And girl groups. And teen pop stars. There, I said it. Sue me. Send me hate mail. On second thoughts, don't. It's not my fault, really. I'm just picky when it comes to the kind of music I listen to. And, to be honest, when I hear a group of adolescents singing, "From the first day that I saw your smiling face, honey, I knew that we would be together forever," it makes me want to throw up in a hurry. The tragedy is: I may be one of a vanishing breed. How else can you or I account for the millions earned by these pre-pubescent debutants across the planet every year? Try a quick head count: There are the Backstreet Boys, Boyzone, 'N Sync, Code Red, Five, Take That (which broke up), 98 Degrees, Hanson... and we've only just begun. As for the fairer sex, there are the Spice Girls, All Saints, B*Witched, Destiny's Child and a couple of hundred more. I grew up with a mix of music from the seventies and eighties. There was Lynyrd Skynyrd, Janis Joplin, Grateful Dead, The Police, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. And there was Woodstock. Which is why coming face to face, over the last few years, with this onslaught of mush on MTV has been too much for me to handle. "They're fun to listen to," I'm told. It is a valid argument, especially since their music really does make me laugh. It also gives the term 'easy listening' a whole new connotation; after all, you can run through two whole albums without being able to differentiate one from the other. Snide remarks aside, it's important to try and figure out when and how this phenomenon actually began. Was it with Elvis Presley -- swagger and sidelocks in tow? Or was it The Beatles? Probably the latter, I guess. They had the right ingredients -- unruly hair, clean cut looks, cleaner lyrics -- or, at least, they did in the days before LSD, success and Yoko Ono. America had Motown and The Jackson 5. They both gave way to New Edition and, eventually, to the group I love to hate, New Kids On The Block. Five guys, each perfectly thought out to cater to all facets of womankind. One suave, another sexy, a third almost cerebral, a fourth who could dance and the fifth to just stand around looking stupid... That was it! The formula had arrived. You could blame NKOTB for today's marketing spin-offs too. According to Rolling Stone, the group grossed over $840 million in 1990 alone, endorsing everything from dolls to notebooks, cartoon shows, clothing, lunchboxes... in fact, almost everything manufacturers could dream of. Compare that with today's Spice Girl toys, 'N Sync screensavers and classroom debates on which of the Boyzone members has the cutest dimple -- and you can see where it all began. There were others like Color Me Badd, Milli Vanilli and those big sellers: Boys II Men. Finally, in 1996, a guy called Lou Pearlman decided to hold auditions for the creation of the perfect boy band. Voila! Welcome Backstreet Boys. Though it took them a while to catch on, the money soon came rolling in. So, using the Boys as a guinea pig, Pearlman revised and corrected his formula to come up with 'N Sync. On the other side, the UK unleashed Spice Girls, Take That, Boyzone, Five and Westlife. To get back to my pet grouse, though, I have friends who probably won't speak to me for the rest of their lives for what I have just said. But hey, I can live with that. Let's take a closer look at the boy band genre of music. The themes discussed rarely move beyond topics like How-I-fell-in-love-at-first-sight, Why-did-she-leave-me? or Why-don't-I-have-better-biceps? Okay, okay, the last one was an exaggeration; but who can tell? Another unwritten rule is that everything has to rhyme. Whether it makes sense or not is irrelevant, it's the rhyming that's important. Which explains why Boyzone came up with "If only tears were laughter, If only night was day, If only prayers were answered, Then we would hear God say..." Or why 'N Sync sang, "You may hate me but it ain't no lie, Baby, bye, bye, bye..." Or why Irish teens B*Witched opted for, "Say you will, say you won't, say you'll do what I don't, say you're true, say to me, c'est la vie." Beating them all at their own game, the Spice Girls thought real hard and came up with the highbrow: "I'll tell you what I want what I really really want, So tell me what you want what you really really want." The album promptly went triple platinum. Maybe I'm just a prude. Maybe boy bands and girl groups are all about uncomplicated fun. Maybe simple melodies and simpler lyrics help one get through the trials and tribulations of adolescence. Maybe they'll garner critical acclaim some day. Maybe I'll wake up one morning and wonder what I've been missing all along. Maybe. As for the 'If can't beat them, join them' theory, I think I'll pass for now. Keep your boy bands. Leave me with Woodstock, Led Zepp and Joplin. They may be passé, but they'll still be around when I won't. Lindsay Pereira has decided to apply for police protection. Illustration: Dominic Xavier Do tell us what you think of this diary
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