0:00 [Music] Welcome back to maybe one of our ever favorite topics of the Kev Boys where today we got to talk about some boy bands like NWA. That is a boy band. Boy, it's one of my favorite ones. Sugar Hill Gang. One of my favorite ones. Yes. Do you have a favorite boy band? [Music] Maybe the Republican Party. All right. You know why I say this true true thing right now. You can quote me on this in the who knows near future when this video comes out in two years. But there is a race between record labels right now to build the next boy band. Interesting. What's the most recent one in America? One Direction in America. Yeah. Isn't that the UK? Oh yeah, they are. They're all foreign.
0:50 Yeah. Then I don't know about America because I would say the most successful global boy band Backstreet or InSync. I would say like maybe you might even consider like BTS. Oh w Korean though. Does that count? That's the thing. This is a global this this boy band race I believe I've heard is to take that crown back is both happening in Korea and in America. Wow. It's a giant race. Do you feel who do you feel is like more equipped to win? Koreans. Koreans I feel like they've been perfecting that model for such a long time. Is is BTS was it the first channel that hit like a billion views or something or they were? Yeah, they're on some mega stuff. They have some crazy metric though. And then and then they took like a a couple year break because they all went to the military. But the thing is in less than 3 months they all come back.
1:41 3 months? I thought the service was like 2 years or some ████ Yeah, I think they like stopped like 2 years ago or something like that. Oh, you said they're returning to different cuz they're of different ages. Yeah. So, like in like three in less than 3 months, they're they're all they're all going to be back, but they're all going to be older, you know? So, like there's a charm. There's a need to fill that like boyband void. And that's probably one of the most ultimate mega cash machines. And apparently the market is just primed for that right now. What do you think? The boy band age is like 15 to maybe cuz after 20 I feel like you're too old. Yeah. Yeah. It's as long as you got that teen glow that like that Justin Bieber like like I can I can save this little boy type thing. I don't I don't know. Cuz I think college I mean I know what you mean. And older is already too
2:32 late. Um are you talking about the demographic or the people in the boy band? In the in the band they have to be for sure earlier than 20. Even we were talking about it yesterday, right? Tate McCrae's got like that like Britney icon. How old is she though? I don't know. But she kind of like hit that younger like teenish like it's that weird age where like a a younger kid or a teen or a teeny bopper can like look up to you but then it's like that oddly younger where it's like slightly older people can still be a fan of remember how like the craze of Justin Bieber like way older people were like infatuated with him and then this fo looked way all of a sudden he started Joey Fetono I thought this fool was already like I'm like did they let the dad in here or what? When they first started, what did he look like when they first started? Faton already look ████ like
3:22 a dad. Same kind of. Yeah. I'm like I don't know, man. Older, but he just looked like the older brother. Nah, he looked like the dad. Wait, how old is the beard? Yo, the members of NSync, how old were they when they first? Dad on TRT trying to ████ jump in the mix. Do you think New Kids were was the original boy band in America? New Kids on the Block. They were Yeah, but they didn't have this like teen magnificence of like these young vocals too, right? With like the high pitch like these are kind of kids and like the backstre to like in sync era was like that was like global ████ phenomenon type ████ too. So Justin Timberlake was started in InSync when he was uh 16 I think. Wa. See that's that's a real boy band. No, he became a member of InSync when he was
4:14 14. Oh, wow. Yeah, they started real young, dude. I didn't even realize how young they were cuz we were kids, too. Wow. We were kids, but they were older than us. Yeah. Bin balling. Killing it. Damn. Well, even before that, he was a part of the Mickey Mouse Club. Yeah. Some of these fools know what they want, right? So, they're like child stars. That's crazy. I do think the boy band age is Yeah. Anywhere from 14 to you're going to age out in your early 20s depending on how young you look. I think I think like Tevin Campbell recorded Can We Talk when he was like 14 or 15 too. You know that song? Can We Talk. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh ████ Really? 14? Yeah. I think it was 14 or 15. Yeah. B2K. Remember? They came to our school.
5:04 Hey, how old were they? probably. They were probably the same age. Trying to get us to vote or some ████ bro. Hey. Yeah, they were also uh 98 to 2004 was like their kind of reign. I think cuz their fan base is probably like junior high to early high school cuz I don't really imagine senior girls in high school still being into them. Interesting. I feel like middle school is like middle school. It's just the young teenage 12 to like 14 is probably where they murder dude like on the demographics because I remember when when Insync was out, Tiff was like she would go to every concert when she was a kid. Wow. And that was like in middle school like any they would always try to get tickets on the radio and ████ every every time they
5:54 came around and that was like middle school. Forget about it. But but Hannah explained it really well for me cuz I was like man like who's actually listening to it? Well, well, for one, it's like I know it's kids, but then like clearly like women, they're not they don't find them attractive cuz they're like boys, right? So, I was like, "But what is it about it?" And then she's like, "It's a young girl's way into sexuality." So, it's like their first crush, but a man is too intimidating for them. We're like, "Guys, it's like we can't have like five Jason Mimoas. It's too crazy. That's too much. That's too much man for anybody. Cuz I was originally thinking like WWE, dude. That's what we like. Cuz youth youthful boys are kind of
6:45 girly, right? So then I'm like, how come they're kind of feminine? And like is that what women like? And she goes, "No, not for not women, but girls." Girls like Yes. I didn't see I didn't get that. Maybe maybe you know cuz you're more a part of that dance world and and and entertainment like you do backup dancing for them and all that and then you see the audience, right? But I'm like I thought girls liked a man like a like a Wolverine or whatever. Yeah. And she goes, "No, no, no. That's that's like too much." Cuz I was She's like, "You never had that stage where like you didn't go full on like Pamela Anderson. You went like halfway and then Pamela." I'm like, "No." as ████ third graders, boys like Pamela and 20some year olds. That's it. Like you wake up one day, you're like, "Oh yeah, she's I wish I was 21 cuz I want to date her." I mean, we still enjoyed like the Alicia
7:36 Silverstone. Yeah, we did. But we still liked um Oh my god, what were their names? Um who who are like the teeny like even I remember even thinking like Mandy Moore was fine when I was a kid. You know when you used to like go into the library and rip magazine things you stick them in your ████ folder in like the sleeve so you can just like stare at like random chicks. Britney Spear was like they were appropriate our age class but I would say we like them and we also like Christina Applegate. Like there was no like oh no she's too sexy this too much. That's true right? It's but women have a too much meter. They have a uh they need the stages of like Justin Bieber is more non-threatening and safer and like oh I could see him being my boyfriend. And then when they're grown
8:26 up they're like Jason Mamoa I'm a woman and ready for you. I see. I see. That's an interesting perspective. Yeah. But boys don't really have that. That's true. Huh. I never thought about that way. Dude, B2K hit for me when I was young. They were like a kid, too. I mean, they were a boy band, too, right? They're kids. American pop boy band. Yeah. Do you think there's ever going to be a co-ed like teen band? It'll never work, dude. It'll never work. I don't think so. I don't think it will work. Probably marketing wise, it's probably easier when it's all girls or all boys. Yeah. I feel like the dynamic if if you're trying to create fandom Yeah. you want girls that love or guys that love. But wouldn't that be interesting to see though? Yeah, it would be interesting. I I would just want to see it one time, you know, like not for the profitability of it or whatever, but I don't know if like teenager, but I think like really
9:16 young adult. Yeah. But I think the biggest consumer of pop music of like let's say Spice Girls, InSync, all that. I think they're all 14-year-old girls. Like, would you consider Boys to Men a boy band? When they first came out, they were I don't know cuz R&B to men aren't boys. So, I mean, they're not boy bands to be honest. Like, you're singing about like love. It's adult ████ Yeah. We're thinking like pop, right? Yeah. I think pop is what makes it a boy band. And then like they're dancing and ████ and then like What about um is it naughty by nature or um No, they're like a group or immature maybe immature. Immature like by default. Who sings uh uh Randy Ranger? Oh, ████ Oh. Um. Uh.
10:11 My candy rain. Yeah, candy rain. Oh, dude. So, for real. Yeah. Is that Is that considered a I think that's R&B though. Yeah. That's a whole separate category. Once you go R&B, it's like that's like lowkey like boy band is pop music. Sex. Yeah. It's pop music. Honestly, in America, when I think of boy band, I just think of like white guys. That's it. Like as soon as Korean guys now. You said what? or Korean guys now. Mhm. That's true. That's definitely B2K was a boy band. Yeah. But there is like Hansen, I mean that's kind of a boy band, right? And then like Yeah. And if you think about like even in um like black music back in the day like the Jackson 5 or like there's young boy kind of band, but when I think of a boy band, I'm thinking about their dem their demographic is girls that want to be
11:01 their boyfriends. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's very specific. Yeah. So, it's like made It's like love songs made for teeny boppers. Yeah, for sure. Did Hannah have a band that she liked growing up? She said she got into K-pop. Really? Hannah got into K-pop. Yeah, she like um I forgot the names. Big Bang, Got Seven. Maybe HOT was our era like Young. Yeah. Was it the more newer bands or she's talking about like old school K-pop? She's the same age as Nick. 32. Yeah, that means she might have been into like EXO, GOT7, icon, but I don't know if that was her boy band stuff. She said that her first crush was Vegeta on Dragon Ball. So funny, bro. That's hilarious. CD crush.
11:54 Her first crush was a cartoon Vegeta level 9,000. Joe's Vegeta. I think of Joe as Vegeta. Joe's pretty Vegeta. So funny. So she goes, "I got my faith." And it's like, "Can you do it again, Joe?" Kakarat, put the M on your forehead. And then she said like K-pop wasn't that in when she was into it. Oh, so it was But there was no word for like weeb either, but she's not a weeb. Korean. K-pop. See, K-pop's a crazy like uh extreme version of like that uh character arc where like even the record labels won't allow them for example in their contract like you can't have girlfriends, you can't post anything about it because like you need to preserve this image that you are like within reach so that people love you.
12:46 Like there's there's like even with Chinese pop stars and stuff the like the boy band pop type of singers like it's a huge cultural thing where like girls will show up to tour like concerts in wedding dresses and they're not like the crazy like glamorous like longtail type but it's just like the wedding dress like white like themed type kind of look veil type ████ like it's it's a huge cultural thing because there's like the like make me your wife but it's not serious like where like the boyfriends will take the girls who are in love with the pop stars and the boyfriends will just sit there and endure it. This is kind of cosplay then. Yeah, it's like cosplay but it's just like that like that's how cooking starts. Oh my ████ You know what though? I I think for the race who's going to win I think it's going to be Korea because of like the either the labor laws or something. They got less
13:37 laws for sure. Korea they just discipline their kids differently than Americans, you Well, the thing is they'll create boy bands regardless, but like the one that pops off and like takes like the world by storm, aka the next like BTS of this generation. Who's who's to say? You know, I think even America's primed for that right now in our pop music market. Well, I have a question about BTS cuz I don't really know about K-pop in general. Like, I didn't even I thought it was like a newer thing like in the later 2000s. Like, I didn't know it was like going on for so long. But like, why do you think BTS popped off? so crazy over all these other K-pop groups. Dude, their music is just way better cuz it was like getting good and then when BTS came out, it got really good. Like production got really good, choreography got really good and then the their faces like their specific
14:28 faces, people were just in love with them. Really? It's like a flavor. Yeah. Just a styles were cool. Like if you compare them as a boy band to the their pre uh like the previous ones like they're just newer, younger, fresher, like it's just better. And like I think the traditional concept in like American media uh would be like the like let's go find talent, right? M whereas like over there they're like let's breed it you know like you submit your kid to like instead of going to traditional schooling you go to like this underground almost like a college or K-pop academy traininee. Yeah. And then from there it's like they're uh not groomed is not the right word, but like literally I was just over there at one of the larger record labels to do a trainee training workshop and I'm just
15:18 teaching like 12 to like 17-year-old boys and they're like this big to like taller than me because they like handp pick different labels are picking different looks. They're good at manufacturing talent because the way I see it is I don't know if if I I heard that they do this in Japan too, but like they'll have that school and then they pick the best. It's like a special ops. Like that's the military, that's the army, and then from the cream of the crop, they'll pick the best and they'll assemble the special ops out of that. Well, Korea does it really good because they'll have like all these people training, right? It's almost like survivor Squid Game type stuff. All these people are training and then from there the best go into a pool that go into a reality TV show of like making the band and then from there they're competing blah blah blah blah blah doing challenges and like their normal school routine is like like uh singing lessons,
16:09 dance lessons, blah blah blah blah blah all these different things and then they make the band but it's via reality TV show. So by the time this band is assembled and they don't even have a song yet, their fansship and their followers and their love and adoration is already at a high level. So then they drop their single, which is basically what happened on that Netflix show that was an American version of a K-pop record label that did it here with Cats Eye. Same thing. It was, you guys know about the the Netflix show that created that all girl group Cats Eye. It's it's literally what they do in Korea, but they did it over here. and we made a Netflix special about it where it's making the band, but by the time Cats Eye was chosen, all the winners were there. There's already an entire relationship with their fan base and then they drop a single. So like imagine back in the day it's like you maybe Damn, that's how they're doing it now. Label might put together a band and then
17:00 you make a song and then you drop it and you'd have to like ████ make sure the radios are playing, you market and billboard everywhere and all that stuff. This is completely different in today's age because now this group's already got like 2 million followers because they just watched him on a TV show. Now put a song on them, you know what must it feel like to like go through all this like studying and practicing and hours and stuff like does do you think that takes the fun out of doing the art? Cuz us doesn't matter. You're a cash machine. For us as artists like we did it because of passion and that's what drove us to get better. But for these kids, it's like they might have an interest and maybe their parents like wanted them to like, you know, go through this training thing and so them it's like all work. So imagine by the time you're like a famous artist like do you even love what you're
17:51 doing anymore? That's what I want. I think so. I don't I mean what's the top in America right now pop? Is it Sabrina Carpenter? Do you think? Like who's the top? You think it's still probably still like the top pop artist. I just learned who Tate McCrae was the other day. I've never heard her music, but I know everyone's like, "Dude, Dave McCra," all the young kids are like, "I love her." I think America is really good at manufacturing an artist that seems authentic, like this is their story. This is their voice. And then you follow this human. And then when you hear their song, you don't know that it's a writer. And then the persona is created. You think it's an authentic person, and then they speak to you. And then I think in Asia they know it's manufactured but it still speaks to them. Yeah. Because it's dope. It's because to them it's like this is all the hard work that they put
18:41 in to get this result you know. But then in America I think like they are really good at creating this story of like this is who they really are. But they're manufactured too for sure. Like a lot of them are studio manufactured. Yeah. Wonder how many American artists actually write their own stuff like you know do everything on their own and then the PR people come in and go let's make a story around this. I think we're all over the place starting to lose that Wikipedia who wrote their songs. Uh cuz back I think it was more common to have multi-talented like artists like that can act, that can sing, that can write their own ████ that can dance and all that. But I think now it's so much more manufactured with a team. This is like the argument at the at the Grammys, too. It's like Beyonce who has like 50 different writers and stuff to like make
19:31 a single album, whereas like Billy Eyish and her brother write every song in their And that's Yeah, that's crazy. But it depends on just how many people value what cultural thing. But I do think American music though is like less so K-pop reminds me of um innocent stuff that's still PC. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And it's they don't have like the more like American music is more sexual adult content. There's more pain in the songs. There's more like suffering in the songs. there's more like rawness and we do have pop too, but um I do think like the music industry has a lot more of that whereas Korean pop music it's just the pop. Yeah. They don't and then but they don't go beyond that. So like like we have crossover
20:23 like like Sabrina Carpenter can be pop, right? Yeah. Yeah. Or like sometimes you have these edgy artists even ████ um what's it oh brain fart wet ass ████ can be pop. Cardi B. Wild to me how like songs like that it popped off, right? But then in other countries that would never fly. Yeah. It would still be underground. Like they wouldn't the government wouldn't allow that to be popped.
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