Looking back on the 'Spice Boys' phenomenon, it's not hard to figure out how it came to be.
This was the other side of the Spice Boys phenomenon – not only did it require young footballers to have more disposable income than ever, it also required salacious hypocrites eager to print stories about the revels which came about as a consequence.
The economy dipped and pop music sales began to sag, along with the entire boy-band phenomenon the Backstreet Boys had spearheaded.
Morgan Spurlock's 3D documentary about One Direction has just enough grit and insight to stop it seeming like simply a glossy promotional vehicle for the boy band phenomenon.
This is a shame because there used to be blokes who were pretty good at being pop stars, until the boy band phenomenon persuaded them to spend their time sitting on stools faux-emoting to easily pleased grandmothers and pre-teens.
Boy, a phenomenon himself in any other company, scored 90.530 and professed himself devoid of the wherewithal to beat Uchimura.
Take That: the boy-band phenomenon was not good for blokes in pop.
Just when you thought the boy-band phenomenon had finally run its course (in how many more directions can One Direction go?), a Chinese iteration goes and renovates the form.
The contest's judges (given the pretentious title "architects") include Nick Carter (the former chief heartthrob of the Backstreet Boys), Emma Bunton (a.k.a. Baby Spice of the Spice Girls), and Timbaland, the early-aughts producer extraordinaire, who had firsthand access to the boy-band phenomenon by way of his work with Justin Timberlake.
The audience at both shows was mostly older, but there were the seeds of what could become a classic boy-band phenomenon: that girl screaming in the audience at the Borgata, high-pitched shrieks of "We love you!" in Toronto, a high school senior who asked Piero to be her date for homecoming.
