Boy Band

A boy band (American English) or boyband (British English) is a style of pop group featuring between three and six young male singers who are usually also dancers. They also sing R&B songs as well and sometimes hip-hop. Often, th

A boy band (American English) or boyband (British English) is a style of pop group featuring between three and six young male singers who are usually also dancers. They also sing R&B songs as well and sometimes hip-hop. Often, they evolve out of church choral groups, or are put together by managers or producers who audition the groups for appearance, dancing, and singing ability, and often seen to be prefabricated. They are similar in concept to Girl groups. Though the term is mostly associated with the 1980s onwards, antecedents exist throughout the history of pop music. The Temptations, popular in the 1960s, may be considered a boy band, while The Monkees certainly were prefabricated, and Latin boy band Menudo was founded in 1977. Boy bands often achieve great commercial success.

Equally important to the group's commercial success is the group's image, carefully controlled by managing all aspects of the group's dress, promotional materials (which are supplied to teen magazines), and music videos, the most famous boy band manager being Lou Pearlman. Typically, each member of the group will have some distinguishing feature and be portrayed as having a particular personality stereotype, such as "the baby," "the bad boy," "the nice boy." Whilst managing the portrayal of popular musicians is as old as popular music, the particular pigeonholing of boy band members is a defining characteristic of boy and girl bands.