible on who’s dating who, who’s writing with who? Having grown up in the 90s, where schoolyard conversations were predominantly based on which member of *NSYNC or the Backstreet Boys you were going to marry and trading Smash Hits posters with your friends until you had a collection tracking the evolution and perfection of Taylor Hanson’s mane, I understand the hype. However, it seems that with the advance of the internet and social media, the hysteria surrounding boy bands and the expectation of what these bands are to bring to the table, entertainment wise, is something of important notice.
What a dream.
Think back to The Beatles or The Rolling Stones at their heyday – you had girls screaming, fainting, crying, doing anything they could to get close enough to their idols, even if that meant trampling their fellow fangirl in the process. It’s happening today too; riots at screenings of This Is Us, fainting outside Martin Place…crazy behaviour from fans who can’t handle the concept of being within the same vicinity of these people. The only major difference, to my mind, between then and now, is the fact that fans today has so much more access to the lives of these pop idols that there’s a heightened level of hysteria and expectation.
One Direction then v now.
Girls know about Zayn’s hairstyles and Harry’s newest tattoo before the rest of the media and general public know (and/or care). How? Twitter. Facebook. Instagram. Back then, you’d freak out over a band because they were in your city and because their existence seemed to be not-quite-real. They only existed in the newspapers, on the radio waves and on your TV screen – out of your reach. Now, fans will freak out, but there’s a weird level of ownership attached to bands now than I think ever existed before.
Recently, British GQ Magazine published their September issue featuring five covers dedicated to 1D, prompting a massive amount of backlash from the band’s fan base. Ignoring the fact that GQ is a men’s magazine, focusing on fashion, culture for men and so would naturally touch on sex (as does every female-directed magazine), fans took aim at the publication specifically for the way Styles was depicted, via the tagline 'He’s Up All Night to Get Lucky'.
An alarming reaction, sure, but this does nothing but prove my point that, without social media, such a reaction would even occur. Fact of the matter is, we’re talking about a group of guys in their late teens to early twenties, growing up under the focused microscope of global media. I don’t particularly care about Harry Styles’ sexual prowess, but hey, if he’s out there getting some, good on him. On the flipside, in recent weeks, fans have hit back at the way they’ve been portrayed by unofficial documentary Crazy About One Direction, prompting Payne to *tweet* the following response.
Again, I remember friends and I being obsessed with boy bands. But when magazines would feature them on the cover, the first response wouldn’t be anger or hatred; we’d be more inclined to beg our parents to buy each different cover just to have them or stock up on every bit of merch you could find. Bands wouldn’t need to feel the need to reach out and justify documentaries or media produced with negative skews because, honestly, there weren’t the outlets for this stuff to be happening through anyway. Where the change in accessibility between bands and their fans change, I can’t say exactly, but it’s definitely something to note over the past ten to twenty years, especially.
At the root of it all, pop music today is a giant machine, and we all know it. The rise of talent shows has done nothing but to make the machine stronger. I’ll happily admit that when One Direction first broke, I was completely anti-everything they stood for. There was no originality. Their image was so sweet and clean cut, it hurt to look at each glossy magazine spread. The fans were being fed empty vessels of songs that didn’t do anything but provide annoyingly catchy choruses.
However, after having a bit of a think about boy bands and the artists I was into from age seven through to about fifteen, it’s really no different, at the root of it all. I’m sure there are groups of girls out there who have a 1D member each assigned to them within their groups, as we did with Nick, Brian, AJ, Howie D and Kevin (though nobody wanted Kevin…). The shift always starts, I find, when these bands start to mature and buck against what fans expect them to be or how everyone else perceives them, regardless of whether they want to admit they care or not.
Boy bands draw people in because it’s so easy to love and hate them. I’ve been on either end of that spectrum. While I’m by no means the biggest fan of One Direction, The Wanted or other bands of that type (actually had to Google them), I get it. They make people happy. They produce songs that are memorable and last. I can’t dog them for that. Plus, in 20 years, they’ll still rake the money in when they do what a heap of bands and artists have done this year, and embark on an anniversary tour.
Backstreet Boys in 2013. Deafening screams all round.
Haters gonna hate, but the pop machine's gonna continue to make.