Imagine being in the spotlight, feeling the adrenaline and rush of performing, as 10,000 teenage girls screaming your name, imagine being chased by groupies everywhere you go as your face smiles back at you from the cover of teen magazines and your album on the charts. This is the life of boy bands. A boy band is a group of young male singers, popular among teens between the ages of 13-16. The members are usually expected to dance often in highly choreographed performances and sing. Boy bands were most popular in the late 80s and early 90s. Boy bands have been around since the 1960s.

        The Jackson 5 was the first popular boy band and is said to establish the real boy band persona. The Jackson 5 began in 1964, and included a 7 year old Michael Jackson. Ever since then generations have blown up with boy bands, including 80’s boy band New Edition, 90s boy bands, Boys II Men, N’ Sync, New Kids On The Block, and the Backstreet Boys. New millennium boy bands include, B2K, B5, The Jonas Brothers, Big Time Rush and Mindless Behavior.  So what is it about these teen sensations that make girls go completely gaga? The main reason is their image says Freshman Dominique Tidwell. “Girls have this perfect image of a guy in their head and as soon as a new boy band comes out, they immediately fall for the guys in the boy band because of their perfect image”, says Tidwell.

        In a typical boy band, each member of the group has some distinguishing feature and is portrayed as having a particular personality stereotype such as "the baby," "the bad boy," or "the nice boy." This of course attracts pre-teen and teen girls to having interest in boy bands and accounts of the boy band members. Sophomore Rebecca Toro state,” They’re appeal makes girls interested in them, things such as their clothing, looks, sound, basically their image.”

           The second factor is the music.  The love songs, the candy pop style songs that make girls go crazy. The love songs attract girls. They feel as if the boys are singing to them.  Boy band’s music attracts teen girls also by their music. With titles of songs like, “Girlfriend”, “I Love You”, “Mrs. Right”, “Bye Bye”, “ABC”, “U Got Me”, “All I Do”, “Bump  Bump”, and more love songs. Sophomore Baindu Idriss stated, “Boy band love songs are cheesy, boy bands in general are cheesy. All they do is talk about girls in their songs“The music despite the opinions of others is a part of the boy bands grave success such as the Backstreet Boys. The Backstreet Boys remain the biggest-selling boy band today with total record sales of 120 million. The band also has the two best-selling boy band albums ever, including 1999's Millennium with worldwide sales of 35 million and 1997's self-titled effort with worldwide sales of 28 million. It also placed 13 Top 40 singles on the Billboard Hot 100. The Jackson 5 topped charts with singles such as ABC, The Love You Save and I'll Be There selling more than 60 copies worldwide. B2K dropped their first Top 40 hit, Uh Huh in 2001. Their next single Bump, Bump, Bump, found them joined by Bad Boy CEO P. Diddy. 
        Boy bands are loved my millions of teens around the world. But one question still remains, after rising to the top, becoming worldwide sensations and becoming the heartthrobs of millions of teenage girls, why don’t boy bands last? Sophomore Amanuel Seyoum stated “boy bands never last; they make one big hit but don’t know how to stay together as a group. That’s why the always end up breaking up.”

        There is longevity and sustainability with boy bands. The lead singer or most talented out of the group goes solo after several years and leaves the group behind. This has happened repeatedly throughout generations of boy bands including with the Jackson 5 as Michael Jackson left the group and of course went solo and became the King of Pop and is one of the biggest entertainers of all time. New Edition, Bobby Brown went solo and started his own career in the music industry. In N Sync, Justin Timberlake he went solo and of course started his own career, which has been successful and even began an acting career. In B2K, Omarion went solo and started his solo career as an artist and even began acting. The Jonas Brothers, Nick Jones attempted to go solo but hasn’t been making any music lately.

        Everyone is familiar with the leaders of these boy bands are but where are the remaining members?  Many members of the group attempt to go solo also, but are not as successful as they were in the band.  According to the section “Where are they now?” from the website “Boy Bands,”  “Nick Carter (Backstreet Boys) and JC Chasez ('N Sync) have all had turns as solo artists but have not made it as successfully alone as what they initially had in their respective boy bands.”  So, why aren’t these artists successful once the band breaks up?  Junior, Macro Cuadra stated “Over time their popularity goes down, and they get older”

        Despite the fact that boy bands don’t last for very long, every generation has had their own boy band spin since the Jackson 5. We even see boy bands today.  Boy bands will be along for a very long time, every generation has one, but the bands themselves don’t always last. The bright side of the breakup of boy bands is that they always do reunion and back together concerts and tours, but they probably won’t be as successful as they were when they first got together.