I second this remark.

Boy bands by social and perhaps industry(?) definition is pure fabrication/bubble gum/flashy/slick dance choreography. It's more about their image than their music. The chain started with NKOTB, accented by Backstreet and N'Sync and leftovers from Westlife and the other small groups that surged from Europe.

I give Linkin Park much respect for putting out their own material and emphasizing their music and fan support more than anything else.

I dont think theyre gone, I just think they go in cycles... groups of guys/girls gettin together and harmonizing is nothing new in the music biz... I'd go so far as to include The Temptations and the Supremes in the group as originators of the genre... what they didnt wasnt so different from what N'sync and The spice Girls did if you think about it. So theyll be back, just in a different form...

K.

A part of me hopes they are gone but then again they weren't targeted at me, so if the young girls like them and enjoy music through them I say more power to them. We shall see...

I agree...however, at least NKOTB played their own instruments, so I guess they're not AS bad as the rest. But they're still pretty bad .

HOLY CRAP... boy bands started with NKOTB? did contemporary pop music only start in 1984?

jackson 5 anyone? new edition?... by definition you could almost count the ratpack as a boy band... although they'd be more of a man band...

i think allisauce has it right... boy band style pop started with motown r&b... you can still hear it in the background of todays pop... it's still got some really funky dance-able beats... i also agree that popular musical styles follow a cyclical pattern... but the cycle is getting shorter... what took 15 years to re-surge the first time only took 7 years to resurge a second time...

while the jackson 5 did play their own instruments i'd say they were the original starting point for so many 'boy band' type pop groups... there were the teen idols before them but that's more akin to the lame solo discs we get when the boy bands start getting old... but it wasn't until the mid-80s that boy bands took off like we know them today... by that point mtv was solid and the music video was THE way to become a success... so the focus became less on the music and more on the singing and dancing...

and i'd call linkin park a boy band... they've got a simple homogenized sound made to appeal to the same pop market once they outgrow the bubblegum pop... sure they play their own instruments... then again anyone who picks up a guitar could play along to their songs within a month...

LOL, I was thinking the same thing when I read that. The Osmond Brothers anyone?

if theyre not dead, they should die or be killed. that goes for the "artists" who hav broken off from their boy bands to pursue solo careers as well. THIS MEANS YOU, JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE!

Yes they are and it's much better that way

For the better well being of everyone...I hope theyre gone...for good.

I haven't anything from those life sucking, gaywadd, music raping, osh gosh bacosh )or whatever) boy bands in some time. Isn't a better world now? I still think MTV is a piece of shit still. There just as bad...agreed? They take an artist, whether their good or not and corporately perform soul surgery and take away everything that remotely gives them pure freedom of love in music....agreed? So when it comes to boy bands, they'll be back, oh yes you can count on that torture. As long as this world revovles around money, and there are little teeny boppers trying to impress their fake friends...their will always be boy bands. I say we all take this time of silence for what it's worth, a nice time out from those ****ing high stepping, circle dancing, ear peircing...wanna-be's.