Across the Pond

I found Jenny's memories and comments of New Kids on the Block (NKOTB) heyday to be familiar, as I am just one year younger than her, I was also in the thick NKOTB-mania. Like Jenny, I wasn't exactly a fanatic myself, but I liked them and was surrounded by friends whose bedroom walls were plastered with posters of the Fab 5. Sleepover conversations did, as Jenny recalls, center around whether one preferred Joey or Jordan. (I was a Joey fan, but I bet Jenny liked Jordan).

I haven't really thought about NKOTB, or even the later bands like N'Sync or Backstreet Boys,until coming to England, where boy and girl bands are still a big deal. Judging by the popularity of the catchy Christmas hit by re-formed boy band Take That, "Rule the World," and by how many of my English friends list the girl band Girls Aloud as favorite music on Facebook, the boy band/girl band phenomena is here to stay across the pond. And, by Jenny's account, maybe it's returning to America. Although she has a good point that NKOTB seems to be targeting its former audience, now young women in their late 20s/early 30s, instead of today's preteens.

I remember going to the Mall of America with a college friend in 2000, and being shocked to see that Joe McIntyre (formerly Joey of NKOTB) was appearing that day to promote his new album. A line stretched around the mall to get autographs and everyone in it was, you guessed it, young women in their early 20s, who'd loved him as a preteen. A few of them had little girls in tow, but clearly it was the adults who were excited.