The Birth of a New Nation
By loose definition Boybands are considered groups of boys who only sing and don’t play their own instruments, yet The Beatles are known as the original Boyband. The quartet, gaining their claim to fame in the 60’s, started a mass fan following known as Beatlemania. Their music spread all across the globe. With over two million records sold and 15 number-one Billboard hits, Beatlemania turned the average teenaged girl into a screaming banshee when their idols were so much as mentioned, making The Beatles the most well known Boyband in history. To this day, 46 years after the split of the band, you can still find Beatles’ merchandise in any city you venture to. The birth of Beatlemania and the spread of the original Boyband Fever brought the dawn of a new nation, overrun with money-hungry record producers feeding off parents’ extra pennies: the Fangirl Nation.
Boyband Academy
After seeing the success that The Beatles had with the younger population of the world, record labels jumped at the opportunity to make major bucks. They immediately started scouting out the most talented young men of the time, thus creating the Boyband Academy. Word was spread from record companies to music schools and from music schools to private institutions, all searching for the most talented, yet moldable, young minds they could find. It began as a summer program that musicians could only attend if they were recommended by a member of the Musical Organization Network of Elite Youths (MONEY). It took a good 30 years to really get off its feet, but in 1990, the Academy released its first music sensation, Take That (See: Notable Boybands).
Later on, the Academy expanded to a full boarding school in London. At first, it was mainly boys, although some girls also made it through to the Academy’s elite schooling (See: Girl Bands). If a young musician (between the ages of 8 and 12) shows star potential, a member of MONEY will nominate them to audition for the school. After auditions, the students must wait for two years while the Academy studies their personal progress before finding out if they’ve earned a spot. Once accepted into the Academy, students spend two more years in London undergoing musical training, PR training, and multiple personality tests to see if they are fit for the critical eye of the public.
After an intense two years, they are sent home to return to normal life for a year, awaiting their final results. If they pass in all tested categories and successfully acclimate to the real world for a year (to make them seem relatable), they are then placed in their boyband. The Boybands are created based on the personality and skill level of each student. The basic equation for a successful Boyband includes: The Serious One, the Heartthrob, the Mysterious Bad Boy, the Boy Next Door, and the Goofball. Sometimes students could fill more than one requirement and result in only three or four members being placed in a group. The new band members then spend a month in a refresher course and get to know their new bandmates before getting thrown into the real world of fangirls and public criticism.
One of the newer methods of introducing a new Boyband is through the UK hit reality show, The X Factor, after Simon Cowell became a notable member and benefactor in MONEY. The show acted as a way to spread the latest Boyband being promoted even if it didn’t win the entire competition. This created a fan-base before the group was really sent out on its own as a brand.
Notable Boybands
Take That:
Take That was the first successful Boyband created by the Academy in 1990. It took a lot of trial and error to perfect the boyband equation, but Take That was the result of all MONEY’s hard work. Although Take That was the first major success, it was also considered a flop. Not five years after their rise to fame, Robbie Williams cracked under the pressure and dove into the world of drugs, sex, and lies. MONEY and the Academy checked and double checked all their data as this behavior was supposed to be trained out of members before they graduated. Giving up on their first trial, they let the group dissipate and Take That became a piece of history. Look for their third reunion tour in Summer 2016.
The Wanted:
After super intensive training through the Academy, The Wanted was supposed to thrive on The X-Factor but didn’t make it past the audition process. MONEY nearly split them as a group but they were given a second chance to release a debut album and redeem themselves. Their first number one single in the UK was “Glad You Came” and soon after the hit broke into America. MONEY finally had a worldwide success on their hands, having by this point perfected the boyband equation, weeding out any resistance to the system they had so carefully woven together. They milked The Wanted for everything it was worth, to the point of giving the band their own reality show for a single season. The Wanted Life, was the last major event in The Wanted’s history before they broke up due to internal conflicts.
One Direction:
Possibly the most successful Boyband of the 21st century, One Direction made their debut on The X-Factor, coming in third place but outshining the winner and runner up with their worldwide success. The day after being voted off the talent show, they were signed to Simon Cowell’s record label SYCO and have since blown up the industry. MONEY was still making good revenue off The Wanted, so they weren’t expecting much success from their back up band, One Direction. MONEY also wasn’t expecting a turf war between One Direction and The Wanted, putting The Wanted out of business and sending three of its members to the A&E.
One Direction was more open about its designated band member roles, and more girls from a wider age group fell head over heels for the band. MONEY saw this as its chance to make some major bank and put all their efforts into backing this formerly supporting act. They released multiple books, perfumes, lunch boxes, toothpaste, toothbrushes, condoms, body-washes, and even specialized contact lenses of each boy’s eye color. They have their own movie, directed by acclaimed documentarian, Morgan Spurlock, which was the number one documentary in 2013, and sold more tickets opening weekend than The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Despite being such a success, they burned out after just five years, when Bad Boy member, Zayn Malik, left the band mid-tour, 25 March 2015.
Girl-Bands
The Spice Girls:
Formed in 1994, with their smash hit Wannabe, The Spice Girls are the most recognized girl band around the world. Their member personas were used to help sell their image, made up of Scary, Sporty, Baby, Ginger, and Posh Spice. These girls were fierce and offered a new sense of girl power to the many fangirls who followed their success. This change in the system brought out a new type of fan and to MONEY a new form of income. They produced a movie based on their lives called Spice World, a comedy in which the band members traverse some issues on their way to perform at Royal Albert Hall. The movie was played off as fiction when too many secrets about the British Monarchy were revealed and the Queen threatened to shut it down before the release. Each of the singers now works as a double agent for the pop industry and the Monarchy.
Girls Aloud:
A girl group put together as a test for a different talent show called Popstars: The Rivals, Girls Aloud had moderate success after MONEY eventually let the group do its own thing because it was the most well behaved group to come from the Academy. The group is still producing music, its most recent album being Ten, released in 2013 after a minor three-year hiatus.
Little Mix:
While Boyband after Boyband has been pushed through the struggle of The X-Factor, none of them has ever actually won the competition. Little Mix, a recent girl group put together before the 8th season of The X-Factor, was the first Academy group to ever actually win The X-Factor UK based on the public’s vote. While they didn’t quite reach the same record sales as some of their counterparts, they still made major profits from the group’s angelic tones and merchandise, keeping them in the pool of manufactured talent.
Members Going Solo
A common ending to a Boy or Girl Band’s career is a member leaving the group. Exhaustion and disagreements between band members or members and MONEY, seem to be the most recurring theme in a member’s departure. Geri Halliwell’s (Ginger Spice) departure from Spice Girls in 1998 and Zayn Malik’s withdrawal from One Direction in 2015 were both said to be for these reasons. Both singers went on to produce solo albums. Zayn’s was released a year to the day that he left the band , just to spite the system.
Robbie Williams of Take That was given the ultimatum to get his drug abuse issues under control or leave the band. He chose to leave the band, becoming a successful soloist before rejoining Take That for a short period in 2010. Cheryl Cole, while not officially leaving Girls Aloud, did pursue a solo career during its hiatus and also worked as a judge on The X-Factor mentoring future popstar, Cher Lloyd and runner up, Rebecca Ferguson. Nathan Sykes from The Wanted is now touring as an opening act for Little Mix, though no mention of his previous Boyband affiliation has since been brought up.
While Victoria Beckham did pursue a solo career after the breakup of the Spice Girls, that did not last. She instead became a fashion icon and personality, creating her own fashion line and working as a judge on Germany’s Next Top Model. She is now married to football star David Beckham and the couple have a net worth of roughly £508 Million.
Fangirl Nation
The mania surrounding these bands is what we refer to today as the Fangirl Nation, mostly comprised of girls from ages 6-25 who spend all their extra cash (or their parent’s cash) on merchandise and music from these manufactured bands. After a while, the mania started to expand. Music and merch weren’t enough to satisfy the burning passion that these girls were feeling for the bands. Social Media training was added to the curriculum at the Academy so band members were able to interact with fans personally, but the fans wouldn’t be satisfied. Older fans began to write fan-fiction about their favorite members, some even going as far as getting these horribly disturbing stories published as novels. Fans created online roleplaying chat rooms where people would impersonate members from a band so they could imagine they actually knew the band personally. Some girls have forced family members to partake in their fangirl routines as well. Parents get tattoos of band members’ faces or replicas of band members tattoos. Family vacations are reduced to spending thousands of pounds for the whole family to meet band members backstage at concerts.
According to multiple studies sponsored by MONEY, a spike in counseling of college age students for symptoms of fangirl fever has erupted over the past five years. Grades have been compromised during times of Boyband drama, putting girls at risk of failing out of school if a band member so much as gets a haircut. The hysteria only continues to grow as MONEY continues to manufacture boy and girl bands through the Academy continuously, increasing their revenue and playing with the minds of fangirls.
By loose definition Boybands are considered groups of boys who only sing and don’t play their own instruments, yet The Beatles are known as the original Boyband. The quartet, gaining their claim to fame in the 60’s, started a mass fan following known as Beatlemania. Their music spread all across the globe. With over two million records sold and 15 number-one Billboard hits, Beatlemania turned the average teenaged girl into a screaming banshee when their idols were so much as mentioned, making The Beatles the most well known Boyband in history. To this day, 46 years after the split of the band, you can still find Beatles’ merchandise in any city you venture to. The birth of Beatlemania and the spread of the original Boyband Fever brought the dawn of a new nation, overrun with money-hungry record producers feeding off parents’ extra pennies: the Fangirl Nation.
Boyband Academy
After seeing the success that The Beatles had with the younger population of the world, record labels jumped at the opportunity to make major bucks. They immediately started scouting out the most talented young men of the time, thus creating the Boyband Academy. Word was spread from record companies to music schools and from music schools to private institutions, all searching for the most talented, yet moldable, young minds they could find. It began as a summer program that musicians could only attend if they were recommended by a member of the Musical Organization Network of Elite Youths (MONEY). It took a good 30 years to really get off its feet, but in 1990, the Academy released its first music sensation, Take That (See: Notable Boybands).
Later on, the Academy expanded to a full boarding school in London. At first, it was mainly boys, although some girls also made it through to the Academy’s elite schooling (See: Girl Bands). If a young musician (between the ages of 8 and 12) shows star potential, a member of MONEY will nominate them to audition for the school. After auditions, the students must wait for two years while the Academy studies their personal progress before finding out if they’ve earned a spot. Once accepted into the Academy, students spend two more years in London undergoing musical training, PR training, and multiple personality tests to see if they are fit for the critical eye of the public.
After an intense two years, they are sent home to return to normal life for a year, awaiting their final results. If they pass in all tested categories and successfully acclimate to the real world for a year (to make them seem relatable), they are then placed in their boyband. The Boybands are created based on the personality and skill level of each student. The basic equation for a successful Boyband includes: The Serious One, the Heartthrob, the Mysterious Bad Boy, the Boy Next Door, and the Goofball. Sometimes students could fill more than one requirement and result in only three or four members being placed in a group. The new band members then spend a month in a refresher course and get to know their new bandmates before getting thrown into the real world of fangirls and public criticism.
One of the newer methods of introducing a new Boyband is through the UK hit reality show, The X Factor, after Simon Cowell became a notable member and benefactor in MONEY. The show acted as a way to spread the latest Boyband being promoted even if it didn’t win the entire competition. This created a fan-base before the group was really sent out on its own as a brand.
Notable Boybands
Take That:
Take That was the first successful Boyband created by the Academy in 1990. It took a lot of trial and error to perfect the boyband equation, but Take That was the result of all MONEY’s hard work. Although Take That was the first major success, it was also considered a flop. Not five years after their rise to fame, Robbie Williams cracked under the pressure and dove into the world of drugs, sex, and lies. MONEY and the Academy checked and double checked all their data as this behavior was supposed to be trained out of members before they graduated. Giving up on their first trial, they let the group dissipate and Take That became a piece of history. Look for their third reunion tour in Summer 2016.
The Wanted:
After super intensive training through the Academy, The Wanted was supposed to thrive on The X-Factor but didn’t make it past the audition process. MONEY nearly split them as a group but they were given a second chance to release a debut album and redeem themselves. Their first number one single in the UK was “Glad You Came” and soon after the hit broke into America. MONEY finally had a worldwide success on their hands, having by this point perfected the boyband equation, weeding out any resistance to the system they had so carefully woven together. They milked The Wanted for everything it was worth, to the point of giving the band their own reality show for a single season. The Wanted Life, was the last major event in The Wanted’s history before they broke up due to internal conflicts.
One Direction:
Possibly the most successful Boyband of the 21st century, One Direction made their debut on The X-Factor, coming in third place but outshining the winner and runner up with their worldwide success. The day after being voted off the talent show, they were signed to Simon Cowell’s record label SYCO and have since blown up the industry. MONEY was still making good revenue off The Wanted, so they weren’t expecting much success from their back up band, One Direction. MONEY also wasn’t expecting a turf war between One Direction and The Wanted, putting The Wanted out of business and sending three of its members to the A&E.
One Direction was more open about its designated band member roles, and more girls from a wider age group fell head over heels for the band. MONEY saw this as its chance to make some major bank and put all their efforts into backing this formerly supporting act. They released multiple books, perfumes, lunch boxes, toothpaste, toothbrushes, condoms, body-washes, and even specialized contact lenses of each boy’s eye color. They have their own movie, directed by acclaimed documentarian, Morgan Spurlock, which was the number one documentary in 2013, and sold more tickets opening weekend than The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Despite being such a success, they burned out after just five years, when Bad Boy member, Zayn Malik, left the band mid-tour, 25 March 2015.
Girl-Bands
The Spice Girls:
Formed in 1994, with their smash hit Wannabe, The Spice Girls are the most recognized girl band around the world. Their member personas were used to help sell their image, made up of Scary, Sporty, Baby, Ginger, and Posh Spice. These girls were fierce and offered a new sense of girl power to the many fangirls who followed their success. This change in the system brought out a new type of fan and to MONEY a new form of income. They produced a movie based on their lives called Spice World, a comedy in which the band members traverse some issues on their way to perform at Royal Albert Hall. The movie was played off as fiction when too many secrets about the British Monarchy were revealed and the Queen threatened to shut it down before the release. Each of the singers now works as a double agent for the pop industry and the Monarchy.
Girls Aloud:
A girl group put together as a test for a different talent show called Popstars: The Rivals, Girls Aloud had moderate success after MONEY eventually let the group do its own thing because it was the most well behaved group to come from the Academy. The group is still producing music, its most recent album being Ten, released in 2013 after a minor three-year hiatus.
Little Mix:
While Boyband after Boyband has been pushed through the struggle of The X-Factor, none of them has ever actually won the competition. Little Mix, a recent girl group put together before the 8th season of The X-Factor, was the first Academy group to ever actually win The X-Factor UK based on the public’s vote. While they didn’t quite reach the same record sales as some of their counterparts, they still made major profits from the group’s angelic tones and merchandise, keeping them in the pool of manufactured talent.
Members Going Solo
A common ending to a Boy or Girl Band’s career is a member leaving the group. Exhaustion and disagreements between band members or members and MONEY, seem to be the most recurring theme in a member’s departure. Geri Halliwell’s (Ginger Spice) departure from Spice Girls in 1998 and Zayn Malik’s withdrawal from One Direction in 2015 were both said to be for these reasons. Both singers went on to produce solo albums. Zayn’s was released a year to the day that he left the band , just to spite the system.
Robbie Williams of Take That was given the ultimatum to get his drug abuse issues under control or leave the band. He chose to leave the band, becoming a successful soloist before rejoining Take That for a short period in 2010. Cheryl Cole, while not officially leaving Girls Aloud, did pursue a solo career during its hiatus and also worked as a judge on The X-Factor mentoring future popstar, Cher Lloyd and runner up, Rebecca Ferguson. Nathan Sykes from The Wanted is now touring as an opening act for Little Mix, though no mention of his previous Boyband affiliation has since been brought up.
While Victoria Beckham did pursue a solo career after the breakup of the Spice Girls, that did not last. She instead became a fashion icon and personality, creating her own fashion line and working as a judge on Germany’s Next Top Model. She is now married to football star David Beckham and the couple have a net worth of roughly £508 Million.
Fangirl Nation
The mania surrounding these bands is what we refer to today as the Fangirl Nation, mostly comprised of girls from ages 6-25 who spend all their extra cash (or their parent’s cash) on merchandise and music from these manufactured bands. After a while, the mania started to expand. Music and merch weren’t enough to satisfy the burning passion that these girls were feeling for the bands. Social Media training was added to the curriculum at the Academy so band members were able to interact with fans personally, but the fans wouldn’t be satisfied. Older fans began to write fan-fiction about their favorite members, some even going as far as getting these horribly disturbing stories published as novels. Fans created online roleplaying chat rooms where people would impersonate members from a band so they could imagine they actually knew the band personally. Some girls have forced family members to partake in their fangirl routines as well. Parents get tattoos of band members’ faces or replicas of band members tattoos. Family vacations are reduced to spending thousands of pounds for the whole family to meet band members backstage at concerts.
According to multiple studies sponsored by MONEY, a spike in counseling of college age students for symptoms of fangirl fever has erupted over the past five years. Grades have been compromised during times of Boyband drama, putting girls at risk of failing out of school if a band member so much as gets a haircut. The hysteria only continues to grow as MONEY continues to manufacture boy and girl bands through the Academy continuously, increasing their revenue and playing with the minds of fangirls.
About Andie RoseAndie Rose Roberts is a Sophomore at Eckerd College studying Theater, Music, and Creative Writing. Her favorite city is London, so she is very excited to be studying here this semester and finds this experience incredible. Andie is hoping to return to the UK for graduate school in a couple years. She enjoys playing piano, bass, and singing in her free time, as well as writing short stories and watching Netflix.
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