One Direction - is this a legit new threat wrt to a new boy band invasion? y/n

why are they wearing kiddie pajamas?

yeah, I mean my post was pretty much deadly serious and not at all tongue-in-cheek. i was just curious if these guys were really a "thing" or just another Jessie J for SNL.

thought this was an Alex in NYC thread

how would Another Boy Band threaten your world? I mean, the best pop released 1998-2000 was almost all boy (and girl) band.

apparently I really have to crank up the sarcasm meter for you guys today, huh?

But since Alfred needs it spelled out, no I'm not "threatened" by these guys, I like some boy band songs, I don't know that these guys will be awful, I just wonder if these guys are a legitimate chance to hit it "big" (whatever that means wrt to boy bands in 2012). I mean, do they have a shot at Bieber-level?

No.

apparently I really have to crank up the sarcasm meter for you guys today, huh?

what kind of crank are you using

Somebody mentioned "The Beatles" this morning, in relation to the 'reaction' they got.

My mom saw them on the Today Show and was smitten. O_o

man, I get shit for being too earnest, then get shit when I start a thread with a "jokey" premise, you can't win around here, can you?

No.&#nbsp;

Gah

god, americans, it is literally as if things don't exist for you until they actually land on your shores

you can act like you've only just been told about cher lloyd next

who?

god, americans, it is literally as if things don't exist for you until they actually land on your shores

But why would we know who they are if they are only just now getting any sort of traction over here? Like, I enjoy a lot pop that comes out of the UK, but I'm not actively seeking out stuff like this. Much more likely to seek out the more R&B, female-fronted end of UK pop right now.

What a surprise, that people don't know about something until they know about it...

The Wanted seem quite a bit better.

if i waited for my favourite US acts to get traction over here before paying attention to them i...would still not have heard any of them

well, yeah, the key part being "your favorite", I have no reason or desire, really, to seek out new boy band pop

lex would you have recommended someone outside the UK mediasphere look into One Direction?

if they were interested in boy bands enough to start a thread when one emrges, yeah

or in x factor alumni

Had the tv on and saw them the other morning:

from Rolling Pop Thread:

Rockefeller Plaza in NYC was packed this morning with young girls watching Brit/Irish boy band One Direction performing "What Makes You Beautiful" live on the Today Show

― curmudgeon, Monday, March 12, 2012 12:45 PM (Yesterday

haha looking at the results chart that must have been the most unsuspenseful season of X-Factor ever

it wasn't suspenseful but it was actually the best XF season EVER i think - the entire top four were viable long-term pop acts (well arguably except the actual winner, lol) and in completely different ways, too. last year otoh, there were lots of voting surprises but you could imagine never hearing from any of them again.

gah X-Factor has taken me back down the Jedward rabbit hole:

On 11 February 2011, Jedward won the Irish national selection for the Eurovision Song Contest 2011 on The Late Late Show with their entry single "Lipstick". They consequently represented Ireland at the contest in Düsseldorf, progressing through the second semi-final on 12 May, and performed at the final on 14 May 2011, achieving eighth place.[13] "Lipstick" was released as the first single released from their second album Victory. Both "Lipstick" and the following single "Bad Behaviour" reached number 1 in the Irish Singles Chart, while Victory also went to number 1 in the Irish Albums Chart.[14]

In August/September 2011, Jedward participated in Celebrity Big Brother 2011, finishing in third place.[15]

Jedward for the second time in a row, entered the Irish Eurovision national final and on 24 February won both the jury and public vote and will be representing Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan with their entry "Waterline".[16]

if they were interested in boy bands enough to start a thread when one emrges, yeah

You do understand that people can be interested in an aspect of pop culture without really being invested in a specific subset, right? I mean, I can be fascinated by the rise of the Twilight phenomenon without ever wanting to watch a second of the films or read a single page of the books.

or in x factor alumni

Explain why I should be invested in a version of a program that isn't even aired in my country?

Like I completely understand your frustration with people set in a single-minded mode of absorbing pop music, but you do have to make certain allowances for where people are located and the aspects they are exposed to.

If lex did that he wouldn't be nearly as funny!

I thought that "What Makes You Beautiful" song was alright when I heard it visiting the UK last year, but I was kind of shocked when I saw the SNL announcement as well.

I'm interested in the how of this. What was the marketing angle? Or was it a viral thing that picked up traction? We haven't had a major boy band in this pop mould (I know the Jonas Brothers etc, but there are arguments to be made about the differences) and obviously we have a long history in the US of not caring at all about UK Boy Band Sensations like Take That, Westlife, etc....

If anyone can illuminate me on how this happened (and I'm not begrudging their success or concerned about it in anyway...I think it's good for America) I'd be grateful.

all the Harry dolls were sold out in Tesco the other day. my daughter has a bit of a crush on him.

Probably a surplus of Zane dolls though...

got it in one :(

I mean, the best pop released 1998-2000 was almost all boy (and girl) band.

good god no, all that boy band stuff was 100% pure garbage and I am boggled by people who defend it.

the best pop released 1998-2000 was almost all this is a thread for dope timbaland ripoffs from the late 90s ~bump--bump--bump-cack~

Oh good, they plastered themselves across the itunes store the other day and I was going to share on a shitty band photos, but got lazy.

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u120/kingkonggodzilla/Screenshot2012-03-15at54903PM.png

I'm going to take a stab at the source of the lex/jonviachi confusion: in Britain, they probably have new boy bands popping up all the time, whereas the Jonas Bros are the closest we've had since NSync broke up.

Oh wait, Gukbe already noted that.

Boy bands will probably be back once the get get sick of reality talent shows. Not that I've missed them, but I won't be missing those idol acts either.

Why do 1D have to look like the Tory Youth Brigade in all those silly clothes?

like early Spandau Ballet?

these dudes are pretty hilarious looking... i think it would be cool to have a boy band back but they're pretty uninspiring -- k-pop groups shit on them, obv

"what makes you beautiful" is pretty huge tho

visually they remind me of LFO more than anything

feel like their impact is kinda dulled by the fact that shit just sounds like tons of male-fronted dance-pop that's on the radio right now -- there's nothing really unique aside from the fact that they're a boy band

They make me think of a Simpsons episode where Lisa buys a magazine and its called "Non-Threatening Boys"

With ilxor Corey in it

Was surprised to learn today that they're all 18-20 yrs old (one might be 17). Thought they were more in the 15-17 range.

Oh, ok. Just found out they got a project in development with Nick and are slated to appear on an iCarly episode. I get where this is going now.

I'm surprised that it's 1D getting the big US push, I'd have thought JLS was a more likely candidate for US success.

im being a bit reductive for the sake of expediency... the trend i'm talking about is mirroring pop in general (lady gaga "the cure" etc), the current post-tropical house/"future bass" iteration of EDM seen in recent zedd & marshmello songs etc

but as far as the rock end of it goes i think the 1975 -> one direction is far from crazy... 1975 are a niche concern in america but pretty big in the UK & 1D did two blatant rip offs of their sound and i think also messed around with matt healy at one point. and again the guys behind that are working in this same vein w/ some of the listed artists and others. (an interesting tangent here is that "slow hands" -- a bunetta/ryan song that fits comfortably in the company of this realm of tasteful soft rock -- was a bigger hit for niall than anything off harry's album and i think any other solo 1D songs outside of "pillowtalk" and "strip that down"). "wait" doesn't sound precisely like one direction but then again maroon 5 never has sounded like one direction or the other way around. i'm just outlining a continuum.

john mayer produced a song on the shawn mendes album

Daughter is watching iCarly and 1D have just turned up.

Harry's acting skills have certainly improved

maroon 5 are interesting to me specifically... red pill blues is half amazing and i think really representative of this general trend in pop but at the rock end in particular. you can see them slowly un-cheese themselves in the time in between "moves like jagger" (which fwiw was ripping off chic even before "get lucky"... it is maroon 5 after all) and "what lovers do". "don't wanna know" is a straight up trop house song basically & "cold" is the skeletal version of the slow, clean, insanely well produced, rippling guitar line stuff that pops up in a few places on red pill blues ("best 4 u" in particular). V is essentially unlistenable but not that far off of red pill blues really, the latter is just way less... cheesy & corny essentially in a lot of ways (in production and in the way that adam levine's falsetto isn't sharpened into an ice pick). "what lovers do" is basically an attempt at a "cool" version of "moves like jagger" (xtina becomes sza, shellback becomes starrah) but again we're talking about small degrees here -- "sugar" was this plasticine version of disco pop (dr luke & cirkut re-writing katy perry's already infantile but much better "birthday") that feels just a bit more artfully done on "what lovers do"

the 11 min song that closes red pill blues is basically an extended yacht rock jam (maroon 5 balearc remixing themselves) and i really don't think that you have to draw a far line between that and some of the real head-y one direction album tracks like "what a feeling" and "fireproof"

Can’t talk about “what lovers do” w/o genuflecting to “sexual” though.

the 11 min song that closes red pill blues is basically an extended yacht rock jam (maroon 5 balearc remixing themselves) and i really don't think that you have to draw a far line between that and some of the real head-y one direction album tracks like "what a feeling" and "fireproof"

Also I just listened to “Closure” for the first time and it’s a jam.

Oh yeah, Charlie Puth for sure is in that vein. I need to check out the other stuff you all mentioned tho, don't think I've heard any recent Maroon 5 or Shawn Mendes

Think part of what I like about "Stockholm Syndrome" so much is not just the 1975 sounds, but that the song feels so light. The chorus is catchy but not weighed down with a thousand synths like most singles for radio. Just breezes by effortlessly. I know it wasn't a single, so it has a little more freedom in that way, but I think (hope) there is a place for more songs like that on the radio. "No Tears Left to Cry" feels open in the same way

my point wasn't to say that it's absurd to draw any connection between the 1975 and one direction but to say that identifying them specifically as especially significant loci along this 'lineage' which you really have to squint at to notice anyhow is idk a little ridiculous? like phillip phillips's hits, jt's "not a bad thing", several of ed sheeran's singles going back to "the a team", many of the electronic/guitar-hybrid hits like "wake me up" "waves" "stolen dance" "a sky full of stars" and ofc the aforementioned "get lucky", several of the acoustic fauxternative hits like "riptide" and "ho hey" that most people here will turn their noses up at, the list goes on really. 1d certainly fit somewhere in there w/ like "story of my life" and "night changes" and i guess you could say "chocolate" did something as well but to argue one group-via-the-other 'crystallized' this aesthetic that has saturated significant swaths of the airwaves for the past 5+ years is just revisionism in the extreme.

i suppose you could say WELL sure, those are lite guitar pop but they're not all TASTEFUL lite guitar pop so it's different! but that judgment is completely arbitrary and goes back to my original point that we (= cultural commentators/observers/critics/whatever) frequently define a lineage similarly arbitrarily by just picking out the stuff we like and drawing imaginary lines of influence through them when the reality is that plenty of the stuff we want to forget about or dismiss as fluff sounded very much the same and was competing for people's attention (often more successfully!) within the very same spaces

idk maybe i'm just feeling extra cynical about cultural criticism and canonization and such lately and it's manifesting itself as bitter rants on this thread where i refuse to believe that anyone could find maroon 5's recent output to be anything but completely generic and ignorable. ("don't wanna know" apparently being 'trop house' simply reminds me how little that phrase has communicated about any of the music it's been used to describe.)

Matt Healy certainly seems to think it's valid

http://www.mtv.com/news/2737946/matt-healy-one-direction-rip-off-1975/

(like, yes, I also find the canonization among critics of the unctuous dude yacht rock hit axis of pop -- maroon 5, charlie puth, shawn mendes, etc. -- very frustrating, particularly since there are literal hundreds of women in pop/alt-pop making better music. but The 1975 and One Direction have a lot of actual connections, they're not some arbitrary indie band with 100 bandcamp plays.)

s/hit/shit, although unfortunately they are all hits as well

did anyone hear zayn's new album?

lol i was surprised when it seemed like the zayn album came out of nowhere but i guess even the diehards have moved on since it completely flopped - chart peak of 77 in the UK and 61 in the US

yeah, I didn't payed much attention to it.
only listened to it once. i think it's possible for it to have a couple of ok songs, but the album is so so long that i just got tired and gave up.

It's weird, I still love 1D but don't have any interest in their solo material. The closest I come is NIAL, fergodssake

i enjoy niall and harry's solo songs.
saw niall live last year and it was pretty great.

genuinely curious to see what harry does next

i bet i'll like 60 percent of the zayn album but have been too tired to try lol

did anyone hear zayn's new album?

― Nourry, Monday, January 14, 2019 9:29 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No, but I noticed he's currently modelling for Philippine clothing brand Penshoppe ...

this is my sexual "nightmare":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NZvM1918_E

this is his best solo song yet? imo

i think so, too.

this is pretty nice, i really like the balearic vibe, but i wish it was longer

album cover of the year

i support this message.

I don’t understand but I want to

I absolutely adore this single.

the talk about the cover made me listen to it again, and yes

it's very "waves (kacey musgraves remix)"

disappointed to report that the d*plo remix of niall's latest single is a significant improvement upon the original

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVKxjto88Vk

I am embarrassed anew each time I remember when I made this thread, esp now that I'm a fan of their latter albums and some of the solo (Niall and Harry, mostly). Terrible wording in trying to predict whether they'd actually crossover in the States or not.

i'm just going to go out on a limb and predict that many of the ppl expecting a Great Album to precipitate based on "lights up" will be disappointed (except the diehard stans who're gonna love it regardless obv)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-x3uD5z1bQ

i don't have any expectations with harry styles so two pleasant singles so far has been a nice surprise

“sign of the times” - one of the best songs of the decade

i think he was just on snl

hosting and performing

Niall released his second solo album, which I still have to listen, but I'm enjoying this Tears for Fears rip-off, although I prefer when he's doing songs a la fleetwood mac. and he's a cutie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4L3EQ6ljcU

there's some amazing songs on the album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TA-WzcAl5Q

he's had the brilliant idea of continuing to work w/ the ppl who made 1D's best music... genius stuff

some other good ones

new angel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAhdtwJnI8w

small talk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fFc0sqAGAc

san francisco

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkvm1qEabl4

'cross your mind' is a really good song.
who knew that, besides Harry, Niall would stand out as a solo act?

it was pretty obvious to me tbh

is he singing "It's easy to return the avocado" on "Cross Your Mind"

it was pretty obvious to me tbh

― maura

i thought that zayn's carrer would not be as "invisible" as it seems these days.

great 1D album, although i miss the other voices

"bend the rules" is especially <3

zayn has a new song. it's nice. just nice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAo38Q9c4xA