Donzerly Light: Boy Bands

Boy bands are a young man’s game and, as a noted young person, I’d like to be the first person to welcome you to this essay about boy bands and the nonsense that comes to mind when I’m thinking about them. You might find yourself wondering how often I think about boy bands. I’m happy to report that I think about boy bands an average amount of time – no more than three or four hours a day. Just a normal, healthy amount of my waking hours.

I’ve noticed that most fans of boy bands tend to identify as female. I don’t think boy bands necessarily appeal to females more, but I do think that males are afraid to openly like boy bands. It’s like how men are afraid to show emotion or let women have autonomy over their bodies. I wonder if men think that liking boy bands would lead to believing that a woman should be able to make her own decisions regarding healthcare and her body. And then where would we be? We’d all just be walking around, letting women lead their lives, unencumbered by the opinion of some dipshit that was born in the 1800s and looks like a constipated turtle. To be fair, I’m just assuming that Mitch McConnell was born in the 1800s. I am not assuming he looks like a constipated turtle. There are thousands of hours of footage and millions of photographs that uphold that observation.

A few months ago, I watched the Saturday Night Live 50th anniversary concert. The Backstreet Boys performed on the show and I found out two things that night: the Backstreet Boys are eerily well-preserved and Jon Hamm fucking LOVES “I Want It That Way.” Dude was totally rocking out. A lesser man wouldn’t have felt as comfortable singing along to that song in the same room as Steven Spielberg and … checks notes … Jelly Roll. That’s the kind of thing that restores a sliver of faith that I have in men, but as you might expect, it lasted for about 19 seconds until I got a news alert that the president decided to close an orphanage because those kids had been freeloading long enough. I’m paraphrasing, but you get what I mean.

I know she’s not a boy band, but Cher also performed at that SNL50 concert and let me tell you, I’ve never seen another person enjoying themselves as much as Kevin Costner was enjoying that performance. Next time you need a shot of dopamine, go watch a clip of Kevin Costner watching Cher. They may be older than your parents, but that clip will make you feel 5% more confident that everything will be OK (and when you add that extra 5%, that means the average person feels about 9% sure that everything will be OK, which is pretty good these days, all things considered).

We’ve all got our hopes and dreams. One of my hopes and/or dreams (Is this one of those geographical nomenclature things where it’s called a hope in the south and a dream in the north? Like “pop” and “soda?” Or “racism” and “heritage?”) is that one day we’ll all be able to openly love our boy bands with the kind of fervor and enthusiasm usually reserved for finding out that weekend socializing plans have been cancelled. I’ve got other hopes and dreams too, mostly just about treating people well and everyone just chilling the fuck out, but one thing at I time, I suppose.

Like any good boy band, my roster only has room for five (or four, or – god forbid – three). They’re not all going to make it to the boy band hall of fame, but they’ve at least made it to Donzerly Light, and so have you. And why are they here? To paraphrase the Backstreet Boys, I’m about to “tell you why!”

• Boyz II Men – Historically, I wouldn’t really consider Boyz II Men a boy band, but I guess they’ve got the word “boy” right in the title. I don’t know why I wouldn’t consider them a boy band, other than the fact that they don’t perform a lot of choreography. Ironically, that is not why I don’t consider Nirvana a boy band. Would any of this stand up in a court of law? We’ll probably never know. Anyhow, I saw Boyz II Men in concert about five years ago and they had to open and close the show with “Motownphilly,” because that’s their only popular song that is also upbeat. That’s not a criticism, just an observation. I’ve also observed that Boyz II Men are always going through something with the ladies in their lives. It’s nice to be able to turn to friends to talk about the stuff you’re going through, but I applaud Boyz II Men’s ability to coordinate both making love to their partners and asking their partners to take them back after a disagreement. Is that like when women who live in the same dorm have their menstrual cycles sync up? I believe it is! #science

  
  

• New Kids on the Block – I know New Kids on the Block weren’t the first boy band by any stretch of the imagination, but they probably deserve credit for redefining what it meant to be a boy band in the modern era. I’m referring to the late 80s and early 90s as “the modern era” here, so I’m using the term rather loosely (which makes me think of your mother). I give them credit for redefining what it meant to be a boy band because New Kids fans took their admiration to a level we pop culture fans hadn’t seen in quite a while. I’ll probably get shot down by a drone for this next sentence, but at the time, the way fans reacted to The Beatles was probably the closest comparison to how New Kids fans got so keyed up. Did you know that the New Kids had their own cartoon? They also had something the internet is calling “fashion figures,” but I think those are just dolls and I’m not sure who is willing to buy a New Kids “fashion figure,” but draws the line at buying a New Kids “doll.” Different strokes for different folks, I guess. New Kids on the Block still go on tour and make a lot of money doing so. They even have New Kids cruises, which sound like a full nightmare to me, but bon voyage to you and yours. If I’m ever trapped at sea with Donnie Wahlberg, know that MISTAKES WERE MADE. I’ll never forget when they tried to rebrand themselves as NKOTB so they would seem more mature. I think I would have just suggested that they tuck their shirts in.

  
  

• Menudo – Did you know that, in addition to being a boy band, “menudo” is also a traditional Mexican soup made with cow’s stomach and a red chili pepper base? Menudo is good source of vitamin B12, zinc and Ricky Martin! Menudo (the boy band) has been around for almost 50 years and has had more than 39 members, mostly because their creep management team kept kicking kids out of the group when they were “too old,” aka 16. I can see kicking someone out of middle school because they’re 16 and that’s too old, but if someone is making that a habit and they’re not the school superintendent, it’s time to call Chris Hansen and the team from To Catch a Predator. In 2022, television’s AC Slater, Mario Lopez, launched a reboot of Menudo with auditions around the country and online. Everyone’s still 16 or younger, but I suppose if you’re 25 and you’re signing up for the Menudo reboot, that’s probably a red flag in and of itself.

  
  

• LFO (Lite Funky Ones) – This was one of those boy bands that only had three people in it and so they were immediately very sus to me. How can you fill up all the boy band archetypes if there are only three of you? Do you want one person to be both the funny one and the old one? That goes against all that I ever learned in physics class! This group had two hits that I remember: “Summer Girls” and “Girl on TV.” Here is a sampling of lyrics from “Summer Girls:” “Like The Color Purple, macaroni and cheese. Ruby red slippers and a bunch of trees. Call you up but what's the use? I like Kevin Bacon but I hate Footloose.” If you’re like me, you read that and asked aloud, “What the actual fuck?” and I am sorry but I do not have the information necessary to elaborate on any actual, literal or figurative fucks when it comes to those lyrics. Beyond the questionable prose, they also had a tendency to really over-sing in their songs and there was definitely a troubling tendency for this group of white performers to speak and sing in a manner that was made popular by black performers. I will admit that if they were just an average boy band, I might have forgotten them by now. So I guess thank goodness those lyrics were terrible and insane nonsense? I also feel compelled to mention that two of three members have died, which makes me assume that the surviving member is currently touring as the Lite Funky One.

  
  

• NSYNC – I once purchased an NSYNC CD online because I was too embarrassed to go to the store and purchase it in person. That is not a comment on NSYNC, but it is a comment on the condition of my headspace in 2000 and it also supports my argument from paragraph two above. I would say that, of all the boy bands mentioned here today, this group had the most questionable hairstyles. They had that one guy that wore ski goggles as a headband to hold back his white boy dreads! That’s a lot of look for one person to handle and he was not successful. Hair tragedies aside, they did sell 2.4 million copies of the album No Strings Attached in its first week of release. That record stood for over 15 years until Adele came along and broke it without wearing even one dreadlock on her head. It was exciting a couple years ago when they reunited for that song from the third Trolls movie. But then I heard the song and it extinguished the excitement faster than someone yelling, “Joey Fatone” during lovemaking.

Takeaway Quote of the Week

“She's been good to me and she deserves better than that.”

Nick Lachey from the song “The Hardest Thing” by 98 Degrees, presumably apologizing to the listener of the song while he is singing it.

Heath Smith is co-host of Fuzzy Memories, the podcast that celebrates the good, the rad and the fugly of the 80s and 90s. He was once asked by a cast member of MTV’s Road Rules if he was from Puerto Rico. In his free time, he enjoys Mariah Carey a normal and healthy amount. For a good time, follow him on Instagram.

Why "Donzerly Light"? Heath says: In elementary school, I thought "donzerly light" was part of the lyrics of the national anthem. I didn't realize that the actual words were "dawn's early light." I just assumed "donzerly" was an old-timey word that meant "majestic" or something like that. My middle school social studies teacher, who thought I was trying to make a joke with “donzerly,” would be 100% irritated by naming my column this way, and that makes it even better.