Inside the Business of Boy Bands — From One Direction to BTS

For about as long as the recorded music industry has been around, so has fans’ obsession with male vocal groups. Now collectively referred to as “boy bands,” these groups have ranged in musical style, presentation and size across generations, but they always remain a mainstay in global music culture. Groups like New Kids on the Block, Menudo, Boyz II Men, One Direction and BTS are more than just singers — they’re big business, and the music industry knows it. It’s become expected that modern hit boy bands can sell millions of albums and, at the same time, they can sell themselves — whether that’s emblazoned on pillowcases, t-shirts, action figures, toothbrushes and more. Related But the way record labels can capitalize on the rabid fandom induced by boy bands doesn’t last forever. As Jason Lipshutz, co-chief content officer at Billboard, puts it in his new book A Whole Lotta History: One Direction and the Sound That Shaped a Generation, the groups are known to be “ephemeral” in nature, lasting for just a handful of years while their largely teen girl fanbase is at its most dedicated. “The idea is that if you’re 13 and a huge boy band fan, you know, by the time you’re 17, you might not be as into that boy band,” Lipshutz explains. Lipshutz joins the latest episode of Billboard On the Record to talk about his new book on One Direction, the industry mechanics behind boy bands and how our modern definition of these groups came to be. To watch this episode of Billboard On the Record, check out the YouTube video below or click here for more viewing and listening options. An edited and condensed excerpt of the conversation can also be found below. Let’s start simple — what is a boy band, by definition? What is a boy band? Before that term got popularized in around the late ’80s, early ’90s, it was basically just, like, an all-male vocal group. And now, in the 2020s, we have this much wider understanding of what a boy band means, what is typically associated with it, how many members are in it and what the sound is like. Dating back to the ’60s, a boy band, before they were called a boy band, was basically just any kind of vocal group that was comprised of all men. Could a barbershop quartet be considered a boy band? Yeah, that is the original boy band to me. For generations before us, that was big business back then. And now, as popular culture has evolved, so has the idea of a popular boy band. I think the classical understanding of a boy band really is steeped in the ’90s — Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, New Kids on the Block, et cetera. What do you think is the first modern boy band? Probably New Kids on the Block. I mean, you know, I think after the Beatles, you get to different iterations of that type of fan impact. In the ’70s, you have these family bands — the Jackson 5 and the Osmonds. What I write about in the book is that the great thing about the Beatles when they really first started is that they were coming off of this period where Elvis was king, and what the Beatles did was, for all of the fans who idolized Elvis, “Oh, now you can idolize this group of guys and pick your favorite and argue with your friends about your favorite.” In the ’70s, you have groups like the Jackson 5 and the Osmonds. Menudo starts in the ’70s. There you are also getting different members that fans gravitate toward because they’re of their ages. Related There’s something for everyone. There’s something for everyone. Very wholesome, very marketable. You can also think about Motown and then into New Edition in the ’80s. When we think about the modern boy band, more than anything, you think about the sound and the merchandise. That’s, to me, New Kids. Not only did they have this bubblegum pop sound, but they marketed the hell out of them with different collectibles and different action figures and posters and there was even a 1-800 number you could call to just hear their voices. You had this really interesting passage in the book, in which you quoted music executive Maurice Starr — the creator of New Edition and New Kids on the Block. He said in an interview that: “They have soul. They sing Black. That’s how I taught them to sing.” There’s a lot to unpack with that one. But I do actually want to focus on the last part of what he said, which was, “That’s how I taught them to sing.” It points to what I see as one of the core tenets of being a boy band, which is that it’s something that’s put together by someone, often a music executive. How often it is that boy bands are just products of a music executive or a record label versus groups that happen in more of an organic fashion? Colloquially, we understand that boy bands are not kicking around in a garage in the same way that a punk band might be. They are formed either through a casting call/audition or a TV show or, you know, the K-pop system. It’s always a bit different per group. You know, with One Direction, what was so interesting about them is that, unlike Backstreet Boys — which was made from an audition — This was five solo performers on The X Factor in 2010 who all got eliminated and then got saved in dramatic reality TV fashion and cobbled together into a group. And then basically, they decamped to Harry‘s stepfather’s house to learn how to harmonize because they didn’t know how to sing together. Ninety-nine times out of 100 — probably more than that — that’s not going to work. And they’re not going to match. But for whatever reason, these five guys match. They sound great together. That is also the thing with boy bands: there aren’t that many successful boy bands. You mentioned, when talking about the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC, Lou Pearlman, who was the manager and put together both of those groups, and it turned out that he had written himself into the band. He was, like, a sixth member, basically, and there were a lot of shady things that happened with Lou. Based on your research, how often is it that some of the executives who are responsible for making these groups exploit them, given these are young people in boy bands, usually with no music industry experience? Lou Pearlman is the most famous one, and he’s very much like — oh, there was some shady stuff going down. Obviously, he went to prison — he died in prison in 2016. He’s a true music industry villain. When [*NSYNC and Backstreet Boys] both exploded, he swindled them out of millions and millions of dollars. That’s true TV drama stuff, where you have, like, this shady, shadowy business figure who was very clearly up to no good and went to prison because of it. Related When you think about the history of boy bands, everything else is a little bit in the gray. I wrote in the book about One Direction that a lot of One Direction’s fans would get mad at management because they would say, “Management, you’re working them too hard. Management, why did you do this? Why did you do that?” But as that was happening, there wasn’t, like, a ton of outcry from the boys themselves. And after One Direction went on hiatus, some of the boys continued to work with them in some capacity. Some obviously did not. But it’s not usually black and white, where it’s like this boy band is the hero, their handlers are the villains. This conversation exists in K-pop too. When we’re talking about One Direction, as I was researching, it was hard for me to really parse through all of that fan noise of, like, “Management, management, management. Why are you guys doing X, Y and Z?” And then also the kind of, you know, general vibe of the guys being like, “Yeah, we like our management team…” It’s one of those things that there’s no kind of easy answer to. One thing that you talked about in the book that I thought was interesting was how ephemeral boy bands are, and that’s kind of baked into the nature of what a boy band is. It’s not something that’s designed to last forever. Based on your research, does it feel like the folks working around these boy bands and girl groups really understand, when they’re signing up to work with these artists, that they have a very narrow window to put out products, put out albums, before it all comes crashing down? Yeah, I think it’s a little bit about expectation. I felt this at Billboard, covering One Direction in real time — you just felt, you know, that kind of wave pressing of, like, “Oh, my God, they’re this enormous thing.” And then they would put out an album every single year and then you have this breaking point where Zayn leaves the group. It’s very clear that multiple members want to go on hiatus and try solo stuff. When you talk about that ephemeral nature of boy bands and girl groups, the idea for labels and managers is, like, “Hey, let’s get out as much as possible in terms of new music, touring, while they’re still so red-hot.” Although I think that’s kind of the case with all pop artists and pop superstars. Still, it’s a little bit different here because the fans around boy bands typically are so young, right? The idea is that if you’re 13 and a huge boy band fan, you know, by the time you’re 17, you might not be as into that boy band. But here’s the thing, though. If you look at BTS’s comeback this year — they had this huge album and stadium tour. This was obviously after they went on an extended break while they fulfilled their military obligations in South Korea… In a previous generation, they would have come back and it would’ve been crickets in terms of excitement around it and fandom. But the BTS Army, especially online, is so gigantic that there was never any doubt that there was going to be a lot of fandom and excitement around the return. They bucked the trend. Related On the other side of that coin, look at what Backstreet Boys are doing on the road right now. I don’t think that Backstreet Boys command the same type of attention with their new singles and new albums anymore, but they’re still making a ton of money at the Sphere, on the road. In terms of that ephemeral trend — there was a moment when Backstreet Boys were enormous… then they didn’t have [an] album for five years [and] the moment was over… But [after they came back] they basically kept making albums. They kept persisting for years and years… Eventually, the nostalgia cycle brought them back into prominence because they had so many beloved songs. That is how to buck the ephemeral trend — keep going for such a long time that everyone who was a teenager when you came to popularity is now in their 30s and can buy concert tickets over and over and over. We’re seeing that with the Jonas Brothers again too. In your book, you talk about how, when One Direction first got started, everyone was buying the albums as a download, but by the time they ended, things had mostly switched over to Spotify. That was a tough transition period for the music industry. How much do you see the group as being shaped by those circumstances of time and place? The crazy thing, looking back at it, is that One Direction dropped their first album Up All Night in the U.K. in November 2011 and then four months later, it’s out in the U.S. No global release dates back then. I think it was really interesting to kind of track the evolution of the music industry from when One Direction debuted to when they put out their final album. When they really kind of started, Spotify was just sort of this oddity in Europe, and who cares about it in the U.S.? And then by late 2015, the third last time, everybody knows Spotify. When it comes to the cultural impact of One Direction, I don’t think the adoption of streaming [changed them a lot]. Radio was still a huge factor throughout their time. Album sales were still a huge factor. And fortunately for them, and for a lot of boy bands — I should say a lot of successful boy bands — they also had [strong] buying power [from their fans] where they can put out Take Me Home, their second album, and it has all of these different versions come out with it… like a “collect them all” kind of vibe. If you were a superfan, you wanted to hear every song, so you wanted to get every collectible. They were definitely an early adopter of that model.