Then and Now: Boy Bands & Bieber ft. Featured Artists

Back in my day, boy bands were both adored and ridiculed.

Nothing has changed. Boy bands are still adored by fans and ridiculed by critics.

But I think there's a difference in what boy bands are nowadays, as well as how they sound. Then again, music in general has just overall shifted over the past few decades.

What is a boy band? Wikipedia to the rescue. It's basically a group of young male singers, mostly (but not always) focused on vocals/lyrics.

The Then
Some of the boy bands I remember being popular in my middle school/early high school years were 'N SYNC, 98 Degrees and Backstreet Boys. Recently I revisited several of said bands' songs and I must admit, songs like Bye Bye Bye and It's Gonna Be Me have never sounded so refreshing compared to music being put out and popularized now. The music videos are very solid and relevant as well, in general. I personally prefer the sound of boy bands back in my middle/high school days, but I can't really complain because I can listen to them if I want to...plus I'm probably quite biased.

The Now
Now we have One Direction and The Wanted, among others. But what's the difference? I listened to several key songs by these artists, in particular One Direction's One Thing and The Wanted's I'm Glad You Came. Today, boy bands don't sound the same when compared to others, that's for sure. One Thing sounds like something out of a musical one-night stand between Carly Rae Jepsen and Owl City's Adam Young (aside from that one-night stand already happening, the chorus and beat of One Thing even sounds very similar to Owl City's Deer in the Headlights chorus). Horrible song title innuendo aside, I'm Glad You Came is more of a song to dance to and sounds more consistent throughout the entire track; it's a bit repetitive but otherwise not a bad song. Both of those had less relevant, thorough music videos; that's one thing I found lacking.

The Bieber
This post now contains Justin Bieber. How could I leave him out? He deserves his own special section.

The old Bieber was preteeny and sounded ridiculously young. I listened to some of his stuff recently. I started with one of his "younger days" songs, One Time (first One Thing from One Direction, now One Time). My goodness, that is just awful music. I won't even bother commenting on it further, aside from saying that the sound and music video were terrible. Baby wasn't a bad song, it just sounded relatively immature. And did I mention how great it is for spoofing?

Now Bieber is older, sounds older, and definitely looks older too (his hair is still annoying to look at though). Some of his newer stuff like All Around The World sounds like something that belongs in an Abercrombie & Fitch playlist alongside artists like Kaskade.

But for the love of all that is holy, why why WHY do these artists keep featuring rap artists in their songs? In All Around The World, I'm actually enjoying the song. I'd go so far as to say that it's a great song. Then BOOM, LUDACRIS OUT OF LEFT FIELD ruining the rest of the song for me. It doesn't even sound good, Ludacris should be rapping not singing lyrics in a tone that should be left to Bieber. Ludacris is even in Bieber's Baby song. I don't care if featuring other artists in songs is better for publicity, it almost always sounds like garbage. So stop doing it. I'm probably going to make another post later on about how stupid featured (mostly rap) artists in songs usually is, but I had to mention it because it really grinds my gears.

Horrible featured artists in otherwise decent songs!

Conclusion
So what happened? Everything sounds very different. Is it bad? Not really, it's just different. Music  has shifted, and as such so have boy bands. For the most part, boy bands fit into pop, and since pop changes over time so have they.

And featured (usually rap) artists that ruin otherwise good songs suck, and I still hate Bieber's hair.